A Quick Introduction to Breton

By Oatmilk

A few weeks ago, I was feeling somewhat homesick and watched a couple videos about the area of France I am from, Brittany. In it I was reminded of the language few of us from this region actually speak, Breton. I quickly got overwhelmed by a sense of guilt for not being able to speak the language as I usually do when I hear people talking about it. Even more so when I reflected on the French’s government tendency of erasing cultures and languages, I realized learning Breton would be somewhat of revolutionary act, and I like that. So, despite the fact that I’m in the final semester of my master’s degree and I have a thesis to write, I decided to get into learning the language seriously. I brushed the dust off of the Breton textbook I bought a few years ago and sat down to actually learn it. So far the experience has been quite emotionally fulfilling but also a lot of fun for multiple reasons: I get to understand the names of the places I grew up in and visited, I learned what the words I’ve always heard around me growing up, but most importantly, I realize how cool this language actually is. And I hope that if more people hear about how cool the language is, they might want to learn it as well.

Breton Alphabet and Phonology

Breton is totally unrelated to French. It is a Celtic language more closely related to languages spoken in the UK like Cornish and Welsh. It is current considered an endangered language with only roughly 200.000 speakers left.

The first thing that strikes you when you start learning it is the alphabet. It is very similar to English or French with the exception of the letters C, Q and X. Instead you might see CH and C’H which are considered separate letters. Its phonology is also interesting, lots of nasal vowels like [ã], [ẽ],[ɛ̃], [õ], ĩ [ɔ̃] [ỹ] [œ̃] that mostly came from French influence, but also sounds that are not in modern French like [h], [x] or [ɣ]. Depending on dialect its r sound is either [r] or [ʁ], so if you hate the French r sound you can still use a trill, so all is good.

One more spicy feature of its phonology, like other Celtic languages, is its consonant mutation. Basically, the first consonant of a word may change depending on the previous word. In Breton there are 4 types of mutations but instead of diving into their individual explanations because that would take too long here are a couple examples:

Breton	IPA	English
Ar ki	[aʁ ki]	The dog
Ma c’hi	[ma ɣi]	My dog
An tad	[ã: tat]	The dad
He zad	[e: zat]	His/her dad

Word Order

Now for the most interesting part, grammar. A language’s grammar can be a very vast topic so I will just introduce grammar features from Breton that I’ve encountered and that I find most interesting.

The first one that is the most striking when you start to learn Breton is its rather flexible word order. In Breton, the most common forms are Verb-Subject-Object (VSO). However, depending on what element of the sentence you want to emphasize on you can also flip word order around and place that element first.

Let’s use an example with the sentence in English: “Soazig reads the newspaper in the park everyday” which can be translated in different ways depending on what aspect of the sentence you want to highlight:

Breton	English	Nuance
Lenn a ra Soazig ar gazeten er park bemdez	Soazig reads the newspaper in the park everyday	Soazig reads everyday in the park and not another action that may have been hinted at
Soazig lenn a ra ar gazeten er park bemdez	Soazig reads the newspaper in the park everyday	Soazig reads and not someone else
Ar gazeten lenn a ra Soazig er park bemdez	Soazig reads the newspaper in the park everyday	Soazig reads the newspaper and not something else
Er park Lenn a ra Soazig ar gazeten bemdez	Soazig reads the newspaper in the park everyday	Soazig reads in the park and not somewhere else
Bemdez lenn a ra Soazig ar gazeten er park	Soazig reads the newspaper in the park everyday	Soazig reads everyday and not once a week

Verb Conjugation

Wow so much flexibility right? But it doesn’t stop there. Breton is also flexible when it comes to conjugating its verbs. There 2 ways you can go, either you mention the subject and you don’t need to conjugate the verb, or you omit the subject and you conjugate the verb to the correct form, that way we know who you’re talking about. Although normally you’d only not conjugate the verb when you introduce a new subject to the conversation, you can also just mention it every time and not have to conjugate anything ever!

Don’t get what I mean? Here’s a quick example:

Breton with Subject	Literal English	Breton w/o Subject	Literal English
Me zo skuizh	I am tired	Skuizh on	tired am
Te zo skuizh	you are tired	Skuizh out	tired are

Numerical System

To finish this article I wanted to introduce you to Breton’s numerical system which is quite spicy to say the least. You’ve probably heard of French’s weird “quatre-vingt” (four-twenty, as in 4*20) for the number 80? Well it comes from Celtic influence, as Celtic languages like Breton use a base of 20 to count things unlike our usual 10 in English and most other European languages. So tens look like this:

Number	Breton	Literal English
10	dek	ten
20	ugent	twenty
30	tregont	three ten
40	daou-ugent	two twenty
50	hanter-kant	half hundred
60	tri-ugent	three twenty
70	dek ha tri-ugent	ten and three twenty
80	pevar-ugent	four twenty
90	dek ha pevar-ugent	ten and four twenty
100	kant	hundred

Special shoutout to 18 which is said triwec’h meaning 3*6. The other numbers between 10 and 20 are “normal”, this one just decided to be different.

I hope that you all found Breton as fascinating as I do and that you all come to at least appreciate its little quirks. I don’t expect anyone to learn just from reading this article of course, but I hope you got to learn more about it and I invite you to spread more awareness about Breton. Many of us in Brittany are fighting to preserve its rich history and every bit of support helps. Learning and talking about Breton is not just a way to connect to the culture of Brittany, but it can also be an act of cultural preservation and resistance against linguistic imperialism. If you are interested to learn more about it and just to chat about Breton come talk to me in the #celtic-table in LC!

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About Oatmilk

24-year-old French queer person who’s been living in the Netherlands for a few years. Currently a master’s student in Social Sciences Research and part-time barista while studying Dutch and Turkish on the side. Loves playing video games, watching movies, and reading philosophy, sociology, or science fiction