Brittany – Half of France's regional languages are considered 'seriously endangered' according to Unesco, but in the west of the country, where the decline in Breton speakers has accelerated in recent years, a network of schools is fighting the decline.
"Demat!" Greetings echo through the corridors of the Diwan secondary school in Vannes. In the entrance hall, Gabriella and her classmates are filling a whiteboard with words of farewell and thanks – "kenavo" and "trugarez" – for someone who is leaving.
Here, with the exception of French and the foreign languages taught, the 145 secondary school pupils and 45 high school students take all their lessons in Breton, and the use of the language is strongly encouraged during breaks, at lunch and in activities.
Diwan – meaning "seed" in Breton, which is a Celtic language – is a network of Breton language immersion schools, founded in 1977.
Gabriella, who is in her last year of middle school, is looking forward to continuing her studies in the high school here next year. "I'm so happy, it's a big family," she says.
She loves the fact that she can "talk in the street with her friends without others being able to understand" – although her parents do speak Breton.
Alsatian dialect taught in French state schools for the first time
But while the mood in school on the eve of the spring holidays may be light, the atmosphere in the wider Breton-speaking community is a little heavier.
According to the results of a survey by the TMO research institute, published on 20 January, there are now just 107,000 Breton speakers left – or 2.7 percent of the population of the five départements concerned. The last survey in 2018 put the figure at 200,000.
"It's a culture, an identity that's in danger of disappearing," said Mathilde Lahogue, director of the Diwan network.
Fulup Jakez, director of the Public Office for the Breton Language (OPLB), responsible for developing and promoting the use of the language, agreed, and added that the results were not surprising. "It's demographics – the last generations raised in the Breton language until after the Second World War are dying out."
A very French linguistic history
Like half of France's regional languages, Breton is considered to be "seriously endangered" by the United Nations' cultural arm Unesco.
Rozenn Milin, a historian and journalist, and author of La honte et le châtiment – Imposer le français: Bretagne, France, Afrique et autres territoires ("Shame and Punishment – Imposing French: Brittany, France, Africa and other territories") says this is the result of the country consistently encouraging the use of French as the sole language, to the detriment of local languages.
"At the time of the Reign of Terror [a period of violence and repression during the French Revolution in which those perceived as enemies of the revolution were arrested and executed en masse, from September 1793 to July 1794] it was decided that everyone had to learn French and that dialects and idioms – as they were called – which were considered to be linked to the clergy and counter-revolutionary ideas, had to be wiped out," she explained.
With the arrival of compulsory education in 1882, French became the language of schools, and the use of local languages was banned.
The last word: why half of the world's languages could vanish this century
"In Brittany, children who used Breton words were given a sabot [a wooden clog] to wear around their necks. At the end of the day, the last one to be wearing the sabot was punished," Milin explained.
"So even though it was still the family language, they were gradually made to feel ashamed of speaking Breton. As a result, in the 1950s and 1960s, Breton stopped being passed down."
It wasn't until a handful of activists set up the Diwan network in 1977, followed by bilingual courses in state and Catholic education, that Breton began to be reclaimed. But the break had caused irreparable damage, and today, the Breton-speaking population is shrinking.
But it is also getting younger. The number of speakers is rising in the 25-39 age group. "This shows that long-term teaching policies are bearing fruit," said Jakez.
The future of Breton today indeed depends essentially on education, with only 16 percent of current speakers having learnt the language at home, while 78 percent have learnt it at school.
But for the time being, this trend is far from offsetting the decline.
At the start of the school year in September 2024, 20,280 pupils were enrolled in Breton-French bilingual streams (across public, private Catholic and private Diwan schools), according to figures from the OPLB – representing less than 7 percent of children in the Rennes education authority.
‘Diwan is not a factory for political activists'
"We're developing media, there are texts and books published in Breton, we're working on voice recognition, but we need to develop teaching more generally," said Paul Molac, MP for Morbihan, a department of Brittany.
Molac proposed the law that was passed in 2021 to allow instruction in France's regional languages in the country's state schools. It was passed by 247 votes to 76, however the provision on immersive learning included in the law was censured by the Constitutional Council, on the grounds that the Republic is one and indivisible and that this could be seen as calling into question the teaching of French.
France allows immersive teaching of regional languages in schools
This decision has prevented the consolidation of the teaching method offered by Diwan, which is now "financially and legally fragile" according to the director of the network, even though it has proved its worth.
"The State is much more opposed to regional languages than it is in other European countries,’ points out Milin, citing the examples of Switzerland and the United Kingdom: "[In France] they confuse a common language with a single language."
"Diwan is not a factory for political activists," insists Diwan president Marc-Yver Le Duic, adding that Breton education is "secular, free and open to all" and comparing the Diwan schools to French lycées abroad, a network of French secondary schools around the world which adhere to the French national curriculum, where French is the primary teaching language.
Responding to another oft-cited fear, he added: "Breton does not make our pupils bad French speakers. This is borne out by the good overall results achieved by our students in national exams."
Florian Voyenne, headmaster of the Vannes Diwan school and a former classics teacher who grew up learning Breton, points to the success of the education system in Wales.
The teaching of Welsh has been made compulsory from the first to the fourth year of secondary school – a model that has helped to increase the number of Welsh speakers. According to the 2021 census, there are 538,300 in the country, almost 18 per cent of the population.
'We don't force it'
"I think that in the next 10 to 20 years, we'll hit rock bottom at around 50,000 speakers," predicted Milin. Jakez, however, remains optimistic: he sees the future of the language revolving around "a minority of speakers but who, unlike their ancestors who were not literate, will have access to reading and writing in the Breton language".
Senegal launches English lessons in nursery and primary schools
Elouan is in his final year of secondary school, having done all his schooling at Diwan. His parents don't speak Breton, although they did try a few lessons.
For Elouan, who wants to study history, "speaking a language from our regions is important, to know where we come from and who we are". He would like to "link his future to Breton, to keep Breton alive" – maybe as a teacher.
According to the latest research, 19 percent of Breton-speakers are aged between 15 and 39 – amounting to around 20,000 people. How many of them will pass on the language?
"We just want them to enjoy speaking Breton. We don't force it," says David Le Gal, who teaches Breton and music, and whose wife and five children are all Breton speakers too. He's part of the generation that reappropriated the language later in life, when his parents had written it off.
"If two out of 10 of them pass on the language, that'll be good. For me, Breton opens doors to the world. It's just one more way of enjoying life."
This piece has been adapted from the original version in French.
