95-510: Loudéac ( French pronunciation: [ludeak] ; Breton : Loudieg ; Gallo : Loudia ) is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department , Brittany , northwestern France. Loudéac has an oceanic climate ( Köppen climate classification Cfb ). The average annual temperature in Loudéac is 11.4 °C (52.5 °F). The average annual rainfall is 901.3 mm (35.48 in) with December as
190-540: A unique dialect of Irish developed before falling out of use in the early 20th century. With a writing system , Ogham , dating back to at least the 4th century AD, which was gradually replaced by Latin script since the 5th century AD, Irish has one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Western Europe . On the island, the language has three major dialects: Connacht , Munster and Ulster Irish . All three have distinctions in their speech and orthography . There
285-464: A 1500 person capacity with 500 seats. This Côtes-d'Armor geographical article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Breton language Breton ( / ˈ b r ɛ t ə n / , BRET -ən , French: [bʁətɔ̃] ; endonym : brezhoneg [bʁeˈzɔ̃ːnɛk] or [bɾəhɔ̃ˈnek] in Morbihan ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of
380-548: A Brittonic language community that once extended from Great Britain to Armorica (present-day Brittany) and had even established a toehold in Galicia (in present-day Spain). Old Breton is attested from the 9th century. It was the language of the upper classes until the 12th century, after which it became the language of commoners in Lower Brittany. The nobility, followed by the bourgeoisie , adopted French . The written language of
475-620: A French team. Discussions to build a covered Velodrome in Loudeac started in 2013, in 2018 the council held a vote and approved the construction with 62 votes for, 3 against and 3 abstentions. Construction began in January 2022 and was completed in July 2023 costing an estimated 13 million Euros, the velodrome subsequently opened in September 2023. Named 'Vélodrome de Bretagne' it has a 200 metre wooden track and
570-697: A bargaining chip during government formation in Northern Ireland, prompting protests from organisations and groups such as An Dream Dearg . Irish became an official language of the EU on 1 January 2007, meaning that MEPs with Irish fluency can now speak the language in the European Parliament and at committees, although in the case of the latter they have to give prior notice to a simultaneous interpreter in order to ensure that what they say can be interpreted into other languages. While an official language of
665-560: A better future for Ireland and all her citizens." The Strategy was produced on 21 December 2010 and will stay in action until 2030; it aims to target language vitality and revitalization of the Irish language. The 30-page document published by the Government of Ireland details the objectives it plans to work towards in an attempt to preserve and promote both the Irish language and the Gaeltacht. It
760-472: A cultural and social force. Irish speakers often insisted on using the language in law courts (even when they knew English), and Irish was also common in commercial transactions. The language was heavily implicated in the "devotional revolution" which marked the standardisation of Catholic religious practice and was also widely used in a political context. Down to the time of the Great Famine and even afterwards,
855-541: A degree course in the NUI federal system to pass the subject of Irish in the Leaving Certificate or GCE / GCSE examinations. Exemptions are made from this requirement for students who were born or completed primary education outside of Ireland, and students diagnosed with dyslexia . NUI Galway is required to appoint people who are competent in the Irish language, as long as they are also competent in all other aspects of
950-536: A fairly large body of literature for a minority language. In 1977, Diwan schools were founded to teach Breton by immersion . Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to the growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton. The Asterix comic series has been translated into Breton. According to
1045-460: A fully recognised EU language for the first time in the state's history. Before Irish became an official language it was afforded the status of treaty language and only the highest-level documents of the EU were made available in Irish. The Irish language was carried abroad in the modern period by a vast diaspora , chiefly to Great Britain and North America, but also to Australia , New Zealand and Argentina . The first large movements began in
SECTION 10
#17328693678821140-461: A national culture. Teachers humiliated students for using their regional languages, and such practices prevailed until the late 1960s. In the early 21st century, due to the political centralization of France, the influence of the media, and the increasing mobility of people, only about 200,000 people are active speakers of Breton, a dramatic decline from more than 1 million in 1950. The majority of today's speakers are more than 60 years old, and Breton
1235-574: A paper suggested that within a generation, non-Gaeltacht habitual users of Irish might typically be members of an urban, middle class, and highly educated minority. Parliamentary legislation is supposed to be available in both Irish and English but is frequently only available in English. This is notwithstanding that Article 25.4 of the Constitution of Ireland requires that an "official translation" of any law in one official language be provided immediately in
