Breton

Breton Language Edit

About Edit

Breton is apart of the Celtic family of languages that also includes: Irish, Scottish, Manx, Welsh, and Cornish. It is a minority language spoken almost entirely inside pockets of the French province of Brittany. While French is almost entirely the first language of Breton people at large, there are certain groups of people in Brittany where it is spoken as a native language. Even then though, people almost always have a French accent, and the Breton accent is lost to time. You're either learning this because you want to complete the full Celtic set, or because you live in a place that speaks it, but with only 210000 native speakers, and incredibly few secondary speakers, its probably the first.

Grammar Edit

Nouns Edit

Gender Edit

Breton, like many other European languages, had two genders. Masculine (gourel) and feminine (gwregel). The neutral, 3rd "gender", is things that are in the literal sense, masculine, but acting feminine instead. (ie traps)

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Plurality Edit

Nouns tend to only exist in two forms of plural, single and multiple. Plurality is generally expressed with the suffix of (i)où But can also be expressed with ien, ed, i, but that is generally less common.

Singularity Edit

A strange trait that is mostly unique to is their singulative marker. In Breton, its marked with the suffix enn, used like gwez (several trees) into gwezenn (one tree). The singularity can then be converted into a plurality. In example gwez can be converted into gwezennoù (several trees, but individually.)

Articles Edit

In Breton, contrasting to other Celtic languages, every article you write has two forms. The two forms are definite (an) and indefinite (un). The constant 'n' changes in both articles based on the following consonants. It is recognized as an 'n' when before another 'n', 'd', 't', 'h', and all vowels except i. It changes into an 'i' when before another 'i', and it changes to an 'r' when before everything else. Think a/an except more complicated.

Adjectives Edit

There are two kinds of adjectives in Breton, synthetic adjectives, for example "bras" (big) inflects as ø (stative), oc’h (comparative), añ (superlative) and at (exclamative). Other adjectives, for example "heñval" (similar) do not inflect.

Adverbs Edit

Adverbs don't inflect at all.

Prepositions Edit

Like all of the other Celtic languages, prepositions in Breton are inflected or uninflected. Inflected prepositions typically derive from the contraction between a preposition and a personal pronoun only.

Pronouns Edit

In Breton, like most other languages, there is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd persons. The singles of which (in that order) are me, te and eñ/hi (masculine/feminine). The pluralities are ni, c'hwi, and int.

Verbs Edit

Verbs inflect for number, person, tense, and mood. Breton verbs typically have impersonal forms,and verbal adjectives. Unlike other Celtic languages, Breton has a distinct periphrastic continuous aspect.

Mutations Edit

They exist, but are generally too case specific to cover.

Celtic
Breton Cornish Irish Manx Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) Welsh

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