Bretonese

Bretonese
breçoneix
Pronunciation	[breˈθoneʃ]
Created by	Tardigrade
Native to	Spain, Portugal
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Brythonic Bretonese
Early form	Common Brythonic
Writing system	Latin

Bretonese (breçoneix) /breˈθoneʃ/ is a Brittonic Celtic tongue spoken in the Spanish autonomous communities of Galicia, Asturias and in northern Portugal. It is spoken by 30% of the population in all territories. Of these, 75% are in Spain and the remainder in Portugal and in diaspora communities.

Phonology and Orthography

Bretonese Consonants

The consonant inventory for Bretonese is as follows:

		Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩			n ⟨n⟩	ɲ ⟨ñ⟩	ŋ ⟨ng, ngu⟩
Plosive	voiceless	p ⟨p⟩		t ⟨t⟩		t͡ʃ ⟨ch⟩	k ⟨c, qu⟩
	voiced	b~β ⟨b⟩		d~ð ⟨d⟩		d͡ʒ~ʒ ⟨g, j⟩	ɡ~ɣ ⟨g, gu⟩
Fricative	voiced		v ⟨v⟩		z ⟨z⟩
	voiceless		f ⟨f⟩	θ ⟨ç⟩	s ⟨s⟩	ʃ ⟨x⟩	x ⟨h⟩
Approximant	central					j ⟨y⟩	w ⟨u⟩
	lateral				l ⟨l⟩	ʎ ⟨ll⟩
Trill					r ⟨rr⟩
Tap					ɾ ⟨r⟩

Vowels & Diphthongs

Bretonesecan be described as having two groups of vowel sounds:

1. the open vowels, which arose from historically short vowels
2. the close vowels, which arose from historically long vowels
3. the diphthongs

The open and close vowels are represented by the following inventory:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	/i/ 〈i, í〉		/u/ 〈u, ú〉
Close-mid	/e/ 〈e, é〉		/o/ 〈o, ó〉
Open-mid	/ɛ/ 〈e, è〉		/ɔ/ 〈o, ò〉
Open		/a/ 〈a, á〉

All of Bretonese's true diphthongs are falling and consist of a vowel + either /i̯/ or /u̯/.

	+ i̯	+ u̯
Near-close		ɪu̯
Mid	əi̯
Open-mid	ɛi̯    ɔi̯	ɛu̯    ɔu̯
Open		au̯

Sound Changes

Consonant Mutations

As with all modern Celtic languages, Bretonese makes extensive use of initial consonant mutations to help signal grammatical and syntactic information. Bretonese has three main mutations: lenis (meyel), spirant (cravel) and nasal (truinel).

The changes caused by the mutations are summarised in the following table.

Radical	Nasal	Lenis	Spirant
p /p/		b /b/	f /f/
t /t/		d /d/	ç /θ/
c, qu /k/		g, gu /g/	h /x/
ch /t͡ʃ/		g, j /d͡ʒ/	x /ʃ/
b /b/	m /m/	v /v/
d /d/	n /n/	∅
g, gu /ɡ/	ng, ngu /ŋ/	∅
gu, gü /ɡw/	ngu, ngü /ŋw/	v /v/
dj /d͡ʒ/	ñ /ɲ/	y /j/
ll /ʎ/		l /l/
m /m/		v /ṽ/
ñ /ɲ/		n /n/
rr /r/		r /ɾ/

Lenited g becomes v before words in go-, gu-, e.g. gou "smith" → i vou "his smith", gur "man, husband" → i vur "his husband".

Examples:

• Lenition: i beñ "his head", di dad "your dad", i gi "his dog", a reg "the woman", de Varselen "to Barcelona".
• Spirantisation: i feñ "her head", tri çad "three dads", ter haç "three cats".
• Nasalisation: no ngreg "nine women", i Marselen "in Barcelona"