1330-554: A pass in Leaving Certificate Irish or English, and receive lessons in Irish during their two years of training. Official documents of the Irish government must be published in both Irish and English or Irish alone (in accordance with the Official Languages Act 2003, enforced by An Coimisinéir Teanga , the Irish language ombudsman). The National University of Ireland requires all students wishing to embark on
1425-611: A religious context. An Irish translation of the Old Testament by Leinsterman Muircheartach Ó Cíonga , commissioned by Bishop Bedell , was published after 1685 along with a translation of the New Testament. Otherwise, Anglicisation was seen as synonymous with 'civilising' the native Irish. Currently, modern day Irish speakers in the church are pushing for language revival. It has been estimated that there were around 800,000 monoglot Irish speakers in 1800, which dropped to 320,000 by
1520-538: A result of linguistic imperialism . Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in Ireland's Gaeltacht regions, in which 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2022. The total number of people (aged 3 and over) in Ireland who declared they could speak Irish in April 2022 was 1,873,997, representing 40% of respondents, but of these, 472,887 said they never spoke it and a further 551,993 said they only spoke it within
1615-471: A schwa sound occurs as a result of vowel neutralization in post-tonic position, among different dialects. All vowels can also be nasalized , which is noted by appending an 'n' letter after the base vowel, or by adding a combining tilde above the vowel (most commonly and easily done for a and o due to the Portuguese letters ), or more commonly by non-ambiguously appending an ⟨ñ⟩ letter after
1710-537: A wider meaning, including the Gaelic of Scotland and the Isle of Man , as well as of Ireland. When required by the context, these are distinguished as Gaeilge na hAlban , Gaeilge Mhanann and Gaeilge na hÉireann respectively. In English (including Hiberno-English ), the language is usually referred to as Irish , as well as Gaelic and Irish Gaelic . The term Irish Gaelic may be seen when English speakers discuss
1805-412: Is -où , with its variant -ioù ; most nouns that use this marker are inanimates but collectives of both inanimate and animate nouns always use it as well. Most animate nouns, including trees, take a plural in -ed . However, in some dialects the use of this affix has become rare. Various masculine nouns including occupations as well as the word Saoz ("Englishman", plural Saozon ) take
1900-584: Is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family . It is a member of the Goidelic language group of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous to the island of Ireland . It was the majority of the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century, in what is sometimes characterised as
1995-448: Is also An Caighdeán Oifigiúil , a standardised written form devised by a parliamentary commission in the 1950s. The traditional Irish alphabet , a variant of the Latin alphabet with 18 letters , has been succeeded by the standard Latin alphabet (albeit with 7–8 letters used primarily in loanwords ). Irish has constitutional status as the national and first official language of
SECTION 20
#17328693678822090-534: Is also a female team within the club. There is a handball team in the town, l'Amicale Laîque Loudéac Handball who compete across male and female senior and junior competition. A rugby team based in the town is named the Loup'déaciens (a play on words on the word 'loup' which means 'wolf' in French. There is a strong local pool scene, which has culminated in a youth based in the town becoming a world champion at youth level as part of
2185-402: Is applied for animate referents. Metals, time divisions (except for eur "hour", noz "night" and sizhun "week") and mountains tend to be masculine, while rivers, cities and countries tend to be feminine. However, gender assignment to certain words often varies between dialects. Number in Breton is primarily based on an opposition between singular and plural. However, the system
2280-511: Is divided into four separate phases with the intention of improving 9 main areas of action including: The general goal for this strategy was to increase the number of daily speakers from 83,000 to 250,000 by the end of its run. By 2022, the number of such speakers had fallen to 71,968. Before the partition of Ireland in 1921, Irish was recognised as a school subject and as "Celtic" in some third level institutions. Between 1921 and 1972, Northern Ireland had devolved government. During those years
2375-406: Is full of complexities in how this distinction is realized. Although modern Breton has lost its ancestral dual number marker, relics of its use are preserved in various nouns pertaining to body parts, including the words for eyes, ears, cheeks, legs, armpits, arms, hands, knees, thighs, and wings. This is seen in a prefix (formed in daou , di or div ) that is etymologically derived from
