47-579: Gourin ( French pronunciation: [ɡuʁɛ̃] ; Breton : Gourin ) is a commune in the Morbihan département of Brittany in north-western France. Gourin is in the northwest of Morbihan, 40 km (25 mi) northeast of Quimper and 47 km (29 mi) northwest of Lorient . Historically, it belongs to Cornouaille . Gourin is on the southern slope of the Montagnes Noires (French, Black Mountains). The river Inam rises in
94-560: A Brittonic language community that once extended from Great Britain to Armorica (present-day Brittany) and had even established a toehold in Galicia (in present-day Spain). Old Breton is attested from the 9th century. It was the language of the upper classes until the 12th century, after which it became the language of commoners in Lower Brittany. The nobility, followed by the bourgeoisie , adopted French . The written language of
141-540: A fairly large body of literature for a minority language. In 1977, Diwan schools were founded to teach Breton by immersion . Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to the growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton. The Asterix comic series has been translated into Breton. According to
188-497: A large copy of the Statue of Liberty standing in the main square opposite the town hall alongside the monument to the fallen soldiers of the 20th century who came from this region. Gourin still has a large number of native Breton speakers. The people of this region are very proud of their Celtic heritage and have preserved many old customs and traditions. In 2008, 18.32% of primary school children attended bilingual schools. Gourin
235-461: A national culture. Teachers humiliated students for using their regional languages, and such practices prevailed until the late 1960s. In the early 21st century, due to the political centralization of France, the influence of the media, and the increasing mobility of people, only about 200,000 people are active speakers of Breton, a dramatic decline from more than 1 million in 1950. The majority of today's speakers are more than 60 years old, and Breton
282-477: A schwa sound occurs as a result of vowel neutralization in post-tonic position, among different dialects. All vowels can also be nasalized , which is noted by appending an 'n' letter after the base vowel, or by adding a combining tilde above the vowel (most commonly and easily done for a and o due to the Portuguese letters ), or more commonly by non-ambiguously appending an ⟨ñ⟩ letter after
329-412: Is -où , with its variant -ioù ; most nouns that use this marker are inanimates but collectives of both inanimate and animate nouns always use it as well. Most animate nouns, including trees, take a plural in -ed . However, in some dialects the use of this affix has become rare. Various masculine nouns including occupations as well as the word Saoz ("Englishman", plural Saozon ) take
376-408: Is twinned with the following place: This Morbihan geographical article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Breton language Breton ( / ˈ b r ɛ t ə n / , BRET -ən , French: [bʁətɔ̃] ; endonym : brezhoneg [bʁeˈzɔ̃ːnɛk] or [bɾəhɔ̃ˈnek] in Morbihan ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of
423-535: Is a town and commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department of Brittany in northwestern France . Inhabitants of Plouha are called plouhatins in French. Plouha is twinned with: Plouha has many notable medieval sites ranging from chapels and churches to manoires and kers , including The Chapel of Kermaria ( Kermaria an Iskuit ). Plouha's beaches were the sight of several resistance efforts, notably as part of
470-402: Is applied for animate referents. Metals, time divisions (except for eur "hour", noz "night" and sizhun "week") and mountains tend to be masculine, while rivers, cities and countries tend to be feminine. However, gender assignment to certain words often varies between dialects. Number in Breton is primarily based on an opposition between singular and plural. However, the system
517-406: Is full of complexities in how this distinction is realized. Although modern Breton has lost its ancestral dual number marker, relics of its use are preserved in various nouns pertaining to body parts, including the words for eyes, ears, cheeks, legs, armpits, arms, hands, knees, thighs, and wings. This is seen in a prefix (formed in daou , di or div ) that is etymologically derived from
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#1732776460302564-422: Is not used, while keleier has become the regular plural, 'different news items'. Meanwhile, certain nouns can form doubly marked plurals with lexicalized meanings – bugel "child" is pluralized once into bugale "children" and then pluralized a second time to make bugaleoù "groups of children". The diminutive suffix -ig also has the somewhat unusual property of triggering double marking of
611-609: Is now classified as an endangered language . At the beginning of the 20th century, half of the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton; the other half were bilingual. By 1950, there were only 100,000 monolingual Bretons, and this rapid decline has continued, with likely no monolingual speakers left today. A statistical survey in 1997 found around 300,000 speakers in Lower Brittany, of whom about 190,000 were aged 60 or older. Few 15- to 19-year-olds spoke Breton. In 1993, parents were finally legally allowed to give their children Breton names. In 1925, Professor Roparz Hemon founded
