A lot of people know that Irish and Welsh are Celtic languages, and that Ireland and Wales are Celtic nations. Even I learned about Celtic culture through the Irish language. But not many people know that Brittany is a Celtic nation too and that Breton is a Celtic language very much alive. Breton, in the Celtic family tree, is the little brother of Welsh and Cornish, and its mother is British. British was spoken by the inhabitants of Britain before and during the Roman period, but unfortunately they didn’t care enough to write it down, so there is next to nothing found of British, which is very upsetting to linguistic fanatics like me..
In the Dark Ages, when Britain was invaded by Saxons, Angles and Jutes (those bastards!!) a lot of Celtic peeps fled the country, and since there had been trade with Brittany for ages, a lot of Britons went to Brittany. This is, of course, after the Roman period when Gaulish had almost died out in Brittany, so there is still debate if Breton is partly Gaulish, partly British. But anywaaay, they settled there and their language gradually changed to Breton.
As Brittany is a part of France, it has also been influenced by French (though I read somewhere that in the 19th century more than half of the French population spoke a different language then French..) and the pronunciation seemed a little French to me when I learned Breton (But my French isn’t that très bien). The grammar is quite similar to Welsh, although you can also say Welsh is similar to Breton :)
As I don’t want to bore you with all the details, because there are a lot of interesting facts and stories, I will just show you some Breton with examples of what I’ve rambled on about!
The most hilarious example in my textbook, dealing on the comparative, is this one: Bambi a zo bihanoc’h eget Godzilla meaning ‘Bambi is smaller than Godzilla’. Yeah duh.
Me a zo o lenn ul levr meaning ‘I’m reading a book’. Levr, meaning book, is llyfr in Welsh. Very similar, if you compare lebor in Old Irish (pronounced levor). These three obviously belong to the same language family but you can see Old Irish is merely Breton’s cousin!
French influence can be seen in Mersi! meaning ‘Thank you!’, obviously related to French merci. If you are very thankful, you can say mersi bras, meaning ’thanks a lot!’
Of course you can only judge a language if you’ve heard it spoken. In the case of Breton, that’s very hard because Breton speakers will usually switch to French when they notice you are a foreigner. That’s why it’s also called a hidden language. Next to bilingual streetnames, you won’t even notice people speak a different language! Luckily, there’s music :) So we can at least hear a bit of Breton!
A wir gallon!
Lian
Bibliography
'Colloquial Breton' by Herve ar Bihan and Ian Press
Photography sources
Wikipedia
The French word for book is livre, which also seems quite similar to levr to me. :)
BeantwoordenVerwijderen