Iain William speaking Breton

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CC BY-SA 4.0

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This video features Iain William Schofield speaking Breton in Ontario, Canada. Breton was spoken by around 206,000 people as of 2013, predominantly in France. As a Brythonic language, Bretton belongs to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family and is closely related to Cornish, another insular Celtic language. With proximity to French, Breton's phonology has been heavily influenced by the French language, distinguishing it from its insular relatives. Breton is the only living Celtic language that is not recognized as an official language by any government. Breton is classified by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages In Danger as severely endangered, due to its decline from more than 1 million speakers in 1950 to roughly 200,000. However, the number of children learning Breton bilingually has risen sharply in the past decade, and several revitalization projects such as literary translations, bilingual dictionaries, Breton immersion education, and a Breton Wikipedia offer hope and vitality.

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