Whilst perceived in many quarters as a legacy of pre-Roman Gaul, Breton is in fact a much more recent arrival. Although a Celtic language, it is instead descended from the Celtic languages on the British Isles and was brought from there to Brittany by settlers some time in the late 3rd, early 4th century AD. It established itself in Lower Brittany and was the language of the elite until the early middle ages when French began to make inroads.
Over the following centuries, Breton fell foul of a series of French state policies that began to marginalize it, initially banning it from being used in public life. This process began with the 1539 Villers-Cotterets Ordinance, in which King Francis I made Parisian French the official State language. Later governments, including the revolutionary governments, actively sought to root out the language using the school system in an attempt to indoctrinate the masses.
Due to these constraints and the absence of an educated Breton speaking class, there was very little in the way of a literary tradition until the early 20th century. This changed in 1925 with the launch of a review entitled Gwalarn. During its 20-year run, this publication not only brought to the fore a large amount of original material but also stimulated the translation of major international works into Breton, thereby deepening the language's cultural base.
Related languages Breton is most closely related to Cornish and Welsh and distantly related to Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic but mutual intelligibility would generally be low.
Current status Breton is the only surviving Celtic language not to be officially recognised and protected. To its credit, the French government did make a belated recent attempt to fund bilingual schools in Brittany but it fell foul of the French Constitutional Council who, rightly, noted that it would contravene Article 2 of the French Constitution which states that French is the language of the Republic. The French state does not seem to have any intention of amending the Constitution out of a fear that it would lead to the country's eventual break-up.
Despite centuries of oppression, Breton is still a living language with somewhere near half a million people using it on a daily basis and over a million claiming knowledge of the language. That said, it has lost some of its vitality in recent decades and language use in daily life is down over 50% on what was reported in the 1930s. The launch of a regional TV station, TV Breizh, has given new impetus to Breton amidst growing regional demand for increased recognition of the language.
Why Basque managed to survive while Iberian and Tartessian died out only adds to the mystery surrounding it. Luckily from Basque's perspective, Roman attention tended to be more on the Mediterranean coastline than on the Atlantic sea-board. Whilst this Roman neglect may indeed have played a role, the mountainous terrain certainly helped. Indeed, there are indications from place names that Basque was widely spoken along much of the Pyrenees but the encroaching Latin languages pushed it out of the less mountainous regions and towards what is now known as the Basque Country (straddling the French and Spanish borders).
This trend was stalled and even reversed for a while during the Reconquest of Spain when the Basques were invited, along with other northern peoples, to colonise areas conquered from the Arabs. It was, however, only when Basque nationalism adopted the language as a symbol of national identity that the language managed to stabilise.
That said, Franco's linguistic policy of Castilian first (known as Spanish outside Spain) meant that there was little place for Basque, which was widely repressed. It was only after Franco's death in 1975 and the coming of democracy that the language began to make a modest comeback, aided somewhat by active promotion by the local regional governments.
Related languages Lack of proof as to its origins has not, however, prevented academics from speculating wildly and endlessly. The most popular theories are that it is connected to Iberian or to Caucasian languages (South Caucasian such as Georgian or alternatively North Caucasian such as Checan or Circasian). A most recent theory has even tied it to the Berber group of languages. How credible any of these claims are remains to be seen but it does demonstrate the scale of the challenge facing linguists. Much work is clearly needed in this field before any of these claims can be taken seriously.
Status today Basque is currently spoken in the Basque regions of France and Spain and in Navarre in Spain. It does not, however, have any official status in France and French linguistic policy historically has done little to encourage the use of anything but French. The language is thus not widely used north of the border, being particularly absent from political and cultural life. South of the border, its co-official status in the Basque autonomous region and in northern parts of Nevarre means that it is heavily promoted and widely used.
Although the populations of Basque speaking regions total over 2.5 million, there are only around 700,000 actual native speakers with an additional 300,000 people claiming it as a second language. As a result of the backing and promotion of the Basque regional government and the fact that it is intertwined with the cause of independence from Spain, Basque is unlikely to disappear any time soon and the current status quo should continue for the foreseeable future.
Tj Leary has sinced written about articles on various topics from Language, Education and Language. Stranslations offers professional services in English, French, Spanish, German and other major European languages.The original version of this arti. Tj Leary's top article generates over 27100 views. to your Favourites.