Misplaced Pages

#55944

57-485: The Federation of Old Cornwall Societies ( FOCS ) was formed in 1924, on the initiative of Robert Morton Nance , with the objective of collecting and maintaining "all those ancient things that make the spirit of Cornwall — its traditions, its old words and ways, and what remains to it of its Celtic language and nationality". The motto of the federation—as written on their web site—is " Cuntelleugh an brewyon ues gesys na vo kellys travyth ", which translated into English

114-514: A Penzance newspaper that seemed enough. He began to write and illustrate poetry for Arthur Quiller-Couch 's Cornish Magazine . In 1909, Nance and Jenner met in Falmouth while the former was researching for the book A Glossary of Cornish Sea Words (published only after his death as a memorial volume in 1959). They became friends and spent the next decade researching Cornish and collecting tidbits of traditional Cornish. These were published in

171-704: A dictionary and grammar." In 1898, Robert Morton Nance wrote The Merry Ballad of the Cornish Pasty . Nance began studying the Cornish language in 1904 from Henry Jenner 's A Handbook of the Cornish language, although he would later steer the language revival towards mediaeval Cornish. ...even the Handbook did not get me to the stage of attempting to write or speak the language, as the projected book of exercises might have done had it been printed. If I could puzzle out such things in Cornish as were printed in

228-540: 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

285-501: 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 was not concerned with the minority languages of France , spoken by

342-477: 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

399-641: A series of papers which were read both to the Royal Institution of Cornwall and the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. Jenner and Nance formed the first Old Cornwall Society in St Ives in 1920. Its motto was "Cuntelleugh an Brewyon us Gesys na vo Kellys Travyth". By 1924, there were sufficient Old Cornwall Societies for a Federation, with Jenner as its president and Nance as its recorder. The Federation established

456-453: A small English-Cornish Dictionary together. His life's work, a full Cornish-English dictionary, was completed by Nance in 1938. £2000 of the day's money was raised by volunteer donations to pay for the work's publication. It was revised and extended to include an English-Cornish section in 1952. Lyver an Pymp Marthus Selevan , a collection of folk tales from the St. Levan parish written to imitate

513-455: A speech by Henry Jenner on the subject of Cornish patriotism in which he wrote "Bedheugh Byntha Kernewek" (Be Forever Cornish). A group of young Cornish folk who were politically active joined together to form Cornwall's first national political movement, Tyr ha Tavas (Land and Language), taking Jenner's phrase as their motto to lobby parliament. Nance commented at the time: The young people of this group are among those who 'see visions' and from

570-571: 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 the Duchy of Brittany was Latin , switching to French in the 15th century. There exists

627-828: A work which detailed a version of Cornish based on the Ordinalia and other mediaeval texts, creating the Unified Cornish spelling system and defining the next phase of the Revival. An Balores, the first play written in Unified Cornish, was written by Nance in 1932 and performed that year at the Celtic Congress meeting in Truro. That year, on 31 December, the Western Morning News published

SECTION 10

#1732782911056

684-412: 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

741-655: Is "Gather ye the fragments that are left, that nothing be lost". The motto in the OCS logo is the Cornish phrase King Arthur is not dead . The first Old Cornwall Society was established by Robert Morton Nance in St Ives in 1920. Today, The Federation of Old Cornwall Societies consists of over 40 individual societies throughout Cornwall. There are also other affiliated groups within Cornwall as well as those Associated societies and groups in England and overseas. The OCS celebrate

798-402: 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

855-406: 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

912-422: 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

969-589: 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

1026-546: 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

1083-405: 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)

1140-498: 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

1197-552: 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 a national culture. Teachers humiliated students for using their regional languages, and such practices prevailed until

SECTION 20

#1732782911056

1254-561: The Royal Institution of Cornwall from 1951 to 1955. During this time, he worked to improve modern Cornish and publish new editions in 1952 and 1955 of his two dictionaries. In 1954, records were produced of Nance reading the story Jowan Chy an Hor , as well as Boorde's Colloquies and the Lord's Prayer. Before his death in 1959, he remarked: "One generation has set Cornish on its feet. It is now for another to make it walk." Nance