658-589: Is pluralized to pesked , singulativized to peskedenn , referring to a single fish out of a school of fish, and this singulative of the plural can then be pluralized again to make peskedennoù "fishes". On top of this, the formation of plurals is complicated by two different pluralizing functions. The "default" plural formation is contrasted with another formation which is said to "emphasize variety or diversity" – thus two semantically different plurals can be formed out of park : parkoù "parks" and parkeier "various different parks". Ball reports that
705-546: Is the only living Celtic language that is not recognized by a national government as an official or regional language. The first Breton dictionary, the Catholicon , was also the first French dictionary. Edited by Jehan Lagadec in 1464, it was a trilingual work containing Breton, French and Latin. Today bilingual dictionaries have been published for Breton and languages including English, Dutch, German, Spanish and Welsh. A monolingual dictionary, Geriadur Brezhoneg an Here
752-405: Is used to form singulars out of collective nouns , for which the morphologically less complex form is the plural. Thus, the singulative of the collective logod "mice" is logod enn "mouse". However, Breton goes beyond Welsh in the complications of this system. Collectives can be pluralized to make forms which are different in meaning from the normal collective-- pesk "fish" (singular)
799-445: The Ya d'ar brezhoneg campaign, to encourage enterprises, organisations and communes to promote the use of Breton, for example by installing bilingual signage or translating their websites into Breton. In the late 20th century, the French government considered incorporating the independent Breton-language immersion schools (called Diwan ) into the state education system. This action
846-620: The Celtic language group spoken in Brittany , part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on the European mainland, albeit as a member of the insular branch instead of the continental grouping. Breton was brought from Great Britain to Armorica (the ancient name for the coastal region that includes the Brittany peninsula) by migrating Britons during
893-555: The Comet line , a resistance group that sheltered Allied troops and helped them return to Great Britain. The Bonaparte beach near Plouha was the site for the evacuations by sea organized by the Shelburne Escape Line and residents of Plouha. In 1944, more than 100 downed allied airmen were evacuated by Royal Navy motor gunboats from Bonaparte Beach to Dartmouth , England . This Côtes-d'Armor geographical article
940-572: The Duchy of Brittany was Latin , switching to French in the 15th century. There exists a limited tradition of Breton literature . Some philosophical and scientific terms in Modern Breton come from Old Breton. The recognized stages of the Breton language are: Old Breton – c. 800 to c. 1100 , Middle Breton – c. 1100 to c. 1650 , Modern Breton – c. 1650 to present. The French monarchy
987-607: The Early Middle Ages , making it an Insular Celtic language . Breton is most closely related to Cornish , another Southwestern Brittonic language. Welsh and the extinct Cumbric , both Western Brittonic languages , are more distantly related, and the Goidelic languages ( Irish , Manx , Scottish Gaelic ) have a slight connection due to both of their origins being from Insular Celtic. Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to about 200,000 in
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#17327764603021034-431: The county of Léon ), tregerieg ( trégorrois , of Trégor ), kerneveg ( cornouaillais , of Cornouaille ), and gwenedeg ( vannetais , of Vannes ). Guérandais was spoken up to the beginning of the 20th century in the region of Guérande and Batz-sur-Mer . There are no clear boundaries between the dialects because they form a dialect continuum , varying only slightly from one village to
1081-498: The Breton-language review Gwalarn . During its 19-year run, Gwalarn tried to raise the language to the level of a great international language. Its publication encouraged the creation of original literature in all genres, and proposed Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, Al Liamm replaced Gwalarn . Other Breton-language periodicals have been published, which established
1128-412: The French law known as Toubon , it is illegal for commercial signage to be in Breton alone. Signs must be bilingual or French only. Since commercial signage usually has limited physical space, most businesses have signs only in French. Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg , the Breton language agency, was set up in 1999 by the Brittany region to promote and develop the daily use of Breton. It helped to create
1175-510: The University of Rennes 2 has a Breton language department offering courses in the language along with a master's degree in Breton and Celtic Studies. Vowels in Breton may be short or long . All unstressed vowels are short; stressed vowels can be short or long (vowel lengths are not noted in usual orthographies as they are implicit in the phonology of particular dialects, and not all dialects pronounce stressed vowels as long). An emergence of
