Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Minority languages and language revitalisation 105
dialectal Breton, one whose grammar is distinctly Celtic but whose vocabulary,
particularly for modern concepts, is heavily infiltrated by French borrowings. Néobretonnants,
by contrast, are predominantly second language acquirers of a standardised,
literary variety of Breton, and consequently their speech is French-influenced in
its grammar while ‘pure’ in its lexicon (Jones 1998a: 322). Standard Breton, it may
be added, is a synthesis of dialects and the comparatively recent product of a long
struggle to establish a pre-eminent unified orthography suitable for use in school
textbooks and the like. 11 As such, and because it is largely the creation of experts and
committees, it has – from the point of view of the native bretonnant – a strained,
artificial, even alien quality.
It is, therefore, not just attitudes to the language that separate native speakers from
néo-bretonnants, but also the linguistic character of the varieties they characteristically
speak. The consequences for revitalisation are, of course, unfavourable, for
without native speaker backing, or indeed wholehearted state support, revivalist
activity becomes very much the preoccupation and private enterprise of a somewhat
narrow constituency. Small in numbers as this group is, it seems unlikely that they
will be able to overcome the very serious shortfall in the intergenerational transmission
of Breton as a native language. As second language speakers predominantly,
they may, however, be able to transmit their ‘new’ (as opposed to ‘old’) Breton to
their children, in whose mouths it will become what Jones (1998a: 323) refers to as
a ‘xenolect’. 12
4.3.4 Comparing Welsh and Breton
As languages of Celtic minorities long since incorporated into the nation states of
Britain and France, it would not be unreasonable to expect Welsh and Breton to have
certain sociolinguistic similarities, and, looking at the patterns of their decline, this
does indeed seem to be the case. The decline of both, for example, appears to have
been accelerated by the nation-state formation processes of Britain and France and
the accompanying allocation of resources and prestige to the dominant language of
the state; both have – for varying periods – suffered exclusion from public, official
arenas such as administration and education, finding succour only in the religious
domain; the speakers of both have been led to regard their language as backward and
of little economic value; both have been exposed to the homogenising forces of
modernisation, which tend to privilege already dominant languages; and both,
finally, have been undermined – to an extent – by economically driven demographic
changes – outmigration and rural depopulation in the case of Brittany and inmigration
in the case of Wales.
At a certain point, however, the parallels break down, for it is quite evident that
Welsh is now in an incomparably stronger position – institutionally and in other
respects – than Breton. We turn finally, therefore, to a brief examination of the
factors that have helped Welsh and impeded Breton.
Principal among these is the roles played by the British and French states. The
latter – for many historical reasons – is particularly sensitive to the French language