My Love for Brittany

[tcpip]

Do you have a love for a place or people that you have never been to? For me, it is Brittany (Bretagne, Breizh), the north-western corner of France. To be sure, I do have a thing for wild coastlines and cool, stormy, maritime climate, which also explains why I like the land of my birth, the South Island of New Zealand. Whilst still spectacular, I can only imagine how impressive the Paimpont forest (Forêt de Paimpont, Koad Pempont) would have been in previous centuries, as the legendary Brocéliande, the final resting place of Merlin and much used in other fantastic literature. Perhaps it is the extraordinary archeological remains, including Neanderthal hearths that are some 400,000 years old, or the stunning neolithic cairns of Barnenez, Saint-Michel tumulus, and the Carnac stones? Maybe it's because I am charmed by the Ouessant sheep, which are around 45-50cm at the shoulder, fully grown.

Perhaps there is something about a place whose people are one of the last beacons in the Celtic Twilight (which I have given previous presentations)? One small village of indomitable Gauls (a childhood favourite) is in Armorica, inspired the village of Erquy as unofficially confirmed by Underzo. The Romans probably didn't really think much of the place, naming the far NW corner, Finis Terrae, the end of the earth. Of course, the Bretons are not Gauls, having made their way over from Devon and Cornwall in the 5th to 7th centuries CE in preference to having to deal with the invading Anglo-Saxons. Brittany managed to remain semi-independent until the 16th Century, until incorporated into France by jure uxoris. With the Breton language (sort of like Welsh with a French accent and loanwords) never officially recognised, it fell into a decline especially in the second half of the 20th century to approximately 200,000 speakers, although there is a contemporary revival and, conveniently, it is today's featured project on Wikiversity.

There is much more that I could say on this subject, but on an Epicurean level, last night was Breton night at home. With caseopaya's nephew Luke staying with us for a few weeks in preparation for his move back to Perth it's a full house. Drinks through the night were various versions of Kir, the Kir Impérial to begin with, followed by Kir Breton for main (with imported Kerisac cider), and a standard with dessert, and a post-dinner Calvados as a night-cap. The dinner itself was Gratin de Thon aux Haricots Secs, which I thought would be pretty plain but was absolutely amazing, although my variance from the standard recipe by using tomato-infused breadcrumbs possibly helped. Dessert was Kaletez, buckwheat pancakes, with fruit fillings. Background music was of the culture, which caseopaya drew some similarity with Dead Can Dance; nothing new under the sun, but there is new combinations.

Comments

[warriorsavant]

I do love wild coastlines, by both geography & linguistics, consider Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.

For a long time, our favorite restaurant was a crepe place that made REAL Crepe Breton, the owner literally having learned how to do so at his grandmother's knee back in Brittany. The Briton language was pushed into disuse by official French policy to wipe it out.

[tcpip]

Fun fact; I almost emigrated to Canada some thirty years ago, and my interest was to do postgraduate studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

As things have turned out, I ended up meeting a good friend here in Melbourne who heralds from said city.

Yes, the French did have a policy of deliberately sidelining and even preventing the use of Breton. Not helped by the fact that for centuries the Breton nobles preferred French (or some variety thereof) to the language of the subjects.

Mind you, there is plenty of things that irks me about Breton grammar, but they are the usual things about European languages (gendered nouns, inconsistent conjugation of verbs etc). In my mind I have often dreamed of an "Celtic Esperanto". It would take me years of course to develop such a thing.

[warriorsavant]

Celtic Esperanto would no doubt be almost as widely used as the original Esperanto. Oh well, a fun intellectual exercise. I'm told in times past, Cornishmen and Bretons could more-or-less understand one another.

[tcpip]

That would be an improvement! There are 1.4 million Celtic language speakers, and 2.0 million Esperanto speakers! :)

But I know what you mean, as a proportion.

Apart from being an easy language to learn, I find the most powerful use of Esperanto is as a structured gateway to other languages.

[warriorsavant]

Interesting. However I wonder if the effect was simply that learning ANY second language at an early age gives one a greater ability to learn a third language later. In the cases cited, did anyone do a comparison with having the students first learn some other Indo-European language (ie a control group to those with the preliminary Esperanto teaching)?

[tcpip]

You're asking the same questions as Symoens!

Edward Symoens "Al nova internacia lingvopolitiko: la propedeutika valoro de Esperanto", Esperanto-Dokumentoj, No. 28-29E (1992)

My understanding (and I haven't delved too deeply in this) is yes, learning a second language does make a third language easier, but Esperanto makes it easier still primarily because of the consistency in grammar.

I think the EKPAROLI study from Monash University looked at this when they were teaching students Esperanto alongside LOTE courses in German, French, Indonesian, Japanese etc.

[tcpip]

I must also say that coastline of Cape Breton Island has some game, and I bet it has weather to match!

But for lots of crinkly bits it's really hard to past Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand :)