Breton: the "French Cousin"

Among the Celtic Nations, Britanny is the only one that is not insular and the only one whose competing language is not English, but French. Although the Breton is spoken by less than 10 % of the locals, Britanny is particularly nationalist.

So much that in 1943, when the tides of war were already against the Axis, some Bretons formed a brigade which was incorporated to the Nazi SS, the Brigade “Bezen Perrot” (cf. Bezen Perrot: The Breton nationalist unit of the SS, by Daniel Leach, 2008). The survivors of this collaborationist force escaped to Ireland, an act that states clearly the belief on pan-Celtic identity. “France's difficulty would be Brittany's opportunity” said once the nationalist leader Mercier d'Erm, adapting a moto of the Irish party Sinn Feinn (“England’s difficulty would be Ireland’s opportunity”) to the World War II context.

"Bezen Perrot" SS Brigade

(Source: Leach's article, op. cit.)

If before there was a feud between Bretons and other French (partially there still is), nowadays there is a internal division between the Bretons themselves. In the article Breton at a Crossroad (2003), Lenora A. Timm discusses the developing of two distinc variants. The advance of bilingual teaching lead to the rising of a “literary, normalized version” of Breton contrasting with the native spoken Breton and installed a diglossia (the first being the H variety). This phenomenon probably is repeated by other Celtic languages and by other languages that passed through a revival. As most of the native speakers is aged, the author thinks that the only hope of the language is the school variety, the “neo-Breton”.

EXTRA MATERIAL

- "New generation aims to maintain French Breton language"

- Two Breton voices on radio (alternative link), by Ned Thomas, is focused in two Breton radio broadcast persons, a 1940’s collaborationist anti-French and a 1950’s pro-bilingualism man.