User:Ucbear/Neo-Breton draft

Neo-Breton (in Breton brezhoneg nevez, in French néo-breton or nouveau breton) is the normalized variety of Breton, developed in the early 20th century, that is generally taught as a second language and used in the broadcast media. Neo-Breton differs markedly from traditional Breton, which refers collectively to the forms of the language spoken by native speakers, particularly those with unbroken transmission of it from earlier generations of Breton speakers.

Introduction
Breton is an endangered language, with a sizable but rapidly aging native speaker population and very low intergenerational transmission rates since the Second World War. The choice of neo-Breton as the standard variety used in re-establishing the language among younger speakers has been criticized by some commentators and native speakers.

Speakers of neo-Breton are referred to as néo-bretonnants, while native speakers are termed bretonnants or brezhonegerien. Native speakers may also derisively be referred to as paléo-bretonnants. Conversely, neo-Breton may be called, somewhat disparagingly, brezhoneg chimik ("chemical Breton").

Differences between neo-Breton and traditional Breton are, on the whole, seen as greater than those between the dialects of traditional Breton themselves. Views on the mutual intelligibility of neo-Breton and traditional Breton vary, with neo-Breton described by some as "well-nigh incomprehensible to ordinary Breton speakers, even those with the ability to read Breton," but by others as "another Breton dialect, which speakers of other dialects may have to make an effort to understand, [...] but which is far from being incomprehensible to them."

Where traditional Breton makes use of a large number of French loanwords, particularly in reference to modern concepts, neo-Breton has replaced French and Latin loanwords, even those several centuries old, with neologisms, in order to avoid the appearance of French influence.

However, the influence of French operates in neo-Breton at the deeper levels of phonetics, syntax, phraseology, and linguistic cultural norms, often in ways its speakers are unaware of, but which may be striking to native speakers. These differences are due in part to the fact that the learners and teachers of neo-Breton are second-language speakers, but also to learners' relative isolation from the native-speaker community and, it is said, to a failure on the part of the early 20th-century language reformers who codified the standard language, for whom French was dominant, to sufficiently "draw on the linguistic and cultural resources of the dialects in constructing Neo-Breton." For these reasons, neo-Breton, if it eventually emerges as a native variety, can be described as a French-influenced xenolect.

Overview of sociolinguistic differences between traditional and neo-Breton
We reproduce here a table of K. George dating from 1986, quoted in Hornsby, summarizing the sociolinguistic features distinguishing bretonnants and néo-bretonnants.

While neo-Breton syntax shows French influence, traditional Breton syntax does not particularly.

Alongside neo-Breton and dialectal Breton, there is a third category, "standardized literary Breton, with no particular French influence, used above all in writing but influencing the speech of educated, older speakers, e.g. the clergy."

The decline of Breton until ca. 1945
Breton has been spoken in Lower Brittany continuously since the 4th century AD, when Celtic migrants began to arrive there from Great Britain. A situation of diglossia began to prevail in the 10th century, when the nobility started to speak French, followed later by the urban bourgeoisie. However, the majority of Bretons remained unilingual in Breton until the end of the nineteenth century.

The diglossic situation was a typical one, with French being used in prestigious settings, and Breton elsewhere. The main exception to this pattern was that Breton continued to be the language predominantly associated with the practice of Catholicism until the Combes law of 1902 banned preaching in Breton.

Several factors contributed, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to French displacing Breton in some of its spheres of use. Some of these involved various institutional, economic, and social changes that took place in Brittany and, more widely, in France; others relate more specifically to negative attitudes towards Breton language and identity on the part of both Bretons and non-Bretons, sometimes reinforced by state intervention.

The post-revolutionary Republican ideology promoted, as never before, the view that the French language was an essential part of French citizenship. The Breton language and culture were stigmatized as backward and anachronistic, and imposing French was portrayed as a means of liberating Bretons intellectually. Government measures were undertaken in the 19th century with the avowed goal of "killing the Breton language." The close association of Breton with the Church and the 1870 loss of German-speaking Alsace-Lorraine to Germany reinforced the suspicion with which Breton was viewed.

The introduction in the 1870s of compulsory military service and in the 1880s of compulsory education — in French only — helped to forge a sense of French national identity. The banning of Breton on school premises, through the humiliating punishment of those who spoke it, and the ostracism and abuse suffered by Breton conscripts, particularly in the First World War, favoured a shift to French in public life.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, negative stereotypes of Breton identity became widespread in France. The cartoon character Bécassine helped popularize the image of "a simplistic, archaic, servile and ridiculous Brittany." The devaluation of Breton identity led Bretons to gradually abandon aspects of Breton culture, and especially dress, in favour of the majority French culture held to be superior and of universal character.

French was more widely known in towns than in the countryside. All in all, Fañch Broudic estimates that in Lower Brittany at the beginning of the 20th century: half the population spoke only Breton; half the population could understand French; a quarter of the population spoke French habitually or occasionally; and over three quarters of the population knew Breton and usually spoke only that language.

By the early 20th century, increased literacy in French, the print and broadcast media, the construction of railways, outmigration, tourism in the region, and participation in the First World War had all brought Bretons into closer contact with people from the rest of France. French became a necessity in certain areas of the economy that had previously operated largely in Breton.

Despite the pressure to which it was subject, in the interwar period the Breton language continued to flourish in social contexts in rural areas of Lower Brittany. Rather, the effect of these pressures was a drastic reduction in the number of unilingual Breton speakers, and a corresponding extension in bilingualism.

Nonetheless, the events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries helped to "produce a widespread view amongst Breton and non-Breton speakers that Breton language and culture was stigmatizing."

Francis Gourvil estimates that in 1952, of a total population of 1,500,000 in Lower Britanny: some 400,000 spoke no Breton; 300,000 could speak Breton but preferred French; 700,000 preferred Breton; and a further 100,000 spoke only Breton.

The postwar period
The 1945–1975 years, known in France as les Trente Glorieuses, saw unprecedented economic growth throughout the country. Brittany, which at the end of the war had had the lowest standard of living in France, became more fully integrated into the national economy. The growth of industry and the modernization of agriculture accelerated.

The postwar years saw a precipitous drop in the rate of transmission of Breton from parents to children. For example, historian Louis Élégoët estimated that whereas in 1946 all the children in his home town of Saint-Méen spoke Breton as their mother tongue, only one in ten born in 1952 did.

More recently, Hornsby and Quentel (2013) have posited a bipartite division in the Breton speech community, along the lines of dialectal and standard Breton, rather than neo-Breton:

1.	Dialectal Breton: very Gallicized lexicon, Celtic syntax and pronunciation, spoken by the older generations who are native speakers which is generally not written (the speakers are mostly illiterate in Breton). Its ‘authenticity’ is maintained by some younger, L2 speakers.

2. Standard Breton: extended Celticized lexicon, Celtic syntax, ideally Breton pronunciation, spoken mostly by non-native speakers appears more in written form(s) than does dialectal Breton.