Contemporary Breton speakers: a divided community?

“the Néo-bretonnants, predominantly native French speakers who, as part of the protectionist movement frequently found in response to situations of impending language death, have learnt Breton as a second language via the education system or at evening class rather than in the home. Consequently, their speech is not based on the dialect of their area … but rather on educated, literary Breton … These people are mainly middle-class urban dwellers and campaign vigorously for the revival of Breton and all aspects of what they see as the Breton Cause. As with many cases of language obsolescence, the movement represented by the Néo-bretonnants is highly politicised and often militant. The Néo-bretonnants emphasise the visual manifestations of Breizh ‘une et indivisible’ with importance placed on costumes, Breton music, festoù-noz and the Gwenn ha du. They send their Lénaïgs and Erwans to the local Breton-medium Diwan school, while addressing their offspring in a variety whose standardised pronunciation is arbitrarily ‘clipped’ for authenticity and crammed full of regionalisms, randomly selected from all four corners of the province.” (Jones 1995:428)

Contemporary Breton speakers: a divided community?

• “the naval museum in Brest is called Mirdi ar Morlu (lit. ‘Conserve-house of the sea-army’), a term which no native speaker would understand.” (German 2007:186)

Nuances of the divide

• Efforts to communicate beyond local dialectal areas: traditional speaker presenters on Breton radio “worked out a halfway speech mode by essentially avoiding elisions typical of their variety” (Moal et al. 2018:198)
• Ó hIfearnáin 2013:121: interviewed a group of professionals working through the medium of Breton, aged 29–45 and employed as “primary or secondary school teachers, as language development agents, in the media or in music and entertainment”; all “had been brought up speaking Breton themselves in an area where Breton was spoken traditionally, or had learnt Breton from their immediate family and neighbours in childhood”
• Kennard’s work on phonology and morphosyntax (2013, 2014, 2018, 2021; Kennard and Lahiri 2017)

My findings: Breton in the media

• Some use of dialectal vocabulary, particularly prepositions, presumably to show allegiance with a local area while remaining comprehensible to users of other varieties
• Use of doublets on the radio (also noted by Hupel and Le Bihan 2023:38)
• Dialect convergence (as opposed to levelling): those who acquired dialectal varieties had moved towards the standard, those who had initially acquired the standard had gained dialectal features
• Balance of communication over a wider area and assertion of local identity

“Néo-breton” v. “standard Breton”

• armerzh (dialectal word incorporated into the standard, but replaced in recommendations by ekonomiezh): “on n’est pas restés sur une position dogmatique” (quoted in Davies-Deacon 2024a:341)
• Different attitudes towards international borrowings across publications (Davies-Deacon 2024b:73–74): varying tolerance towards different sources of neologism
• instead of “des approches idéologiques”, “on se base plutôt sur ce qui sont des normes internationales ISO qui concernent la terminologie … il n’y a pas de présupposés” (quoted in Davies-Deacon 2024a:338)

Do speakers use the standard?

• My previous research: professional users of Breton in the media (potentially more unusual trajectories; sometimes not easily classed as traditional or new speakers)
• Some reluctance to rely on dictionaries (precedent preferred); TermOfis was mentioned, only in the context of terms relating to public administration (Davies-Deacon 2024b:116–117)

TermOfis

• “n’eo ket TermOfis ur geriadur, gant-se ne vez ket kavet gerioù ar brezhoneg diazez ennañ. Hogen eno ez eus gerioù ha ne vezont ket kavet er geriadurioù hollek pe pa vezont kavet enno e vez disheñvel o ster alies” (https://www.brezhoneg.bzh/87-termofis.htm)
• Terms from public administration, science and technical fields, industry, media, politics …
• Similar resources for other languages: tearma.ie, FranceTerme
• Terminology forum: innovative crowdsourcing method

Crowdsourcing: emerging themes

• Range of dictionaries and online databases cited
• Comparison with major French sources (Journal officiel, dictionaries, Office québécois de la langue française)
• References to European and international languages
• Other sources: idiom, Facebook, Wikipedia, experience in education, contributor’s entourage, their own coinages …
• Advantages and disadvantages of staying close to French
• Value judgements: ugly, precise, clear, direct, concise, strange, funny, simple, logical, artificial, heavy …
• Spered ar yezh

What is the standard?

• Current prescriptions: concentration on terms (rather than lexis as a whole)
• Difference between prescribed standard and varieties used by speakers (even néo-bretonnants?)
• ISO principles and open negotiation on the terminology forum: a departure from earlier processes of neology
• Potential use in written contexts where terminology and standardisation are important e.g. Wikipedia