In my work as a QA proofreader, I have to be comfortable with words and content that aren’t immediately familiar to me. I find that learning languages in my spare time exercises the mental muscles I use when proofreading.

I’ve been working through the Breton course on the Desketa website and comparing it to my experience of learning Welsh. They’re both Brittonic languages, descended from languages spoken in Britain during the Roman era and before.

I’m a weak A2 (CEFR scale) in Welsh and only 14 units into the A1 section of the Desketa course. I’ve also been comparing Welsh and Breton on the uTalk app.

It’s still early days, but so far I’m finding Breton a bit easier than Welsh. Knowing some Welsh means that quite a bit of Breton vocabulary is immediately familiar to me. The two languages have a lot of words in common.

Similarly, I took GCSE French at school. This has helped me recognise a few instances where French and Breton have similarities (which can occur for all kinds of reasons).

Here’s a phrase that illustrates the similarities between French and Breton: N’eo ket gwir = C’est pas vrai. In both languages, the verb “be” is surrounded by other words to make the negative.

The phrase means “it’s not true.” In Welsh, we can say: Nid yw’n wir. (The “g” has dropped off “wir” because of a grammatical feature called a mutation.) In Welsh, the word for true is “gwir,” just like in Breton.

I’m enjoying the Desketa Breton course. The grammatical explanations are in French, which is rather challenging for me. They often focus on explaining the many grammatical differences between French and Breton. I need to understand the differences between English and Breton, so I tend to ignore these points.

The French explanations and translations are helpful on a cultural level. Breton is a language of France. The course content therefore focuses on aspects of lifestyle and behaviour that are relevant to Bretons and other French people alike. A Breton course focusing on a UK lifestyle might be far less useful.

In a funny way, Desketa reminds me of the Dysgu Cymraeg Welsh course, which draws on typical British scenarios for its course content.

Learning Breton has encouraged me to keep going with Welsh. Together, they’re part of a larger northwestern European language story – one that includes Cornish, Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic. When we add all those languages together, it reveals a very significant aspect of Europe’s history.