Breton Language
Breton (Brezhoneg) is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany (Breton: Breizh; French: Bretagne), France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as an Insular Celtic language. Breton is most closely related to Cornish, as both are thought to have evolved from a Southwestern Brythonic protolanguage. The other regional language of Brittany, Gallo, is a Langue d'oïl derived from Latin and is consequently relatively close to French.
Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to about 200,000 in the first decade of the 21st century, of whom 61% are more than 60 years old, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. However, the number of children attending bilingual classes has risen 27% between 2006 and 2011 to 14,129.
Read more about Breton Language: History and Status, Geographic Distribution and Dialects, Education, Vocabulary, Orthography
Famous quotes containing the words breton and/or language:
“In the world we live in ... everything militates in favor of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you.”
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