Re: History of the Breton Language

On 21 Oct 2005 02:55:49 -0700, "fred" <f5r4e3d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>
>fred wrote:
>> How many native speakers of Breton do you think there are, Michel=EDn?
>> One site I came across suggests there are 240 000 'native speakers'.
>> I suspect this would be an optimistic figure (though I really don't
>> know!)
>>
>> If that was the case, and these were genuine 'mother tongue speakers'
>> (albeit non-monoglot, obviously), that would put Breton far ahead of
>> Irish in terms of the mother-tongue speakers (as opposed to those who
>> have learned it as a second language.)
>>
>> If I remember right, according to Reg Hindley's book, the number of
>> people who have learned Irish as non-mothertongue speakers outnumbers
>> people who learned it from birth as their first language by 10 to 1,
>> with only about 30 000 actual mothertongue Irish speakers as opposed to
>> something like 300 000 who have reasonable Irish learned through the
>> various educational structures for second language acquisition.)
>
>Hello ello!! ....Wikipedia article reckons that even in 1950 there were
>100 000 monolingual Breton speakers!!
>
>So perhaps the figure of 120 000 as mother tongue speakers today is
>credible.
>
>I had not realized it would be so many!
>Compared to many minority languages under threat, this is in fact quite
>big and surely a  viable base to keep the language going, especially
>given some political sup****t and funding.
>
>I was in Brittany July before last playing Irish music, I certainly got
>the feeling that the place had a very different identity from France in
>general.
>An Irish friend who lives there certainly backed up this impression.
>Especially in the context of a music festival, they seemed to have a
>very outgoing and, to be honest, quite a lot more welcoming general
>attitude to people from other cultures.
>
>I met a character from Brittany whose father was a native speaker, and
>he said that when Breton language TV came in, his dad couldn't
>understand it - apparently there were several different dialects even
>within Brittany, that were not necessarily mutually intelligible.
>
>One of the main political issues that gives rise to protests is that
>under Nazi occupation, the border between Brittany and France was
>altered (a case of divide and rule). Nantes, the historic capital of
>Brittany (at least, it was the capital for much of Breton history)
>ended up officially being in France.
>And guess what, when the Nazi occupation was over...they never got
>round to changing the border back...
>

Brittany represents what could have happened in our lifetimes with
Scots-Gaelic, had it not already happened in the two previous
centuries. Had the Highland dis****a never happened, and had the sort
of pressure been put on Gaelic that is beiong put on Breton, I think
we would have seen the same reaction and revulsion against politicians
telling us what language we must use from now on.

In the Scottish Central Belt (the area between and including Glasgow
and Edinburgh) there is a phenomenon known as the "Scottish Cringe"
where the people have ben taught to feel inferior to England. In the
two more warlike parts of Scotland, the Borders and the Highlands,
this has not happened, but the fact that this cringe is used to impose
English-style social class pressure on Scots is extremely bad news,
especially in view of the highly visible slogan of Burn's famous
dictum that "A man's a man for all that" (everyone is equal), which
seems to be accompanied by the addendum "providing he doesn't speak
Scots at the office."   

Murchadh