ABSTRACT
Breton belongs, with Welsh and Cornish, to the Brythonic, or P-Celtic, branch of Celtic. It is the only Celtic language spoken on the continent of Europe, although it is in origin an insular Celtic language transported from Britain during the Dark Ages. Its closest relative is Cornish, and its affinity to Welsh is very apparent. Reports that Welsh-speaking and Breton-speaking soldiers in the armies of Henry V and Charles VI of France were able to understand each other probably have some truth, though mutual intelligibility today is practically nil except for words in isolation. The recorded language may be divided into three periods: Old Breton (ninth to eleventh centuries – mainly glosses and lists of person and places), Middle Breton (eleventh to mid-seventeenth centuries – continuous texts, poems, plays and prose, often of a religious nature and some very long, from the fifteenth century on), and Modern Breton from the mid-seventeenth century. The modern language is spoken in four main dialects: Cornouaille (kerneveg), Léon (leoneg) and Tréguier (tregerieg) (collectively referrred to in linguistic works as KLT) share broad similarities in contrast to the fourth, divergent dialect of Vannes (gwenedeg – Gw).