2470-422: Is not used, while keleier has become the regular plural, 'different news items'. Meanwhile, certain nouns can form doubly marked plurals with lexicalized meanings – bugel "child" is pluralized once into bugale "children" and then pluralized a second time to make bugaleoù "groups of children". The diminutive suffix -ig also has the somewhat unusual property of triggering double marking of
2565-609: Is now classified as an endangered language . At the beginning of the 20th century, half of the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton; the other half were bilingual. By 1950, there were only 100,000 monolingual Bretons, and this rapid decline has continued, with likely no monolingual speakers left today. A statistical survey in 1997 found around 300,000 speakers in Lower Brittany, of whom about 190,000 were aged 60 or older. Few 15- to 19-year-olds spoke Breton. In 1993, parents were finally legally allowed to give their children Breton names. In 1925, Professor Roparz Hemon founded
2660-567: Is only in Gaeltacht areas that Irish continues to be spoken as a community vernacular to some extent. According to data compiled by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht , Sport and Media , only 1/4 of households in Gaeltacht areas are fluent in Irish. The author of a detailed analysis of the survey, Donncha Ó hÉallaithe of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology , described
2755-589: Is pluralized to pesked , singulativized to peskedenn , referring to a single fish out of a school of fish, and this singulative of the plural can then be pluralized again to make peskedennoù "fishes". On top of this, the formation of plurals is complicated by two different pluralizing functions. The "default" plural formation is contrasted with another formation which is said to "emphasize variety or diversity" – thus two semantically different plurals can be formed out of park : parkoù "parks" and parkeier "various different parks". Ball reports that
2850-412: Is still spoken daily to some extent as a first language . These regions are known individually and collectively as the Gaeltacht (plural Gaeltachtaí ). While the fluent Irish speakers of these areas, whose numbers have been estimated at 20–30,000, are a minority of the total number of fluent Irish speakers, they represent a higher concentration of Irish speakers than other parts of the country and it
2945-540: Is the only living Celtic language that is not recognized by a national government as an official or regional language. The first Breton dictionary, the Catholicon , was also the first French dictionary. Edited by Jehan Lagadec in 1464, it was a trilingual work containing Breton, French and Latin. Today bilingual dictionaries have been published for Breton and languages including English, Dutch, German, Spanish and Welsh. A monolingual dictionary, Geriadur Brezhoneg an Here
Loudéac - Misplaced Pages Continue
3040-405: Is used to form singulars out of collective nouns , for which the morphologically less complex form is the plural. Thus, the singulative of the collective logod "mice" is logod enn "mouse". However, Breton goes beyond Welsh in the complications of this system. Collectives can be pluralized to make forms which are different in meaning from the normal collective-- pesk "fish" (singular)
3135-442: The Ya d'ar brezhoneg campaign, to encourage enterprises, organisations and communes to promote the use of Breton, for example by installing bilingual signage or translating their websites into Breton. In the late 20th century, the French government considered incorporating the independent Breton-language immersion schools (called Diwan ) into the state education system. This action
3230-659: The Fíor-Ghaeltacht (true Gaeltacht ), a term originally officially applied to areas where over 50% of the population spoke Irish. There are Gaeltacht regions in the following counties: Gweedore ( Gaoth Dobhair ), County Donegal, is the largest Gaeltacht parish in Ireland. Irish language summer colleges in the Gaeltacht are attended by tens of thousands of teenagers annually. Students live with Gaeltacht families, attend classes, participate in sports, go to céilithe and are obliged to speak Irish. All aspects of Irish culture and tradition are encouraged. The Act
3325-601: The Celtic language group spoken in Brittany , part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on the European mainland, albeit as a member of the insular branch instead of the continental grouping. Breton was brought from Great Britain to Armorica (the ancient name for the coastal region that includes the Brittany peninsula) by migrating Britons during
3420-561: The Duchy of Brittany was Latin , switching to French in the 15th century. There exists a limited tradition of Breton literature . Some philosophical and scientific terms in Modern Breton come from Old Breton. The recognized stages of the Breton language are: Old Breton – c. 800 to c. 1100 , Middle Breton – c. 1100 to c. 1650 , Modern Breton – c. 1650 to present. The French monarchy
3515-544: The Early Middle Ages , making it an Insular Celtic language . Breton is 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 , Scottish Gaelic ) have a slight connection due to both of their origins being from Insular Celtic. Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to about 200,000 in
