It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on the European mainland, albeit as a member of the insular branch instead of the continental grouping. Breton was brought from Great Britain to Armorica the ancient name for the coastal region that includes the Brittany peninsula by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages , making it an Insular Celtic language.
Breton is most closely related to Cornish , another Southwestern Brittonic language. Having declined from more than one million speakers around to about , in the first decade of the 21st century, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. It comes from a Brittonic language community that once extended from Great Britain to Armorica present-day Brittany and had even established a toehold in Galicia in present-day Spain.
Old Breton is attested from the 9th century. The nobility, followed by the bourgeoisie , adopted French. The written language of the Duchy of Brittany was Latin , switching to French in the 15th century. There exists 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 β c. The French monarchy was not concerned with the minority languages of France , 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 try to keep the peasant masses under-informed. Since the 19th century, under the Third , Fourth and now Fifth Republics , the French government has attempted to stamp out minority languagesβincluding Bretonβin 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 s. In the early 21st century, due to the political centralization of France, the influence of the media, and the increasing mobility of people, only about , people are active speakers of Breton, a dramatic decline from more than 1 million in The majority of today's speakers are more than 60 years old, and Breton is now classified as an endangered language.