1311-510: The Society for Nautical Research . His insight and learning were displayed in his book Sailing-ship Models which appeared in 1924. He studied art in Britain and France and was both a painter and a skilled craftsman. "My own interest in Cornish came, I expect, from my father's comparison of Cornish names with Welsh, of which he knew a little, having had at least enough interest in it to get

1368-431: 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

1425-539: 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

1482-498: 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

1539-613: 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 the Early Middle Ages , making it an Insular Celtic language . Breton is most closely related to Cornish , another Southwestern Brittonic language. Welsh and

1596-412: 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

1653-720: 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 a Brittonic language community that once extended from Great Britain to Armorica (present-day Brittany) and had even established

1710-510: 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

1767-586: The autumn of 1957. 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 the Celtic language group spoken in Brittany , part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on

Federation of Old Cornwall Societies - Misplaced Pages Continue

1824-479: 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

1881-1156: 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

1938-880: 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

1995-568: 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

2052-463: 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 the first decade of the 21st century, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by

2109-577: 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")

2166-681: 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,

2223-541: 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

2280-411: 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 is now classified as an endangered language . At the beginning of

2337-450: 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

Federation of Old Cornwall Societies - Misplaced Pages Continue

2394-550: 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 the peasant masses under-informed. In 1794, Bertrand Barère submitted his "report on

2451-589: 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

2508-492: The old Cornish tradition of midsummer bonfires, normally held on 23 June each year. The hilltop bonfires that form a chain are currently held at Kit Hill , St Breock Beacon, Castle An Dinas , and Redruth . In the autumn the harvest festival known as Crying The Neck is also celebrated by the OCS. Old Cornwall , the journal of the Federation, began publication in 1925 and is published twice yearly. The first editor

2565-457: 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

2622-464: The periodical Old Cornwall in 1925. The 1920s to circa 1940 saw Nance and A. S. D. Smith using the works of Edward Lhuyd and Whitley Stokes , as well as Breton grammar, to resolve the issue of syntax and grammar in Cornish. On 21 September 1928, Nance, Jenner and others held the first Gorsedh Kernow at Boscawen-Un. Twelve bards were made, including Nance who took the bardic name Mordon (' Sea Wave '). In 1929, he published Cornish for All ,

2679-478: 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

2736-410: 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

2793-579: The response to their clarion call, there is ground for hoping that they represent a new and growing force which will help to revive in Cornish people a consciousness of their race and destiny, and to create a bond of affinity and unity between the remnants of the Cornish Nation throughout the world. In 1934, with the death of Henry Jenner, Nance became Bardh Meur or Grand Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh. That same year, Nance and Smith published

2850-806: The style of Cornwall's miracle-plays, was published by Nance in 1939. 1949 saw the chance discovery in the British Museum of the Tregear Homilies . John Mackechnie, the Celtic scholar who discovered them, passed news of the discovery on to Nance. The Old Cornwall Societies began in 1951 to publish a series of small booklets with extracts from Middle Cornish edited in Unified Cornish by Nance and A. S. D. Smith. Including among these texts were Bewnans Meryasek , An Tyr Marya , Sylvester ha'n Dhragon , Abram hag Ysak , Adam ha Seth , Davydd hag Urry and An Venen ha'y Map . Nance served as President of

2907-512: 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");

SECTION 50

#1732782911056

2964-570: 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

3021-514: Was Robert Morton Nance . Robert Morton Nance Nance wrote many books and pamphlets on the Cornish language , including a Cornish dictionary , which is a standard work, and edited magazines and pamphlets about Cornwall , including Old Cornwall , the journal of the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies . Nance was also a nautical archaeologist of distinction and was an originator of

3078-804: 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

3135-574: Was born in Cardiff to Cornish parents. His father was from Padstow. Nance spent most of his youth living in Penarth and studied art in Cardiff and Hertfordshire. In 1906, Nance moved from Wales and settled at Nancledra near St Ives, Cornwall from where he jointly founded the Society for Nautical Research in 1911. In 1959, he died and was buried at St Senara's Church, Zennor after taking ill in

3192-701: 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

3249-489: 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

#55944