3610-619: The Republic of Ireland , and is also an official language of Northern Ireland and among the official languages of the European Union . The public body Foras na Gaeilge is responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island. Irish has no regulatory body but An Caighdeán Oifigiúil , the standard written form, is guided by a parliamentary service and new vocabulary by a voluntary committee with university input. In An Caighdeán Oifigiúil ("The Official [Written] Standard ")
3705-431: The county of Léon ), tregerieg ( trégorrois , of Trégor ), kerneveg ( cornouaillais , of Cornouaille ), and gwenedeg ( vannetais , of Vannes ). Guérandais was spoken up to the beginning of the 20th century in the region of Guérande and Batz-sur-Mer . There are no clear boundaries between the dialects because they form a dialect continuum , varying only slightly from one village to
3800-611: The 17th century, largely as a result of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland , which saw many Irish sent to the West Indies . Irish emigration to the United States was well established by the 18th century, and was reinforced in the 1840s by thousands fleeing from the Famine . This flight also affected Britain. Up until that time most emigrants spoke Irish as their first language, though English
3895-769: The 1998 Good Friday Agreement , the language gradually received a degree of formal recognition in Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, and then, in 2003, by the British government's ratification in respect of the language of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . In the 2006 St Andrews Agreement the British government promised to enact legislation to promote the language and in 2022 it approved legislation to recognise Irish as an official language alongside English. The bill received royal assent on 6 December 2022. The Irish language has often been used as
Loudéac - Misplaced Pages Continue
3990-403: The 6th century, used the Latin alphabet and is attested primarily in marginalia to Latin manuscripts. During this time, the Irish language absorbed some Latin words, some via Old Welsh , including ecclesiastical terms : examples are easpag (bishop) from episcopus , and Domhnach (Sunday, from dominica ). By the 10th century, Old Irish had evolved into Middle Irish , which
4085-563: The Act all detailing different aspects of the use of Irish in official documentation and communication. Included in these sections are subjects such as Irish language use in official courts, official publications, and placenames. The Act was recently amended in December 2019 in order to strengthen the already preexisting legislation. All changes made took into account data collected from online surveys and written submissions. The Official Languages Scheme
4180-491: The Breton-language review Gwalarn . During its 19-year run, Gwalarn tried to raise the language to the level of a great international language. Its publication encouraged the creation of original literature in all genres, and proposed Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, Al Liamm replaced Gwalarn . Other Breton-language periodicals have been published, which established
4275-463: The European Union , only co-decision regulations were available until 2022, due to a five-year derogation, requested by the Irish Government when negotiating the language's new official status. The Irish government had committed itself to train the necessary number of translators and interpreters and to bear the related costs. This derogation ultimately came to an end on 1 January 2022, making Irish
4370-412: The French law known as Toubon , it is illegal for commercial signage to be in Breton alone. Signs must be bilingual or French only. Since commercial signage usually has limited physical space, most businesses have signs only in French. Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg , the Breton language agency, was set up in 1999 by the Brittany region to promote and develop the daily use of Breton. It helped to create
4465-536: The Irish language policy followed by Irish governments as a "complete and absolute disaster". The Irish Times , referring to his analysis published in the Irish language newspaper Foinse , quoted him as follows: "It is an absolute indictment of successive Irish Governments that at the foundation of the Irish State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi Irish-speaking areas, but
4560-597: The Republic of Ireland ), new appointees to the Civil Service of the Republic of Ireland , including postal workers , tax collectors , agricultural inspectors, Garda Síochána (police), etc., were required to have some proficiency in Irish. By law, a Garda who was addressed in Irish had to respond in Irish as well. In 1974, in part through the actions of protest organisations like the Language Freedom Movement ,
4655-504: The University of Rennes 2 has a Breton language department offering courses in the language along with a master's degree in Breton and Celtic Studies. Vowels in Breton may be short or long . All unstressed vowels are short; stressed vowels can be short or long (vowel lengths are not noted in usual orthographies as they are implicit in the phonology of particular dialects, and not all dialects pronounce stressed vowels as long). An emergence of
4750-479: The base vowel (this depends on the orthographic variant). Diphthongs are /ai, ei, ou/ . Breton nouns are marked for gender and number. While Breton gender is fairly typical of gender systems across western Europe (with the exception of Basque and modern English), Breton number markers demonstrate rarer behaviors. Breton has two genders: masculine ( gourel ) and feminine ( gwregel ), having largely lost its historic neuter ( nepreizh ) as has also occurred in
