The Welsh part is funny to me because the news anchor is speaking about how a man has killed his friend in cold blood in order to cover up an affair that he was having an affair with the friend's wife. And in court he pleaded that he had followed the plan of someone called Manon to kill the friend. What a weird report to choose in order to showcase the different languages
My mother was an Irish speaker from Connemara. When I took her on holiday to the north of Scotland we met a Scottish couple who spoke Gaelic. They chatted away with little problem in understanding the other's Celtic tongue.
That’s really cool. I’m a Texan. I went to Italy and couldn’t speak Italian, but I can speak some Spanish. I chatted to a really sweet man one night who helped lift my spirits when I was home sick.
I think that because both Irish and Scottish belong the Goidelic branch of Celtic. Welsh meanwhile belong to the Brythonic branch together with Cornish and Breton :)
Of them all the Welsh lady sounded most as if she used the language all the time and wasn't just putting it on for the telly. It was relaxed and natural sounding.
Welsh person here and while I don’t mean to put down the other Celtic languages as they’re all still very much alive, Wales is the only one that you could say is thriving still. Welsh is a very popular first language in Wales and most people can at least speak enough to hold a conversation. There were a lot of efforts in history to fight back against English oppression of Wales’ culture and language that have carried over to today so it’s become a language that refuses to die.
Cymraeg is a lived language and a world case study as how to revive an indigineous language. There are over 850,000 who can speak and understand it [working on getting that number past 1million by 2050] in Cymru [Wales] alone, where as of 2020 every school child will be taught Cymraeg as a first language alongside English, and anyone with a child in early education or anyone under the age of 26 has access to free lessons in Cymraeg - as well as having hundreds upon thousands of people learning online/via apps. Where, it shouldn't really be a shock to understand that: people from Wales speak Welsh - not everyone can, but close to 1/3 of our populous are able to [and all of us when singing our national anthem]. Come and visit and see for yourself! Our language is upon all our road signs, but to hear more Cymraeg - go to the North [the highest density of Welsh speakers], but you will be able to hear it spoken and used amongst the South [the highest population of Welsh speakers]. Cariad fawr o Gymru - much love from Wales x
I'm pretty sure that the presenter is speaking Breton with a heavy non-native (French) accent. Actually, except for the Welsh presenter, they're all second-language speakers. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
@@gwenn145 that's exactly what I wrote previously. I m French myself and I ve been to Bretagne and this woman is definitely a non native speaker . She sounds like me trying to speak Breton 😊. Ive heard older people speak Breton, and it didn't sound THAT FRENCH . People need to understand that the French government did everything to forbid people to speak what we call the regional languages of France in order to have a unique national language. So new generations are all native French speakers ( some of them learn Breton at school now as a second language but they don't use it as often as French)
I think the one speaking Breton has a very strong French accent. I am French and even though I don't understand her, I can tell that French is her first language. Maybe an older Breton would sound different
Scottish Gaelic and Irish are mutual intelligible to a decent level. But then, it depends: a Scottish Gaelic speaker would generally communicate easier with an Irish speaker from the north (County Donegal or Northern Ireland) and would struggle a bit more with someone from County Kerry.
Makes sense. Historically I understand towards the end of Roman rule in Britain, what is now Western Scotland was invaded by Celtic tribes from Northern Ireland, pushing the Picts Eastward and bringing Gaelic to Scotland. It makes absolute sense that there would be greater similarity between Scots Gaelic and Ulster Irish, rather than Munster Irish.
@Meme Master For sure, but I think the original source was Ireland 2000 years ago or so, then Scots Gaelic came back to NI with the Ulster Plantation in late Tudor times.
@@henrineumann literally 10s of thousands speak Welsh as a first language and 1000s speak the others aside from Cornish and Manx please don’t speak on things you obviously don’t know anything about
@@columnhi3352 sorry I was talking about irish. No one speaks that or scottish as a first language. Show me the source on that, most people learn it ws a second language.