1222-479: The base vowel (this depends on the orthographic variant). Diphthongs are /ai, ei, ou/ . Breton nouns are marked for gender and number. While Breton gender is fairly typical of gender systems across western Europe (with the exception of Basque and modern English), Breton number markers demonstrate rarer behaviors. Breton has two genders: masculine ( gourel ) and feminine ( gwregel ), having largely lost its historic neuter ( nepreizh ) as has also occurred in
1269-427: The changes associated with -er / -ier are less predictable. Various nouns instead form their plural merely with ablaut : a or o in the stem being changed to e : askell "wing" → eskell "wings"; dant "tooth" → dent "teeth"; kordenn "rope" → kerdenn "ropes". Plouha Plouha ( French pronunciation: [plu.a] ; Breton : Plouha ; Gallo : Plóha )
1316-1156: The comic, the Gaulish village where Asterix lives is in the Armorica peninsula , which is now Brittany. Some other popular comics have also been translated into Breton, including The Adventures of Tintin , Spirou , Titeuf , Hägar the Horrible , Peanuts and Yakari . Some original media are created in Breton. The sitcom, Ken Tuch , is in Breton. Radio Kerne , broadcasting from Finistère , has exclusively Breton programming. Some movies ( Lancelot du Lac , Shakespeare in Love , Marion du Faouet , Sezneg ) and TV series ( Columbo , Perry Mason ) have also been translated and broadcast in Breton. Poets, singers, linguists, and writers who have written in Breton, including Yann-Ber Kallocʼh , Roparz Hemon , Añjela Duval , Xavier de Langlais , Pêr-Jakez Helias , Youenn Gwernig , Glenmor , Vefa de Saint-Pierre and Alan Stivell are now known internationally. Today, Breton
1363-880: The consideration of the Breton language in Microsoft products. In October 2014, Facebook added Breton as one of its 121 languages after three years of talks between the Ofis and Facebook. France has twice chosen to enter the Eurovision Song Contest with songs in Breton; once in 1996 in Oslo with " Diwanit bugale " by Dan Ar Braz and the fifty piece band Héritage des Celtes , and most recently in 2022 in Turin with " Fulenn " by Alvan Morvan Rosius and vocal trio Ahez . These are two of five times France has chosen songs in one of its minority languages for
1410-568: The contest, the others being in 1992 (bilingual French and Antillean Creole ), 1993 (bilingual French and Corsican ), and 2011 (Corsican). Breton is spoken mainly in Lower Brittany, but also in a more dispersed way in Upper Brittany (where it is spoken alongside Gallo and French), and in areas around the world that have Breton emigrants. The four traditional dialects of Breton correspond to medieval bishoprics rather than to linguistic divisions. They are leoneg ( léonard , of
1457-676: The first decade of the 21st century, 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 rose 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709. Breton is spoken in Lower Brittany ( Breton : Breizh-Izel ), roughly to the west of a line linking Plouha (west of Saint-Brieuc ) and La Roche-Bernard (east of Vannes ). It comes from
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1504-577: The growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton. The schools have also gained fame from their high level of results in school exams, including those on French language and literature. Breton-language schools do not receive funding from the national government, though the Brittany Region may fund them. Another teaching method is a bilingual approach by Div Yezh ("Two Languages") in the State schools, created in 1979. Dihun ("Awakening")
1551-681: The growth of the movement. In 2007, some 4,500 to 5,000 adults followed an evening or correspondence one Breton-language course. The transmission of Breton in 1999 was estimated to be 3 percent. In addition to bilingual education (including Breton-medium education) the region has introduced the Breton language in primary education, mainly in the department of Finistère. These "initiation" sessions are generally one to three hours per week, and consist of songs and games. Schools in secondary education ( collèges and lycées ) offer some courses in Breton. In 2010, nearly 5,000 students in Brittany were reported to be taking this option. Additionally,
1598-541: The heritage of France ). The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , which obliges signatory states to recognize minority and regional languages, was signed by France in 1999 but has not been ratified. On 27 October 2015, the Senate rejected a draft constitutional law ratifying the charter. Regional and departmental authorities use Breton to a very limited extent. Some bilingual signage has also been installed, such as street name signs in Breton towns. Under
1645-450: The latter pluralizer is used only for inanimate nouns. Certain formations have been lexicalized to have meanings other than that which might be predicted solely from the morphology: dour "water" pluralized forms dourioù which means not "waters" but instead "rivers", while doureier now has come to mean "running waters after a storm". Certain forms have lost the singular from their paradigm: keloù means "news" and * kel
