Breton language

Breton
Breton
brezhoneg
	Bilingual sign in Huelgoat in Brittany
Pronunciation	[bʁeˈzɔ̃ːnɛk], [brəhɔ̃ˈnek]
Native to	Brittany (France)
Region	Lower Brittany
Ethnicity	Bretons
Native speakers	107,000 in Brittany (2024); 16,000 in Île-de-France; (Number includes students in bilingual education)
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Brittonic Southwestern Brittonic Breton; ; ; ; ;
Dialects	Gwenedeg; Kerneveg; Leoneg; Tregerieg; Gwerranneg †;
Writing system	Latin script (Breton alphabet)
Official status
Recognised minority; language in	France Brittany;
Regulated by	Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg
Language codes
ISO 639-1	br
ISO 639-2	bre
ISO 639-3	Variously:; bre – Modern Breton; xbm – Middle Breton; obt – Old Breton
Linguist List	xbm Middle Breton
	obt Old Breton
Glottolog	bret1245 Bretonic; bret1244 KLT Breton; vann1244 Gwenedeg
ELP	Breton
Linguasphere	50-ABB-b (varieties: 50-ABB-ba to -be)
	Percentage of Breton speakers in each region of Brittany, 2018
	Breton is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Breton (/ˈbrɛtən/, BRET-ən; French: [bʁətɔ̃]; endonym: brezhoneg [bʁeˈzɔ̃ːnɛk] ^ⓘ or [bɾəhɔ̃ˈnek] in Morbihan) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language group spoken in Brittany, part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still in use on the European mainland.

Breton is an Insular Celtic language that was brought from Great Britain to Brittany by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages, which makes Breton most closely related to Cornish, another Southwestern Brittonic language. Welsh and the extinct Cumbric, both Western Brittonic languages, are more distantly related, and the Goidelic languages (Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic) have a slight connection due to their origins being from Insular Celtic.

Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to 107,000 in 2024, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Yet, the number of children attending bilingual classes rose 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709.