I missed out on schooling in Cornwall introducing optional Cornish lessons, left a couple years before they introduced them. Tried to learn it myself while doing my undergraduate degree at a Welsh uni and it was pretty fun but also difficult. Wrote all my xmas cards in Cornish one year and it was funny to see them all try to pronounce the words!
Yeah, lived in Cornwall/Devon my whole life and it isn’t as much of a dead language as many make it out to be, with some of my local shops ect having signs and people speaking in Cornish but more generally the older generations :)
@@Megs.. i live down cornwall as well, and i dont think its as dead as people think iver . just go to a family run farm, or a hidden away pub. i can understand cornish but not that good at speeking it.
@@helenswan705 Because even those who speak it don't have nearly as much opportunity to use it on a daily basis. The language actually died out and had to be rebuilt with no living speakers left.
growing up in cornwall, i really wish they would teach us cornish at my school. sometimes you see it on some signs or on the side of the bus but i havent heard anyone speak it here :(
As a native french speaker, I can confirm, this is literally what I was going to comment lmao. Back when I was a child and didn't speak english yet, this is what music sounded like to me
I have read the comments and what no-one seems to appreciate is that the languages are different but there are elements that I, as a Welshman, can pick up on so that, after a while, I get a good idea of what is being said. I haven’t spoken Welsh since my grandmother died - in the fifties - and I haven’t lived in Wales since 1963 so I can no longer claim to be a fluent Welsh speaker. I know that, when the man with the onions came from Brittany, as he did every year, he and my mother could converse quite happily, each speaking their own language.
American here, it's slightly comforting to know that no matter what language/dialect is spoken, the speech pattern for the news is basically still the same. 😂
As a French person, the Breton clip felt really jarring. It almost sounds like a French person having a stroke or saying incoherent stuff in their sleep. Pretty sure Breton used to sound a lot different before the French educational system tried to kill it.
Yes, Breton used to sound much more like Welsh. But its phonology became French. This is true of modern Cornish and Irish (though not always) as well, in terms of influence from the dominant language, as you can hear a lot of English phonetics. From what you see here in this video, the Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, and Manx examples in the video have retained more of the original Celtic phonology. Irish does too, just not in the news broadcast type of "taught Irish" you typically hear. You have to go to the Gaeltacht to hear more authentic Irish.
I am French and my grandparents spoke Breton and they had many difficulties with French. In the video, it is clear that all celtics are english speaking people, except the Breton woman. She does not "sound" Breton. Yet if you would have heard my grandparents, from what I could remember, you would have immediately recognized they lived in the French side of the sea. Even if they spoke Breton as their native dialect and they did not master French.
Excellent. I think that Manx pronunciation is closer to Scottish Gaelic than Irish. It was great hearing songs in some of the languages, particularly Manx and Cornish. Now you also need to include Jerriais or the Channel Island French, which is close to Norman French and Ch’ti. I’m impressed by your pronunciation of Scottish Gaelic. Doric is worth including too. Most Scots outside the NE find it difficult to understand.
As a Russian native and German, English learnt speaker, I must admit and convey my absolute love for the Welsh language... This tongue sounds so beautiful to me, I could never ever express... I even tried to learn it with BBC helpful tutorials. It's a pity Welsh is so minor speaking language, yet so beautifully sounding ❤ Cymraeg
These languages are so pretty, I’m learning them all - my current levels are... - intermediate level in Old Norse / Icelandic / Welsh - writer level in English + native speaker level in Spanish - upper advanced level in Dutch + advanced level in Norwegian - mid intermediate level in German / Swedish / Portuguese / French / Italian - beginner level in Breton / Hungarian / Gothic / Latin / Faroese / Galician / Danish / Slovene - total beginner in Cornish / Manx / Irish / Scottish Gaelic / Aranese / Elfdalian / Gallo / Limburgish / Occitan / Luxembourgish / Catalan / East Norse / Ripuarian / Swiss German / Alemanic / Austrian German / PlatDeitsch / Greenlandic Norse / Friulian / Pretarolo / Sardinian / Neapolitan / Sicilian / Venetian / Esperanto / Walloon / Ladin / Guernsey / Norn / Burgundian / West Frisian / North Frisian / East Frisian / Yiddish / Afrikaans / Finnish / Latvian / Estonian etc (and the other languages based on Dutch / German / Norwegian / Italian / French that are referred to as ‘dialects’ but are usually a different language with different spelling etc) (I highly recommend learning Welsh / Breton / Irish etc 2gether with Dutch / Icelandic + Norse + Faroese / Norwegian etc as they are so magical, as pretty / refined / poetic as English - all other pretty languages on my list are also gorgeous, so they are all a great option!)
