Is there complicity in Breton’s decline?

Rémy Penneg, NHU Bretagne

A recent study shows that the number of Brezhoneg / Breton speakers has plummeted from around 200,000 a decade ago to just 107,000 by the end of 2024.

A look back…

Breton, the only continental Celtic language older than the hegemonic French, has been in significant decline in Brittany since the 1950s. At that time, around 1.2 million people spoke Breton on a daily basis. Today, the number of Breton speakers is estimated at 100,000, with an average age of 60, underlining the lack of intergenerational transmission.

In comparison, Welsh in Wales/Cymru has followed a different trajectory.

In the 1950s, around 500,000 people spoke Welsh. Today, this figure has risen to over 700,000 speakers, or almost a quarter of the Welsh population, equivalent to the population of the region of Brittany, which administers four of the five departments of Brittany.

This revitalisation is the result of proactive language policies, in particular the Welsh Language Act of 1993, which made Welsh compulsory in all government offices, introduced bilingual road signs and made Welsh compulsory up to the age of 16. In addition, the Welsh-language television channel S4C helps to promote the language.

In Brittany, language policy is palliative care

Of course, there are the niceties.

The administrative region of Brittany has set up initiatives such as the ‘Ya d’ar brezhoneg’ programme to encourage the use of Breton in public and professional life. However, these efforts remain limited. At the start of the 2024 school year, only 20,280 pupils were enrolled in bilingual courses in 683 schools across the country, which is not enough to ensure that the language is passed on in the long term.

But none of this will be enough to halt the decline of Brezhoneg. Nothing.

And almost all the politicians in Brittany, most of whom are subservient to central government, are at best naïve, at worst accomplices.

Naïve are those who continue to believe in the fine promises made by the hucksters, Presidents of the Republic, Ministers and the like, which are never followed by any significant effect. From election to election, these salesmen in Brittany sell us programmes drawn up in the offices of parties whose head offices are in Paris. More often than not, they don’t even believe it.

Those on the left want to get rid of those on the right and vice versa. Brezhoneg is at best one or two lines on a programme written in Paris, one or two words in Gwenn ha Du.

Our thousand-year-old language is neither left-wing nor right-wing.

Some people don’t like the words ‘neither left nor right’. So be it! Then let them tell us which side our language is on.

Accomplices are the worst

They know very well what they are doing. They know full well that the palliative care they are generously offering will not prevent the language spoken by our ancestors from disappearing any time soon. And they couldn’t care less.

That these accomplices are in Paris, in the Ministries, is quite normal. For centuries, the Parisian-centric Jacobin government has been advocating the eradication of the original languages of the peoples and nations that make up France.

But the fact that these accomplices are of Breton origin is an act of treason.

Regional ‘power’?

In fact, the administrative region has no real power in France. Everything is decided in Paris and Brussels for the administrative region and for Brittany as a whole.

The region has virtually no real direct financial resources. Its budget is made up of funds magnanimously endowed by the French central powers and the European Union.

To return to Brezhoneg, the President of the region Loïg Chesnais-Girard, who administers four of the five departments of Brittany on behalf of Paris, has, to his credit, only a ridiculous piggy bank (which some people call a ‘budget’). The budget for the year 2025, which is just beginning, is €1.93 billion. Mind the comma!

Budget for the Breton language

Paul Molac, a staunch Breton autonomist MP but running mate to the Macronpatible loyalist socialist president, recently announced the share of the overall budget allocated to Brezhoneg and Gallo: 13 million euros. That’s 6.5 million for Brezhoneg alone.

Hurrah Loïg, ha trugarez vras deoc’h: 0.34% (zero, point, thirty-four) of the ridiculous budget.

It’s a handout, a pittance.

We expect the President, even if it’s only four-fifths of Brittany, to fight tooth and nail to demand from Paris real and broad autonomy so as to have significant and lasting direct resources.

We have a moderate Jacobin President, elected, let’s call him, with 10.45% of the registered voters, representing a Socialist Party that didn’t lift a finger for Brittany (reunification, language, economy …) when it had ALL the means to do so, who goes so far as to vote Macron out of exacerbated loyalty …

From time to time, Loïg gets very angry and sends a wish to a Ministry or to the Élysée Palace to express his wrath to the central power, sometimes to say that if this continues, he will become ‘autonomist’; or to complain to his Director about this or that imposed decision.

Of course, he knows full well which bin his pious wishes will end up in. But these messages are really addressed to us, Bretons: ‘See how I’m taking your concerns into consideration. I have sent a pigeon and its message to the Lord. Hold a few subsidies and go back to sleep’.

So the question arises: is Loïg Chesnais-Girard complicit in the decline of Breton?

Two first radical actions are needed to regain our powers:

Take power at regional level through the ballot box, and oust the loyalists who are the vassals of distant decision-makers.

Make Brezhoneg compulsory throughout the school system, like Welsh in Wales, French in Quebec, etc…

With Loïg Chesnais-Girard’s 0.34%, Brezhoneg will soon be extinct. There is an urgent need to oust from regional power, and elsewhere, those who are complicit in failing to help an endangered language.

Trugarez vras deoc’h / Diolch yn fawr