4845-731: The beginning of the following academic year. For a number of years there has been vigorous debate in political, academic and other circles about the failure of most students in English-medium schools to achieve competence in Irish, even after fourteen years of teaching as one of the three main subjects. The concomitant decline in the number of traditional native speakers has also been a cause of great concern. In 2007, filmmaker Manchán Magan found few Irish speakers in Dublin , and faced incredulity when trying to get by speaking only Irish in Dublin. He
SECTION 50
#17328693678824940-475: The changes associated with -er / -ier are less predictable. Various nouns instead form their plural merely with ablaut : a or o in the stem being changed to e : askell "wing" → eskell "wings"; dant "tooth" → dent "teeth"; kordenn "rope" → kerdenn "ropes". Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish : Gaeilge ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( / ˈ ɡ eɪ l ɪ k / GAY -lik ),
5035-1137: The comic, the Gaulish village where Asterix lives is in the Armorica peninsula , which is now Brittany. Some other popular comics have also been translated into Breton, including The Adventures of Tintin , Spirou , Titeuf , Hägar the Horrible , Peanuts and Yakari . Some original media are created in Breton. The sitcom, Ken Tuch , is in Breton. Radio Kerne , broadcasting from Finistère , has exclusively Breton programming. Some movies ( Lancelot du Lac , Shakespeare in Love , Marion du Faouet , Sezneg ) and TV series ( Columbo , Perry Mason ) have also been translated and broadcast in Breton. Poets, singers, linguists, and writers who have written in Breton, including Yann-Ber Kallocʼh , Roparz Hemon , Añjela Duval , Xavier de Langlais , Pêr-Jakez Helias , Youenn Gwernig , Glenmor , Vefa de Saint-Pierre and Alan Stivell are now known internationally. Today, Breton
5130-853: The consideration of the Breton language in Microsoft products. In October 2014, Facebook added Breton as one of its 121 languages after three years of talks between the Ofis and Facebook. France has twice chosen to enter the Eurovision Song Contest with songs in Breton; once in 1996 in Oslo with " Diwanit bugale " by Dan Ar Braz and the fifty piece band Héritage des Celtes , and most recently in 2022 in Turin with " Fulenn " by Alvan Morvan Rosius and vocal trio Ahez . These are two of five times France has chosen songs in one of its minority languages for
5225-561: The contest, the others being in 1992 (bilingual French and Antillean Creole ), 1993 (bilingual French and Corsican ), and 2011 (Corsican). Breton is spoken mainly in Lower Brittany, but also in a more dispersed way in Upper Brittany (where it is spoken alongside Gallo and French), and in areas around the world that have Breton emigrants. The four traditional dialects of Breton correspond to medieval bishoprics rather than to linguistic divisions. They are leoneg ( léonard , of
5320-713: The education system. Linguistic analyses of Irish speakers are therefore based primarily on the number of daily users in Ireland outside the education system, which in 2022 was 20,261 in the Gaeltacht and 51,707 outside it, totalling 71,968. In response to the 2021 census of Northern Ireland , 43,557 individuals stated they spoke Irish on a daily basis, 26,286 spoke it on a weekly basis, 47,153 spoke it less often than weekly, and 9,758 said they could speak Irish, but never spoke it. From 2006 to 2008, over 22,000 Irish Americans reported speaking Irish as their first language at home, with several times that number claiming "some knowledge" of
5415-468: The end of the famine, and under 17,000 by 1911. Irish is recognised by the Constitution of Ireland as the national and first official language of Republic of Ireland (English being the other official language). Despite this, almost all government business and legislative debate is conducted in English. In 1938, the founder of Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League), Douglas Hyde , was inaugurated as
5510-545: The first President of Ireland . The record of his delivering his inaugural Declaration of Office in Roscommon Irish is one of only a few recordings of that dialect. In the 2016 census, 10.5% of respondents stated that they spoke Irish, either daily or weekly, while over 70,000 people (4.2%) speak it as a habitual daily means of communication. From the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 (see History of
5605-655: The first decade of the 21st century, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger . However, the number of children attending bilingual classes rose 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709. Breton is spoken in Lower Brittany ( Breton : Breizh-Izel ), roughly to the west of a line linking Plouha (west of Saint-Brieuc ) and La Roche-Bernard (east of Vannes ). It comes from
5700-566: The growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton. The schools have also gained fame from their high level of results in school exams, including those on French language and literature. Breton-language schools do not receive funding from the national government, though the Brittany Region may fund them. Another teaching method is a bilingual approach by Div Yezh ("Two Languages") in the State schools, created in 1979. Dihun ("Awakening")