Wow, I love these languages! I am a fluent speaker of Irish, Welsh, & Breton. Greetings from an Albanian person in Vannes, France! 🇦🇱🏴🏴🇮🇲🇮🇪🇨🇵
@@FaithfulOfBrigantia that's actually just an Irish accent. That's how our language sounds. Mind you, I can't understand that woman at all despite being a fluent speaker because she has a thick southern accent.
As an Irish person that had to learn Irish (or Gaeilge) in primary and secondary school, I have found great similarity with written Scots Gaelic...the spoken word harder due to accent and pronunciation I think. However I could never find anything like the same similarity in Welsh. Then I found out that Irish and Scots Gaelic are from the same branch of the Celtic language tree, but Welsh while still a proud and beautiful Celtic language is from a very different branch.
The Cornish speaker doesn't sound like he's very fluent. I expected the Manx would sound more like Irish, but I couldn't follow a word despite being able to speak Irish.
You must remember that Kernewek died out almost completely, with only a handful of people speaking some of the language. Sadly there is no one presently who could claim to be 100% fluent in the language and most probably no one who only speaks Cornish. All speakers would still have to use English on a daily basis to get by. However, the numbers of speakers are rising, and the battle for official status of the language is continuing. Yes the gentleman may not have been very fluent but, when one is struggling with words in a language, it doesn't sound the best. Just listen to Boris Johnson, educated at Eton and a university "graduate". Struggle with his language.
Má d’fholaghaim tú an Caighdeán nó Gaeilge na Mumhan nó Gaelige Conamara b’fhéidir sin cén tuige char thuig tú rud ar bith mar tá Gaelige Mhanann níos cóngaraí le Gaelige Uladh agus Gaeilge na hAlbain, táimse i ndán focail a tuiscint ach níl mé 100% cinnte má tá an gist agam lol sílim cúrsaí tithíochta ach Níl mé cinnte ar chór ar bhith lol
@@grahamnancledra7036 Literally Gwenno is an L1 speaker and 100% fluent I don't really know where you got this from, but there's quite a few people who can speak fluently. Matthi ab Dewi (the person speaking in the video) Is quite a hesitant speaker in both Cornish and English.
If you couldn't understand a word of Manx, then you don't speak Irish. I'd no difficulty with Scots Gaelic or Manx. They are both Irish languages after all.
Reminds me of the situation with the Basque language. It should be completely different from Spanish since it's not even Indo-European (and as far as grammar and vocabulary goes, it is) but it sounds completely Spanish to me (I speak neither Spanish nor Basque).
Well to me irish or cornish sound english. If i don"t pay attention, I would think its english. Dominating language usually have strong influence on dominated languague's phonetics
The french accent is super thick in that lady's breton. I don't speak Breton myself, but even my grandparents, who don't speak Breton as first language, have a lighter french accent when they speaj Breton. If you hear at the radio, it's very different. On the main difference is that the stressing in Breton is on the penultimate syllab while it is on the last syllab in French, and it makes a huge difference when you hear it. Also, there are different dialects of Breton even inside of Brittany, and they don't even have a similar pronunciation of the "R" sound. Some pronounce it like a french "R", the guttural way, and some do it the more usual way, like in other celtic languages. My grandparents do it the french way, but it might also be because they didn't learn it as first tongue, while most Breton singer I listen to tend to "roll" it.
