What is it like for an English speaker to learn Breton?

Jessica Vitale : Learning Breton language in California

We are excited to share another story in our Breizh Amerika Profiles series, spotlighting individuals who forge connections between the United States and Brittany.

Today we are meeting Jessica Vitale, who is learning Breton language in California. She shares how it is difficult to learn Breton language, especially if the person does not speak French.

Read on to discover our interview with Jessica, as she shares her experience discovering and learning Breton language.


Tell us about yourself?

I was born in Lima Peru in 1970 and lived there for ten years. We lived in Japan for a year and then moved permanently to the United States. My love of Foreign Languages comes from living in Polyglot Los Angeles where I grew up with Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russians, Ukrainians students and of course Hispanic students of all sorts. French is taught in every school in the Los Angeles Unified School District yet very few people come out of it speaking fluent French.

I live in a suburb of Los Angeles called Temple City with my husband and two cats. In addition to Foreign Languages, I draw and paint both traditional and digital, do soft sculpture, play the violin and teaching myself piano. In addition to Breton, I have also been learning Japanese with a teacher from Japan, and both Chinese and French with the Duolingo app. Up until last year, I worked doing the digital layout for an English language Armenian newspaper.


How did you discover Breton language? Why did you decide to learn it?

I love foreign languages and Celtic culture. How I found about Breton is a funny story.
My late father-in-law was lying on the couch of our living room watching the movie Black Hawk Down on Netflix. He would fall asleep before the end of the movie and when he would wake up he’d realize that he missed the ending and would rewind the film a bit. He would fall asleep again, wake up, and he would rewind it again. This would happen about 20 times or so. He was also hard of hearing so the TV would be on really loud.

The song Gortoz A Ran by Denez Prigent doesn’t come on until the end of the film. As my father-in-law kept rewinding the ending of the film, I had to keep listening to the ending song. At first, I thought it sounded Italian due to the operatic nature of the song but as the repeats kept happening, I began to realize it wasn’t Italian so I got curious. I looked up the credits and found the title, then I found the video on YouTube, then I began to research what the Breton language was and then I fell into the Rabbit Hole of the Breton language and Brittany.

​I had no idea Brittany was a country within another country with its own language and culture not to mention that it was a Celtic country, and I love Celtic culture. The only thing I knew about Brittany was that it was next to Normandy.

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Are there a lot of resources for English speakers to learn Breton?

​Sadly no. In the introduction to the English version of Brezhoneg Buan hag Aes,
(Breton Quick and Easy) says that, 

“the lack of books in Irish, Welsh, or English to help the student of Breton has disheartened many a speaker of those languages and prevented their achieving success in the study of Breton which they had hopefully started to pursue on their own.”

​If it wasn’t for the fact that I find learning Foreign Languages fun, I would’ve given up a long time ago.

What are the best resources you’ve found?

The resources are rather scattered all over the place. The site Kervarker is good
but it is really old and looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 90s. It is mostly based on the book Ni a Gomz Brezhoneg by Mark Kerrain. It’s a good starting off point.

Skol Ober is supposed to be a correspondence learning site, but it seems to be mail correspondence (who does that these days?). According to the site, you are supposed to full out a form and mail it to them along with 40 Euros (I live in the U.S) They have some examples of exercises and instruction and some helpful links.

Sked is another place that now offers courses for English speakers. I haven’t tried it yet but I might.

Glosbe is supposed to be an all language dictionary site. You have to dig deep to find Breton in the sub-language section and it is over reliant on Artificial Intelligence. It is not always reliable from English to Breton but more so reliable from French to Breton (of course).

The YouTube channel, web site, and app Brezhoweb is good for listening to the language, specially ALL the dialects. They have short segments that deal with the language and grammar but it is not in English. There are some videos on their site with English subtitles. Also, they provide subtitles in Breton so one can listen to along with the speech. That’s when you can tell the differences in pronunciation. Made e Breizh is my favorite segment.

Another You Tube Channel is Tepod Mab Kerlevenez has short videos on the Breton language with English subtitles.
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A reading of the Breton version of The Hobbit whose translator was featured in Breizh- Amerika, can be found the You Tube channel Evertype.

One interesting source I found was a website called Academia. It is a repository for
academic papers of all sorts. I initially came across this site while trying to find sheet music. Because of cookies, it found out that I was studying Breton and soon bombarded me with papers that I might be interested in. One suggestion was a very extensive Breton to French dictionary which I have made it my mission to translate the French part to English and to make a version from English to French. I have added to it words in the small dictionary currently available and plan to add more. There are other interesting academic papers in English on the Breton language itself.

As for books I’ve found Breton Grammar (English version) by Roparz Hemon. Kemmadur ha Plijadur and Ni a Gomz Brezhoneg by Mark Kerrain are good but they are for French speakers.

​Breton Quick and Easy and Colloquial Breton are for English speakers but they are both out of print.

Tell us about your future website project?

My ideal website would be audio visual. The visual part is not a problem but audio resources is what I would like and I don’t completely trust my pronunciation of Breton. The most troublesome aspect of learning languages with a book is the pronunciation guide. There are so many debates about the pronunciation of the language as it is. Ideally, I would probably start with the alphabet and its pronunciation, then move on to a searchable verb conjugation and searchable dictionary, and interactive conversation.
It would with the alphabet and pronunciation. The worst thing about learning with books are the pronunciation guides. It’s always best to hear them rather than trying to imagine what it would sound like.

Here’s an example of what that might look like:​
If I started with a pronunciation guide with the Breton alphabet, it would look like this:

I would go through the entire Breton alphabet with visual and sound examples.

​Then I’d like to add a searchable dictionary from Breton to English and English to Breton
Breton to English
aes adj.
↪ easy ↪ easily ↪ ease ↪ comfortable ↪ convenient
◊ aes-kenañ ↪ that simple
◊ n'eus netra aes ↪ nothing is easy
◊ aes-tre ↪ naturally (really simple)
◊ aes a-walc'h ↪ naturally (simple enough)
◊ aes Bernez! ↪ at ease Bernez!
◊ aes d'ober gantañ ↪ convenient ↪ practical adj. ↪ functional

​English to Breton
dark a
↪ teñval ↪ du
◊ get darker ↪ teñvalaat
◊ get dark in the evening ↪ noziñ ◊ (thus) dark ↪ noz
◊ darker ↪ nosoc’h

Verb Conjugation
debriñ (to eat)
Present
Me a zebr pesked alies I eat fish often
Conversation:
Future
Me a zebro pesked alies
I will eat fish often
Past
Me a zebre pesked alies
I ate fish often

This would be best if it was video based. My idea is, you would see two people having a basic conversation while looking at each other, then in the next segment one of the two characters would look into the camera saying their lines while the viewer is expected to say the other character’s lines by reading the subtitles. This is something I’ve seen with other languages
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I would also a repository for articles and papers related to the Breton language, and there would also be other things like reading and comprehension, etc.
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