Editing Brittany (section)

====Breton====
{{main|Breton language}}
[[File:Road signs bilingual Breton in Quimper.jpg|thumb|left|Bilingual road signs can be seen in traditional Breton-speaking areas.]]
Breton is a [[Celtic language]] derived from the historical [[Common Brittonic]] language, and is most closely related to [[Cornish language|Cornish]] and [[Welsh language|Welsh]]. It was imported to Western [[Armorica]] during the 5th century by Britons fleeing the [[Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain]]. Breton remained the language of the rural population, but since the [[Middle Ages]] the [[bourgeoisie]], the [[nobility]], and the higher clergy have spoken French.
[[File:WIKITONGUES- Iain William speaking Breton.webm|thumb|A Breton speaker, recorded in [[Canada]].]]

Government policies in the 19th and 20th centuries made education compulsory and, at the same time, forbade the use of Breton in schools to push non-French speakers into adopting the French language. Nevertheless, until the 1960s Breton was spoken or understood by many of the inhabitants of western Brittany. During the 1970s, Breton schools were opened and the local authorities started to promote the language, which was on the brink of extinction because parents had stopped teaching it to their children.

Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to about 200,000 in the first decade of the 21st century, of whom 61% are more than 60 years old, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO ''[[Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger]]''. However, the number of children attending bilingual classes has risen 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709.<ref name="Broudic2009">[[Fañch Broudic]], 2009. ''Parler Breton au XXIe siècle – Le nouveau sondage de TMO-Régions.'' (including data from 2007: 172,000 speakers in Lower Brittany; slightly under 200,000 in whole Brittany; 206,000 including students in bilingual education)</ref><ref name="ofis-stats">{{in lang|fr}} [http://www.ofis-bzh.org/fr/langue_bretonne/chiffres_cles/index.php Données clés sur Breton, Ofis ar Brezhoneg]</ref>

The [[Breton language]] has several dialects which have no precise limits but rather form a [[dialect continuum|continuum]]. Most of them are very similar to each other, with only some phonetic and lexical differences. The three main dialects spoken in the western end of Brittany are:

* the ''Cornouillais'', around [[Quimper]],
* the ''Léonard'', around [[Saint-Pol-de-Léon]], and
* the ''Trégorrois'', around [[Tréguier]], are grouped into the ''KLT group'' (Kerne-Leon-Treger),

in opposition to the ''Vannetais'', spoken around [[Vannes]], which is the most differentiated Breton dialect.

According to a 1999 INSEE survey, 12% of the adults of Brittany speak Breton.<ref>{{cite web |date=January 2003 |title=Langue bretonne et autres langues: pratique et transmission |trans-title=Breton language and other languages: practice and transmission |url=https://www.epsilon.insee.fr/jspui/bitstream/1/11835/1/oc92_lan.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171010234849/https://www.epsilon.insee.fr/jspui/bitstream/1/11835/1/oc92_lan.pdf |archive-date=10 October 2017 |access-date=28 May 2017 |publisher=INSEE}}</ref>