Thats because alot of the fantasy genre was inspired by welsh mythology ,our culture language ect , the story of king arthur and the excalibur sword in the stone is brythonic , he was a Celtic briton (welsh, cornish , breton) and he fought against the Anglo Saxons (english) who were invading from germany 🇩🇪 during the 5th century ,the story of the lord of the rings was also inspired by brythonic mythology King Arthur = king Aragorn Merlin = gandalf Excalibur = anduril Welsh = elvish Lord Leodegrance of Cameliard = lord elrond of rivendell Guinevere = Arwin Mordred = sauron Tolkien studied the Mabinogion, a collection of Celtic myths and Arthurian legends from medieval Welsh manuscripts, and wove some of their themes into his works. In fact, he claimed that The Lord of the Rings was his own translation of the mythical ‘Red Book of Westmarch’ - based on the real-life Red Book of Hergest, one of the oldest and most important Welsh manuscripts Alot of the stuff you see in the witcher comes from welsh mythology too like the lady of the lake , and in the books ciri goes to Arthur's realm at the end and goes to a mountain called snowdon and meets sir Galahad before meeting Arthur , snowdon is a real life location here in wales
@Welsh-Cymru That’s right, The Witcher even used Cymro names for the fort Like Kaer (Caer) Morhen and called their card Game “Gwent” the Kingdom in which King Arthur is said to come from Within Wales. The reason why people aren’t aware that most mythology used comes from Wales is because those people are under the false pretence that Wales is a Part of England. So just assume it’s English, many Americans do the same thing British origin surnames. They automatically think they are English because their Welsh ancestors emigrated from London, Bristol or Liverpool, without realising their ancestors also emigrated to England from Wales.
I heard that Welsh language had VSO structure. So special. Plz make it survive, keep it alive no matter what! English is strawberry juice. And Cornish is also that strawberry but with orange flavor.
We're trying to keep it alive! Difficult but there are still lots of communities where welsh is spoken first language in Wales, and many other parts can speak Welsh but choose not to because most conversations are started in English first.
I was tinkering with the three Celtic languages on Duolingo (Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic), and that was one of the first patterns I noticed. I'm comparing languages from different branches, and that still stood out to me.
My step great grandfather spoke cornish and as a 8/9 yr old found it amusing my father being Irish didn’t speak irish Celtic but now I live in oz i find it fascinating as my two great grandchildren in wales will now learn welsh in school
My theory to why french sounds so different than other romance languages and so similar to breton is that french is basically just a gallic accent of latin when the romans conquered gallia and romanized them. That's why it sounds so similar to breton the only surviving continental celtic language. So basically every french person is just a celt who speaks a former language with an ingrained accent.
Рік тому+1
Hello ! It was my theory as well, until I got to know French (my language) got its modern phonetics from some ways the "Parisian bourgeoisie" had in their speaking, mainly durong the XIXth century : before the end of XVIII century, "r" was rolled ; before XVIIth century, they were diphtongues ("de l'eau" like "de l'owe"), nasal wowel were really nasals, etc. Actually, they can now tell with some certainty how the Gallic population spoke around the VIth century - and it has nothing to do with what sounds "French" now !
Unfortunately the problem with this is that Breton isn't a continental Celtic language. While it's obviously spoken on the mainland European continent, it's a Brythonic language spoken by the descendants of Cornish settlers on the peninsula. The nasalisation in Breton is largely due to French influence on the language. The Frankish were actually Germanic speakers, and France's position and history has seen significant linguistic influence from a whole range of groups that the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese didn't really face. Spanish, Portuguese and some minority languages/dialects of Italy too have seen different external influences (Arabic and semitic languages), and Romanian has exposure to Slavic, Turkic and Uralic languages. Being closely related isn't necessarily indicative of a similar sound inventory - Portuguese is often said to sound close to Russian given the range of sounds used, European Spanish to Greek etc. In fact, Brazilian Portuguese is, soundwise, much closer to French than European Portuguese, even though they're the same language.
Рік тому+1
@@ml07rwh You're 100% right, thank you for this. Merci !
Your theory is shared by no linguist and certainly not by specialists of Gaulish on one side and specialists of the French and Romance languages on the other side. The specificity of French is due to the Germanic influence, not to the Celtic one.
