Breton

My first Breton lessons

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I’ve been taking Desketa’s free online course in the Breton language.

At first, I thought Desketa was a bit old hat compared to interactive apps like Duolingo. It’s a website, and it certainly doesn’t adjust itself to fit your individual needs. Now that I’m more familiar with it, I’ve changed my mind. Desketa’s method is straightforward but effective.

The exercises include pairing words or phrases with pictures, audio recordings, or other words and phrases. There are gap fills with audio too. My least favourite exercises ask you to unscramble mixed-up words or phrases. They’re a real test of Breton spelling!

I’m just about to start Unit 10 of the course. It follows on from a fairly tough Unit 9, which introduces the negative of “to be” and shows you how to use prefixes to create antonyms. My favourite words from Unit 9 are skuizh (tired) and diskuizh (rested).

I’m surprised by how much I like Breton. From the little I know, it’s a very attractive language. You might be interested in this Breton music video:

Breton is spoken in Brittany in France. It’s a Brittonic language, closely related to Welsh and Cornish. The first Bretons left Britain for Brittany in the fifth and sixth centuries, just as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from Northern Europe were settling in England.

Some people used to think that all speakers of Brittonic languages left England during this period (apart from Cornwall, of course). The evidence suggests that many stayed, surrounded by the first speakers of Old English.

As someone who grew up in England, I’m fascinated by the Brittonic languages. They’re a living link to England’s pre-English history. And, of course, they’re modern languages still spoken today in Northwest Europe.

I’ve studied Welsh to a basic level. I can see that Breton vocabulary has a lot in common with Welsh. To me, the two languages also feel quite different. I think I might find Breton slightly easier than Welsh, but time will tell. Here’s a Welsh music video that might interest you:

Peeking out from my English mindset

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I’m from England and my first language is English. When I looked into my family tree, I found two ancestors who weren’t first-language English speakers. They lived 200 and 250 years ago. That is a very long time, and it means I don’t share in a very common human experience.

  • I’ve never felt wistful or sad because the older living generations of my family use a language that I can’t communicate in.
  • I’ve never felt responsible for keeping a recent family language alive in a country where a language like English or French dominates.
  • I’ve never had to work hard to learn a language that is part of my recent family’s cultural identity.
  • I’ve never looked back and seen a language lost to my recent family because of colonialism, cultural prejudice, or social pressure.
  • I’ve never felt that I had to keep going with learning a particular language even though it was difficult for me.
  • I’ve never had people criticise me for not knowing the language that my grandparents spoke (and I have never criticised myself about it either).

Millions of people around the world have had at least one of these experiences. Their first language (or dialect) is not the same as their older living relatives’ – often because one of the major world languages has spread in their community. Their grandparents’ language is now classed as vulnerable, threatened, or endangered. I can empathise with that experience, but I can’t share it.

I probably first thought about this difference in experience when I read about the pressures of learning Welsh when you’re Welsh in this article.

My reasons for learning Welsh were heartfelt and valid, but I wasn’t living with the emotional pressures felt by learners from former Welsh-speaking communities.

International learners of vulnerable, threatened, or endangered languages tend to have very honourable motives. They often want to support the language by raising awareness and encouraging other people to learn it too. More international learners eventually means more money for learning resources and benefits everyone.

For newcomers to the lands where these languages were traditionally spoken, learning them can help people put down roots in the community. It’s a way of saying, “I want to belong here.”

The key takeaway for me is that it’s always worth being sensitive to the feelings of learners who are reclaiming the language of their grandparents. I imagine that all language learning feels deeply personal when it touches on family, belonging, and heritage.

I’ve recently started learning Breton, a close relative of Welsh. (If you’re interested, you can give it a go at the Desketa website.)

As an international learner, it’s my small way of saying that Western Europe’s Brythonic languages matter. I’ll never know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of someone who has a more personal relationship with Breton or Welsh. But I think that learning from their experiences is part of what makes studying these languages so interesting.

I’ve really enjoyed exploring Welsh-language music and TV – some of it created by Welsh learners of Welsh. It’s been my favourite part of my learning experience. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s available in Breton.