Thursday, July 16, 2015

Challenge 52 in 52: Breton

Breton (brezhoneg) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family, spoken in Brittany.

Breton was brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages, making it an Insular Celtic language. It is closely related to the Continental Celtic Gaulish language, which was spoken in pre-Roman Gaul. Breton is most closely related to Cornish, another Southwestern Brittonic language. Welsh and the extinct Cumbric, both Western Brittonic languages, are more distantly related.

Having declined from more than 1 million speakers around 1950 to about 200,000 in the first decade of the 21st century, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. However, the number of children attending bilingual classes has risen 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709.



At Omniglot


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