5795-681: The growth of the movement. In 2007, some 4,500 to 5,000 adults followed an evening or correspondence one Breton-language course. The transmission of Breton in 1999 was estimated to be 3 percent. In addition to bilingual education (including Breton-medium education) the region has introduced the Breton language in primary education, mainly in the department of Finistère. These "initiation" sessions are generally one to three hours per week, and consist of songs and games. Schools in secondary education ( collèges and lycées ) offer some courses in Breton. In 2010, nearly 5,000 students in Brittany were reported to be taking this option. Additionally,
SECTION 60
#17328693678825890-537: The heritage of France ). The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , which obliges signatory states to recognize minority and regional languages, was signed by France in 1999 but has not been ratified. On 27 October 2015, the Senate rejected a draft constitutional law ratifying the charter. Regional and departmental authorities use Breton to a very limited extent. Some bilingual signage has also been installed, such as street name signs in Breton towns. Under
5985-698: The language family, is derived from the Old Irish term. Endonyms of the language in the various modern Irish dialects include: Gaeilge [ˈɡeːlʲɟə] in Galway, Gaeilg / Gaeilic / Gaeilig [ˈɡeːlʲəc] in Mayo and Ulster , Gaelainn / Gaoluinn [ˈɡeːl̪ˠən̠ʲ] in West/Cork, Kerry Munster , as well as Gaedhealaing in mid and East Kerry/Cork and Waterford Munster to reflect local pronunciation. Gaeilge also has
6080-410: The language was in use by all classes, Irish being an urban as well as a rural language. This linguistic dynamism was reflected in the efforts of certain public intellectuals to counter the decline of the language. At the end of the 19th century, they launched the Gaelic revival in an attempt to encourage the learning and use of Irish, although few adult learners mastered the language. The vehicle of
6175-472: The language. For most of recorded Irish history , Irish was the dominant language of the Irish people , who took it with them to other regions , such as Scotland and the Isle of Man , where Middle Irish gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx . It was also, for a period, spoken widely across Canada , with an estimated 200,000–250,000 daily Canadian speakers of Irish in 1890. On the island of Newfoundland ,
6270-450: The latter pluralizer is used only for inanimate nouns. Certain formations have been lexicalized to have meanings other than that which might be predicted solely from the morphology: dour "water" pluralized forms dourioù which means not "waters" but instead "rivers", while doureier now has come to mean "running waters after a storm". Certain forms have lost the singular from their paradigm: keloù means "news" and * kel
6365-563: The mid-18th century, English was becoming a language of the Catholic middle class, the Catholic Church and public intellectuals, especially in the east of the country. Increasingly, as the value of English became apparent, parents sanctioned the prohibition of Irish in schools. Increasing interest in emigrating to the United States and Canada was also a driver, as fluency in English allowed
6460-497: The name of the language is Gaeilge , from the South Connacht form, spelled Gaedhilge prior the spelling reform of 1948, which was originally the genitive of Gaedhealg , the form used in Classical Gaelic . The modern spelling results from the deletion of the silent ⟨dh⟩ in Gaedhilge . Older spellings include Gaoidhealg [ˈɡeːʝəlˠəɡ] in Classical Gaelic and Goídelc [ˈɡoiðʲelɡ] in Old Irish . Goidelic , used to refer to
6555-409: The new immigrants to get jobs in areas other than farming. An estimated one quarter to one third of US immigrants during the Great Famine were Irish speakers. Irish was not marginal to Ireland's modernisation in the 19th century, as is often assumed. In the first half of the century there were still around three million people for whom Irish was the primary language, and their numbers alone made them
6650-519: The next. Gwenedeg , however, requires a little study to be intelligible with most of the other dialects. French is the sole official language of France . Supporters of Breton and other minority languages continue to argue for their recognition, and for their place in education, public schools, and public life. In July 2008, the legislature amended the French Constitution , adding article 75-1: les langues régionales appartiennent au patrimoine de la France (the regional languages belong to
6745-522: The number now is between 20,000 and 30,000." In the 1920s, when the Irish Free State was founded, Irish was still a vernacular in some western coastal areas. In the 1930s, areas where more than 25% of the population spoke Irish were classified as Gaeltacht . Today, the strongest Gaeltacht areas, numerically and socially, are those of South Connemara , the west of the Dingle Peninsula , and northwest Donegal, where many residents still use Irish as their primary language. These areas are often referred to as