Decided to listen to this without looking, and Scottish Gaelic resembled Dutch a lot to my native English-speaking ears. Breton gave me German vibes even though it logically shouldn't. As someone brought up in Wales I'm so familiar with Welsh that I had zoned out during it and thought the video didn't include it when the video finished.
Cornish and Breton was obviously spoken by a non-fluent Englishman and French speaker, respectively. Irish, Scots and Manx all stem from the same Gaelic branch. Whereas, Welsh, Breton and Cornish share the same Brythonic root. I can speak a bit of Welsh and could pick out pieces of the Cornish. Didn't get anything from the Breton, though.
It's Scottish Gaelic, not 'Scots', which is related to English; Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx are from the Goidelic branch of the Celtic language family.
Nope that's just what breton sounds like. It might sound French to you but it would sound like gibberish as a French speaker probably. And for cornish the english sounding accent is probably because it has been revived
The Cornishman is likely Matthi Ab Dewi, he's fluent billingually. He just speaks slowly to ensure he gets it all correct and that it's easily listenable as it's an radyo and a learning resource.
I primarily float between Classical and Romance languages, but since starting Irish almost a decade ago, I've become more interested in Celtic languages too!
As a Scottish Gaelic speaker, the Manx sounded more familiar sound wise, but I actually understood far more of the Irish. And the Cornish sounded like a badly pronounced version of Gaelic to me lol
The Irish speaker wasn't that great. She speaks very slowly and with a lot more prosody between words than a more natural speaker has, and clearly has a "Dublin Irish" accent (which is to say, learned through school rather than living). Obviously Manx and Scottish Gaelic were quite easy to understand for me too, but the Cornish was like he was reading Irish with no knowledge of how the letters sound!
@@0range2un even though here the reason is probably just virtue signaling, it's not the worst pick for learning a language. Decent amount of native speakers, some literature, and you'll have a significant headstart for Russian, Polish and Belarusian if you ever feel like learning those
Welsh, scottish gaelic and manx are the only ones that seem to me to have been pronounced properly. Maybe it's just because of the guy speaking but scottish gaelic was really relaxing. Manx sounded like a fairy tale being read, also nice (I don't speak any of them, it's just an impression).
If everyone spoke only one language we wouldn’t be able to comprehend how strange we sound from the outside.it makes me wonder what other things are like that, but we just have no idea about it because we all share it, as if we all spoke one language but in a different sense.
I would like the languages to be shown, but not that big so that they cover the words being written in the bottom. It’s fun to look at and see how they write it
Welsh and Manx sound beautiful. Breton sounds like it was infused with French. And at first I thought the Scottish Gaelic guy was speaking English with an insanely thick Scottish accent.
➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ the woman speaking Breton in the video is Goulwena A' Henaff. She is very famous to young breton speakers. I read that many thought she has a strong French accent. I must tell you that for a French speaker, the others have a strong English accent. In my opinion, the most beautiful accents I have heard are those of the Welsh and Manx speakers. I understood some things from the cornish speaker. ✚🤝🏻〓〓 ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖
Unfortunately it's just the truth that modern Breton speakers sound very French and the native accent has been lost. But you're right, the same thing happens with all the other Celtic languages even when there are still pockets of native speakers. The "Cornish" guy particularly had a very obvious southern English accent, basically no attempt at sounding native at all, but since Cornish was literally resurrected there's nobody to use as a reference.
Imagine being a non native English speaker having spent years studying English and become able to speak it fluently, only to take a trip to the British isles and be hit with this.
@@ernestmostly8156 Bretons are Welsh people who migrated to France to escape English rule. Cornish are Welsh people who diverged from Wales in the middle ages and became more Anglicised. Scots are mostly descended from Welsh Picts and Strathclyde Britons who became assimilated into Gàidhlig culture before being Anglicised.
@indeed Ivan, more evidence for that is the major place names in Scotland. They come from Brythonic and the Scoti didn’t change them, which implies the Britons played a major role in Scotland for far longer than academia admits.
As a French speaker from Québec both Breton and Irish (and Cornish) sounded like an English or French speaking a foreign language. The accent was there. But for Welsh it sounded more... Welsh. One point for Welsh! Gaelic was good too but with a bit of a stronger English accent. Manx also deserves a point though!
