Breton language
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.
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 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. Yet, the number of children attending bilingual classes rose 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709.
History and status
Breton is spoken in Lower Brittany, roughly to the west of a line linking Plouha and La Roche-Bernard. It comes from a Brittonic language community that once extended from Great Britain to Armorica and had even established a toehold in Galicia. Old Breton is attested from the 9th century. 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 patois. 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 patois" to the Committee of Public Safety in which he said that "federalism and superstition speak Breton".
Since the 19th century, under the Third, Fourth and now Fifth Republics, the French government has attempted to stamp out minority languages—including Breton—in state schools, in an effort to build a 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 Gwalarn. During its 19-year run, Gwalarn tried to raise the language to the level of a great international language. Its publication encouraged the creation of original literature in all genres, and proposed Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, Al Liamm replaced Gwalarn. 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, Spirou et Fantasio, Titeuf, Hägar the Horrible, Peanuts and Yakari.
Some original media are created in Breton. The sitcom Ken Tuch is in Breton. Radio Kerne, broadcasting from Finistère, has exclusively Breton programming. Some movies and TV series have also been translated and broadcast in Breton. Poets, singers, linguists, and writers who have written in Breton, including Yann-Ber Kallocʼh, 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, Geriadur Brezhoneg an Here 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 Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg 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 started, which counts just over 90,000 articles as of December 2025. In March 2007, the Ofis ar Brezhoneg 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 Ofis and Facebook.
France has twice chosen to enter the Eurovision Song Contest with songs in Breton; once in 1996 in Oslo with "Diwanit bugale" by Dan Ar Braz and the fifty piece band Héritage des Celtes, and most recently in 2022 in Turin with "Fulenn" 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, 1993, and 2011.
Geographic distribution and dialects
Breton is spoken mainly in Lower Brittany but also in a more dispersed way in Upper Brittany, 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 leoneg, tregerieg, kerneveg, and gwenedeg. Guérandais 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. Gwenedeg, however, requires a little study to be intelligible with most of the other dialects. 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.
| Region | Population | Number of speakers | Percentage of speakers |
| Basse Bretagne | 1,300,000 | 185,000 | 14.2% |
| Centre Ouest Bretagne | 112,000 | 20,000 | 20% |
| Trégor-Goelo | 127,000 | 25,000 | 20% |
| Pays de Brest | 370,000 | 40,000 | 11% |
| Pays de Cornouaille | 320,000 | 35,000 | 11.5% |
| Pays de Lorient | 212,000 | 15,000 | 7.3% |
| Pays de Vannes | 195,000 | 11,000 | 5.5% |
| 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 | 7.6% |
| Haute Bretagne | 1,900,000 | 20,000 | 2% |
| Pays de Rennes | 450,000 | 7,000 | 1.5% |
| Loire-Atlantique | 1,300,000 | ||
| Pays de Nantes | 580,000 | 4,000 | 0.8% |
| TOTAL | 4,560,000 | 216,000 | 4.6% |
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: les langues régionales appartiennent au patrimoine de la 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.