Breton 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 in use on the European mainland.Diamond, Jared (2012) The World Until Yesterday New York: Viking. p.399.

Breton is an Insular Celtic language that was brought from Great Britain to Brittany by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages, which makes Breton 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, and Scottish Gaelic) have a slight connection due to their origins being from Insular Celtic.

Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to 107,000 in 2024, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. The number of children attending bilingual classes rose 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709.__TOC__

History and status

Breton is spoken in Lower Brittany (), 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 a toehold in Galicia (in present-day Spain). Old Breton is attested from the 9th century.Benjamin W. Fortson IV, Indo European Language and Culture, chapter 14 paragraph 63. 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 until it switched to French in the 15th century. There is 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 – to , Middle Breton – to , Modern Breton – to present.

The French monarchy was not concerned with the minority languages of France, which were 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 . The revolutionaries assumed that reactionary and monarchist forces preferred regional languages to keep the peasant masses underinformed. In 1794, Bertrand Barère submitted his "report on the " to the Committee of Public Safety in which he said that "federalism and superstition speak Breton".

Under the Third, Fourth and early Fifth Republics, the French government attempted to stamp out regional languages - including Breton — in state schools, in an effort to build a unified national culture. Teachers humiliated students for using their regional languages, and such practices prevailed until the late 1960s.

In the early 21st century, the political centralization of France, the influence of the media and the increasing mobility of people have caused only about 200,000 people to be active speakers of Breton, a dramatic decline from more than 1 million in 1950. Most of today's speakers are more than 60 years old, and Breton is now classified as an endangered language.

In the early 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 the 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.

Revival efforts

In 1925, Professor Roparz Hemon founded the Breton-language review . During its 19-year run, tried to raise the language to the level of a great international language.Francis Favereau, "Anthologie de la littérature bretonne au XXe siècle : 1919–1944", "Tome 2 : Breiz Atao et les autres en littérature", Skol Vreizh, 2003, . Its publication encouraged the creation of original literature in all genres, and proposed Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, replaced . Other Breton-language periodicals have been published, which established 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 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, , Titeuf, Hägar the Horrible, Peanuts and Yakari.

Some original media are created in Breton. The sitcom is in Breton. Pdf. 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 Kalloc'h, 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 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, 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 ("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 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 Wikipedia launched, which counts over 91,000 articles as of September 2026. In March 2007, the signed a tripartite agreement with Regional Council of Brittany and Microsoft for 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 and Facebook.

France has twice chosen to enter the Eurovision Song Contest with songs in Breton; once in 1996 in Oslo with "" by Dan Ar Braz and the fifty piece band Héritage des Celtes, and most recently in 2022 in Turin with "" 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 the contest, the others being in 1992 (bilingual French and Antillean Creole), 1993 (bilingual French and Corsican), and 2011 (Corsican).

Geographic distribution and dialects

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 (, of the county of Léon), (, of Trégor), (, of ), and (, of Vannes). (, of Guérande) 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 and vary only slightly from one village to the next. , however, requires a little study to be intelligible with most of the other dialects.Kergoat, Lukian. "Breton Dialects" in Celtic Culture, pp. 250 ff. ABC-CLIO (Sta. Barbara), 2006. Due to this difficulty in intelligibility, the Glottolog project split the Gwenedeg dialects into a separate language entry from the KLT Breton dialects in v5.2 under the name Vannetais.

+Distribution of Breton speakers by region(statistics based on around the year 2010) Region TotalPopulation Breton speakers Number Percentage Basse Bretagne 1,300,000 185,000 14% Centre Ouest Bretagne 112,000 20,000 18% Trégor-Goelo 127,000 25,000 20% Pays de Brest 370,000 40,000 11% Pays de Cornouaille 320,000 35,000 11% Pays de Lorient 212,000 15,000 7% Pays de Vannes 195,000 11,000 6% Pays de Guingamp 76,000 12,000 17% Pays de Morlaix 126,000 15,000 12% Pays de St Brieuc 191,000 5,000 3% Pays de Pontivy 85,000 6,500 8% Pays d'Auray 85,000 6,500 8%Haute Bretagne 1,900,000 20,000 1% Pays de Rennes 450,000 7,000 2%Loire-Atlantique 1,300,000 <1,000 <1% Pays de Nantes 580,000 4,000 1% TOTAL 4,560,000 216,000 4.7%

Official status

Nation 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.

Constitution In July 2008, the legislature amended the French Constitution, adding article 75-1: (the regional languages belong to 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.

Region 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 the Toubon Law, it is illegal for commercial signage to be in Breton alone. Signs must be bilingual or only in French. Since commercial signage usually has limited physical space, most businesses have signs only in French.

, 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 the 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.

Education

In the late 20th century, the French government considered incorporating the independent Breton-language immersion schools (called ) into the state education system. This action 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.