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:
“Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“Our goal as a parent is to give life to our children’s learning—to instruct, to teach, to help them develop self-discipline—an ordering of the self from the inside, not imposition from the outside. Any technique that does not give life to a child’s learning and leave a child’s dignity intact cannot be called discipline—it is punishment, no matter what language it is clothed in.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)