French Celts - Bretons
Brittany's Celtic language under threat from French colonial government
Indigenous Breton guestwriter speaks about loss of Bretagne's indigenous language and cultural identity.
The situation of the Breton language in Brittany is scandalous. It's OK for the French to scream 'VIVE LE QUEBEC LIBRE!' But if we scream 'VIVE LA BRETAGNE LIBRE', we are ridiculed and dismissed as reactionaries, never mind if the rest of the EU (apart from Greece) is composed of countries more or less federal.
At some stage, the Breton language was spoken from Dol-de-Bretagne down to Pornic, located south of the river Loire. Indeed there are Breton-originated place names in the Pays de Retz (Paimboeuf coming from Penbo, Mindin from Men den, Coitargant in St Pere en Retz, Gourmalon in Pornic, etc.). It is normal to consider Brittany as nation, but the French won't accept any of it, brainwashed as they are in their 'unnatural' nation, born out of the abstract fantasy of the high-jacked revolution of 1789.
When I think of my cousins the Welsh, and their situation which is improving (S4C, Welsh Assembly), it reinforces my anger against the French State. The French, they idolise their language, make statements in favour of the 'holiness' of their idiom as opposed to the 'unholiness' of Anglo-Saxon language. Of course the Breton language as 'unholy' is associated with the Chouans, etc.
Apparently, around 1900, Breton was the Celtic language most spoken on the planet (2 millions and more?). Now we've got 300000 speakers. True, the situation of Irish Gaelic is here to remind us that there's no guarantee of saving Breton from extinction even if it were made compulsory to learn. But the Welsh seem to know a revival.
Anti-Breton attitudes go alongside an attempt to turn the Breton department of Loire-Atlantique (formerly the Pays Nantais) into a non-Breton area attached to an artificial region designed by bureaucrats, the Pays de la Loire, with the audacity to turn this entity in a cultural area, denying the Breton sentiment to the Nantais. It's so damaging that you can hear people in Saint Nazaire saying 'We're not in Brittany here' even though the area abounds with Breton place names (Penhoet, Prezegat, Mean, Kerlede, etc.).
It is as if South-East Wales, West Gloucestershire and Avon were part of an artificial province called the 'Severn County'. I am and feel Breton and Celt, unfortunately I don't speak the Breton language yet (difficult to speak a language when you don't have speakers around you) but I DO feel it, it's as if it was part of my 'racial memory'(sic).
