Breton Language - Geographic Distribution and Dialects

Geographic Distribution and Dialects

Breton is spoken mainly in Western Brittany, but also in a more dispersed way in Eastern Brittany (where Gallo is spoken alongside Breton and French), and in areas around the world that have Breton immigrants.

The four living dialects of Breton, as identified by Ethnologue, are (named in Breton) leoneg, tregerieg, gwenedeg, and kerneveg. In French these are respectively léonard spoken in the Breton county of Léon, trégorrois spoken in the Trégor, vannetais spoken around the city of Vannes, and cornouaillais spoken in the Breton Cornouaille). A fifth guérandais dialect was spoken up to the beginning of the 20th century in the region of Guérande and Batz-sur-Mer.

There are no clear boundaries between the dialects because they form a dialect continuum, varying only slightly from one village to the next. Compared to the other dialects, the Gwenedeg dialect is somewhat more distinct due to several pronunciation specificities.

Read more about this topic:  Breton Language

Famous quotes containing the word distribution:

    The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)