6840-452: The other Celtic languages as well as across the Romance languages. Certain suffixes ( -ach/-aj, -(a)dur, -er, -lecʼh, -our, -ti, -va ) are masculine, while others ( -enti, -er, -ez, -ezh, -ezon, -i , -eg , -ell , and the singulative -enn ) are feminine. The suffix -eg can be masculine or feminine. There are certain non-determinant factors that influence gender assignment. Biological sex
6935-498: The other official language, if not already passed in both official languages. In November 2016, RTÉ reported that over 2.3 million people worldwide were learning Irish through the Duolingo app. Irish president Michael D. Higgins officially honoured several volunteer translators for developing the Irish edition, and said the push for Irish language rights remains an "unfinished project". There are rural areas of Ireland where Irish
7030-510: The peasant masses under-informed. In 1794, Bertrand Barère submitted his "report on the patois " to the Committee of Public Safety in which he said that "federalism and superstition speak Breton". Since the 19th century, under the Third , Fourth and now Fifth Republics , the French government has attempted to stamp out minority languages—including Breton—in state schools, in an effort to build
7125-478: The plural: bugelig means "little child", but the doubly pluralized bug ale ig où means "little children"; bag boat has a singular diminutive bagig and a simple plural bagoù , thus its diminutive plural is the doubly pluralized bag où ig où . As seen elsewhere in many Celtic languages, the formation of the plural can be hard to predict, being determined by a mix of semantic, morphological and lexical factors. The most common plural marker
7220-539: The political party holding power in the Stormont Parliament , the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), was hostile to the language. The context of this hostility was the use of the language by nationalists. In broadcasting, there was an exclusion on the reporting of minority cultural issues, and Irish was excluded from radio and television for almost the first fifty years of the previous devolved government. After
7315-410: The prefixation of the number two. The dual is no longer productive, and has merely been lexicalized in these cases rather than remaining a part of Breton grammar. The (etymologically) already dual words for eyes ( daoulagad ) and ears ( divskouarn ) can be pluralized "again" to form daoulagad où and diskouarn où . Like other Brythonic languages, Breton has a singulative suffix that
7410-487: The relationship between the three Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx). Gaelic is a collective term for the Goidelic languages, and when the context is clear it may be used without qualification to refer to each language individually. When the context is specific but unclear, the term may be qualified, as Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic or Manx Gaelic. Historically the name "Erse" ( / ɜːr s / URS )
7505-432: The requirement for entrance to the public service was changed to proficiency in just one official language. Nevertheless, Irish remains a required subject of study in all schools in the Republic of Ireland that receive public money (see Education in the Republic of Ireland ). Teachers in primary schools must also pass a compulsory examination called Scrúdú Cáilíochta sa Ghaeilge . As of 2005, Garda Síochána recruits need
7600-625: The revival was the Gaelic League ( Conradh na Gaeilge ), and particular emphasis was placed on the folk tradition, which in Irish is particularly rich. Efforts were also made to develop journalism and a modern literature. Although it has been noted that the Catholic Church played a role in the decline of the Irish language before the Gaelic Revival, the Protestant Church of Ireland also made only minor efforts to encourage use of Irish in
7695-512: The suffix -ien , with a range of variants including -on , -ion , -an and -ian . The rare pluralizing suffixes -er / -ier and -i are used for a few nouns. When they are appended, they also trigger a change in the vowel of the root: -i triggers a vowel harmony effect whereby some or all preceding vowels are changed to i ( kenderv "cousin" → kindirvi "cousins"; bran "crow" → brini "crows"; klujur "partridge" → klujiri "partridges");
7790-404: The town, and Loudéac OSC, formed from the amalgamation of Stade Loudéacien (1909) and Avenir Sportif Loudéacien (1966) on 1 June 2001. Loudéac OSC is traditionally a big club on the amateur scene in the region (being one of the larger towns). Recently, the club has restructured with a strong policy on developing youth, which has paid dividends as the club are again rising through the divisions. There
7885-556: The use of the Spilhennig to let speakers identify each other. The office also started an Internationalization and localization policy asking Google , Firefox and SPIP to develop their interfaces in Breton. In 2004, the Breton Misplaced Pages started, which counts more than 85,000 articles as of August 2024. In March 2007, the Ofis ar Brezhoneg signed a tripartite agreement with Regional Council of Brittany and Microsoft for
7980-655: The vacancy to which they are appointed. This requirement is laid down by the University College Galway Act, 1929 (Section 3). In 2016, the university faced controversy when it announced the planned appointment of a president who did not speak Irish. Misneach staged protests against this decision. The following year the university announced that Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh , a fluent Irish speaker, would be its 13th president. He assumed office in January 2018; in June 2024, he announced he would be stepping down as president at