1692-589: The next. Gwenedeg , however, requires a little study to be intelligible with most of the other dialects. French is the sole official language of France . Supporters of Breton and other minority languages continue to argue for their recognition, and for their place in education, public schools, and public life. In July 2008, the legislature amended the French Constitution , adding article 75-1: les langues régionales appartiennent au patrimoine de la France (the regional languages belong to
1739-540: The northern part of Gourin and flows to the south. Inhabitants of Gourin are called in French Gourinois . Gourin lost 40% of its population since 1946. This small town is well known for the Révolte des Bonnets Rouges against local nobles at the end of the 17th century. The town is also known for being the origin of many immigrants to United States and Canada during the first part of the 20th century. It has
1786-457: The other Celtic languages as well as across the Romance languages. Certain suffixes ( -ach/-aj, -(a)dur, -er, -lecʼh, -our, -ti, -va ) are masculine, while others ( -enti, -er, -ez, -ezh, -ezon, -i , -eg , -ell , and the singulative -enn ) are feminine. The suffix -eg can be masculine or feminine. There are certain non-determinant factors that influence gender assignment. Biological sex
1833-519: The peasant masses under-informed. In 1794, Bertrand Barère submitted his "report on the patois " to the Committee of Public Safety in which he said that "federalism and superstition speak Breton". Since the 19th century, under the Third , Fourth and now Fifth Republics , the French government has attempted to stamp out minority languages—including Breton—in state schools, in an effort to build
1880-478: The plural: bugelig means "little child", but the doubly pluralized bug ale ig où means "little children"; bag boat has a singular diminutive bagig and a simple plural bagoù , thus its diminutive plural is the doubly pluralized bag où ig où . As seen elsewhere in many Celtic languages, the formation of the plural can be hard to predict, being determined by a mix of semantic, morphological and lexical factors. The most common plural marker
1927-410: The prefixation of the number two. The dual is no longer productive, and has merely been lexicalized in these cases rather than remaining a part of Breton grammar. The (etymologically) already dual words for eyes ( daoulagad ) and ears ( divskouarn ) can be pluralized "again" to form daoulagad où and diskouarn où . Like other Brythonic languages, Breton has a singulative suffix that
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1974-512: The suffix -ien , with a range of variants including -on , -ion , -an and -ian . The rare pluralizing suffixes -er / -ier and -i are used for a few nouns. When they are appended, they also trigger a change in the vowel of the root: -i triggers a vowel harmony effect whereby some or all preceding vowels are changed to i ( kenderv "cousin" → kindirvi "cousins"; bran "crow" → brini "crows"; klujur "partridge" → klujiri "partridges");
2021-570: The use of the Spilhennig to let speakers identify each other. The office also started an Internationalization and localization policy asking Google , Firefox and SPIP to develop their interfaces in Breton. In 2004, the Breton Misplaced Pages started, which counts more than 85,000 articles as of August 2024. In March 2007, the Ofis ar Brezhoneg signed a tripartite agreement with Regional Council of Brittany and Microsoft for
2068-804: Was blocked by the French Constitutional Council based on the 1994 amendment to the Constitution that establishes French as the language of the republic. Therefore, no other language may be used as a language of instruction in state schools. The Toubon Law implemented the amendment, asserting that French is the language of public education. The Diwan schools were founded in Brittany in 1977 to teach Breton by immersion . Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to
2115-701: Was created in 1990 for bilingual education in the Catholic schools. In 2018, 18,337 pupils (about 2% of all students in Brittany) attended Diwan , Div Yezh and Dihun schools, and their number has increased yearly. This was short of the goal of Jean-Yves Le Drian (president of the Regional Council ), who aimed to have 20,000 students in bilingual schools by 2010, and of "their recognition" for "their place in education, public schools, and public life"; nevertheless he describes being encouraged by
2162-534: Was not concerned with the minority languages of France , spoken by the lower classes, and required the use of French for government business as part of its policy of national unity. During the French Revolution , the government introduced policies favouring French over the regional languages, which it pejoratively referred to as patois . The revolutionaries assumed that reactionary and monarchist forces preferred regional languages to try to keep
2209-489: Was published in 1995. The first edition contained about 10,000 words, and the second edition of 2001 contains 20,000 words. In the early 21st century, the Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg ("Public Office for the Breton language") began a campaign to encourage daily use of Breton in the region by both businesses and local communes. Efforts include installing bilingual signs and posters for regional events, as well as encouraging
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