Variation and communities among

speakers of Breton and Cornish

Merryn Davies-Deacon · Queen’s University Belfast

m.davies-deacon@qub.ac.uk · merryndd.net

Breton and Cornish speakers

Breton: perceived divide between new and traditional speakers
- “a new generation of Breton speakers, who represent a radical shift in stance … and who, in many ways, stand apart from the traditional speakers of the language” (Jones 1995:428)
- But signs that this is not clear-cut: Hornsby and Quentel 2013, Ó hIfearnáin 2013, Kennard 2014, 2017, 2018, 2021, my work
Cornish: smaller community, revived language, debates over orthographies

Breton: disruptions of the binary

My participants (Davies-Deacon 2024): variety of methods of acquisition
- Summer immersion courses, self-study + evening classes, immersion schools (traditional new speaker trajectories)
- But also: acquisition within the family and community, role of new speaker parents
What is a “native speaker”? (Jouitteau 2019: cognitive nativeness)
More broadly: who is a learner and who is a teacher?

Breton: innovative uses of language in online contexts

High levels of performativity, ludic language
- Ludic nonce borrowings (drapo), transscripting (see Li and Zhu 2019; “Σalud”), multilingual exchanges
Representativity of the sample?
Potential inclusion of speakers outside Brittany; different definitions of the speaker community

Cornish: a pluricentric orthography

	RMC	RLC
Main	konna	kodna
Traditional	conna	codna

Associated lexical, phonological, grammatical differences
- Yma ef ow mos dhe’n lyverva
- Ma va moas dhe’n lyverji
Other orthographies still in use

Revived Cornish lexicography

`https://cornishdictionary.org.uk/#neck`, accessed 26 March 2024.

Revived Cornish lexicography

Why did the SWF fail to replace existing orthographies?

MacKinnon 2004: speakers wanted a standard, saw tensions as part of the past
But:
- Speakers consciously choose to speak Cornish; they have beliefs about what the language is for
- SWF is ideologically neutral, and therefore unappealing
- Under the surface; debate has always been framed in linguistic terms, but is ideologically motivated

Considerations

Double minoritisation; taking into account varieties that are beyond the “mainstream”
How do we account for this while building tools based on generalisation and extrapolation?

References

Davies-Deacon, M. (2024). Breton in contemporary media: Speakers, language, community. De Gruyter.
Hornsby, M. and Quentel, G. (2013). Contested varieties and competing authenticities: Neologisms in revitalised Breton. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 223:71–86.
Jones, M. C. (1995). At what price language maintenance? Standardisation in modern Breton. French Studies 49(4):424–438.
Jouitteau, M. (2019). The nativeness of Breton speakers and their erasure. Studia Celtica Posnaniensia 4:1–26.
Kennard, H. J. (2014). The persistence of verb second in negative utterances in Breton. Journal of Historical Linguistics 4(1):1–39.
Kennard, H. J. and Lahiri, A. (2017). Mutation in Breton verbs: Pertinacity across generations. Journal of Linguistics 53(1):113–145.
Kennard, H. J. (2018). Verbal lenition among young speakers of Breton: Acquisition and maintenance. In C. Smith-Christmas, N. P. Ó Murchadha, M. Hornsby, and M. Moriarty (eds.). New speakers of minority languages: Linguistic ideologies and practices. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 231–252.
Kennard, H. J. (2021). Variation in Breton word stress: New speakers and the influence of French. Phonology 38. 363–399.
Li W. and Zhu, H. (2019). Tranßcripting: Playful subversion with Chinese characters. International Journal of Multilingualism 16(2):145–161.
MacKinnon, K. (2004). “As Cornish as possible” – “Not an outcast anymore”: Speakers’ and learners’ opinions on Cornish. In P. Payton (ed.), Cornish studies: Twelve. University of Exeter Press, pp. 268–287.
Ó hIfearnáin, T. (2013). Institutional Breton language policy after language shift. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 223:117–135.