8075-565: The wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 17.8 °C (64.0 °F), and lowest in January, at around 5.6 °C (42.1 °F). The highest temperature ever recorded in Loudéac was 37.9 °C (100.2 °F) on 9 August 2003; the coldest temperature ever recorded was −11.0 °C (12.2 °F) on 2 January 1997. The inhabitants of Loudéac are known in French as Loudéaciens and Loudéaciennes . Loudéac has 2 football teams, FC Saint-Bugan, named after an area in
8170-594: The work of such writers as Geoffrey Keating , is said to date from the 17th century, and was the medium of popular literature from that time on. From the 18th century on, the language lost ground in the east of the country. The reasons behind this shift were complex but came down to a number of factors: The change was characterised by diglossia (two languages being used by the same community in different social and economic situations) and transitional bilingualism (monoglot Irish-speaking grandparents with bilingual children and monoglot English-speaking grandchildren). By
8265-523: Was also sometimes used in Scots and then in English to refer to Irish; as well as Scottish Gaelic. Written Irish is first attested in Ogham inscriptions from the 4th century AD, a stage of the language known as Primitive Irish . These writings have been found throughout Ireland and the west coast of Great Britain. Primitive Irish underwent a change into Old Irish through the 5th century. Old Irish, dating from
8360-731: Was blocked by the French Constitutional Council based on the 1994 amendment to the Constitution that establishes French as the language of the republic. Therefore, no other language may be used as a language of instruction in state schools. The Toubon Law implemented the amendment, asserting that French is the language of public education. The Diwan schools were founded in Brittany in 1977 to teach Breton by immersion . Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to
8455-632: Was created in 1990 for bilingual education in the Catholic schools. In 2018, 18,337 pupils (about 2% of all students in Brittany) attended Diwan , Div Yezh and Dihun schools, and their number has increased yearly. This was short of the goal of Jean-Yves Le Drian (president of the Regional Council ), who aimed to have 20,000 students in bilingual schools by 2010, and of "their recognition" for "their place in education, public schools, and public life"; nevertheless he describes being encouraged by
8550-643: Was enacted 1 July 2019 and is an 18-page document that adheres to the guidelines of the Official Languages Act 2003 . The purpose of the Scheme is to provide services through the mediums of Irish and/or English. According to the Department of the Taoiseach, it is meant to "develop a sustainable economy and a successful society, to pursue Ireland's interests abroad, to implement the Government's Programme and to build
8645-526: Was not concerned with the minority languages of France , spoken by the lower classes, and required the use of French for government business as part of its policy of national unity. During the French Revolution , the government introduced policies favouring French over the regional languages, which it pejoratively referred to as patois . The revolutionaries assumed that reactionary and monarchist forces preferred regional languages to try to keep
8740-465: Was passed 14 July 2003 with the main purpose of improving the number and quality of public services delivered in Irish by the government and other public bodies. Compliance with the Act is monitored by the An Coimisinéir Teanga (Irish Language Commissioner) which was established in 2004 and any complaints or concerns pertaining to the Act are brought to them. There are 35 sections included in
8835-483: Was published in 1995. The first edition contained about 10,000 words, and the second edition of 2001 contains 20,000 words. In the early 21st century, the Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg ("Public Office for the Breton language") began a campaign to encourage daily use of Breton in the region by both businesses and local communes. Efforts include installing bilingual signs and posters for regional events, as well as encouraging
8930-678: Was spoken throughout Ireland, Isle of Man and parts of Scotland . It is the language of a large corpus of literature, including the Ulster Cycle . From the 12th century, Middle Irish began to evolve into modern Irish in Ireland, into Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, and into the Manx language in the Isle of Man . Early Modern Irish , dating from the 13th century, was the basis of the literary language of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland. Modern Irish, sometimes called Late Modern Irish, as attested in
9025-442: Was unable to accomplish some everyday tasks, as portrayed in his documentary No Béarla . There is, however, a growing body of Irish speakers in urban areas, particularly in Dublin. Many have been educated in schools in which Irish is the language of instruction. Such schools are known as Gaelscoileanna at primary level. These Irish-medium schools report some better outcomes for students than English-medium schools. In 2009,
#881118