As a Welsh person the Breton sounds like a French speaker trying to speak Welsh. Having known some French people who have learned our language the Breton sounds like them. Can pick out words in the Breton that are similar or same as Welsh but can't comprehend what is being said.
While there is an easy political definition of what a nation is, culturally and geographically its' much more complex. The bretons of france frequently interacted with the basques of france and spain, who interacted with the celts of galicia(spain). Making a triangle connection. Many of these ancient roots were forgotten somewhat in 19th century romantic nationalism, but before then, europe was essentially a continent of trade routes and fortified cities.
Nationalisme mostly fortified dominant cultures within a country and stamped out any minority they could find, like the Basques, Bretons, Welsh, Irish, etc..
Welsh is quite clearly the only one that is spoken daily by the news anchor. The others obviously can speak their languages fluently, but you can guarantee just by how they're talking they speak English/French as soon as they are off camera.
As an English speaker with only a very beginner French vocabulary, this was the first time hearing Breton and it sounds very very similar to French to me!
As a french speaker, the Breton one was very confusing because it sounded like french but I couldn‘t understand anything. Probably she‘s not a native breton speaker and just has a strong french accent
I must admit I cringed a bit with this Breton speaker. I know it's not her fault and the overwhelming French influence over the language has completely hijacked its original phonetic system, but god damn.... The Welsh and Manx on the other hand sounded the most natural and free from foreign influence, I'm happy to hear that some Celtic languages still resist assimilation!
For me, as a non-Celtic speaker, Irish sounds like English and Breton like French, but with all words made up. Scottish Gaelic has some Scandinavian accent or melody in it. Cornish was spoken by a man whose first language was English and it seemed as if he struggled with speaking Cornish in the first place. Only Welsh and Manx sounded somehow "genuinly" Celtic to me. Imagine Celtic languages were once the most spoken languages in Europe...
With Cornish it's rather understandable though. There are literally zero recordings of native speakers and how they sounded. They basicly had to revive a dead language without almost any reference. The fact that they have gotten as far as they got at the moment is already amazing.
Matthi Ab Dewi is fluent in Cornish, he sorta just speaks like that. It's also an Radyo and a learning resource, so he's speaking conversationally slow deliberately for learners to pick out each word. You can hear him speak in "real time" on Radyo An Gernewegva.
I'm irish and struggle with irish I want to learn it so bad biggest regret was getting a language exemption ill figure out how to remove it or get a tutor in irish
Aye, just about. I'm a Scottish Gaelic learner, not quite intermediate but getting there. When reading Irish I can pick out most of the nouns and verbs, some of the grammar is more difficult. Listening is a strange experience, it feels like I can almost understand it. People who are fluent can have full conversations just speaking their own languages, there's videos of it on UA-cam 👍
@@languagenerd467 Manx is closely related to Irish/Scottish gaelic, it can look different because they use English orthography but it's easy enough to understand
Al tempo dell'antica Roma il latino e la lingua dei Galli erano abbastanza simili (sono due rami indoeuropei vicini, italico e celtico). Nel proto-celtico c'erano parole simili al latino che ancora oggi sono confrontabili con gli equivalenti neolatini. Al giorno d'oggi l'italiano e le lingue celtiche superstiti sono diventate totalmente inintelligibili, non sembrano neanche lontanamente imparentate. Un'evoluzione divergente notevole, non c'è che dire.
Sarebbe interessante fare il confronto tra le lingue celtiche e le lingue regionali del nordovest come il piemontese e il lombardo. Probabilmente qualche somiglianza ancora sarà rimasta.
Quando mi sono trasferito in Italia non sapevo parlare una parola di italiano. Sono rimasto sorpreso da quante parole fossero simili al gallese. Per esempio: ponte=pont, fenestra-ffenestr, libro-llyfr, latte-llaeth, oro-aur, credo-credaf, Deus-Duw ecc. Anche molte parole simili all'inglese. Essendo cresciuto con il gallese e l'inglese, ho pensato che avrei potuto imparare l'italiano velocemente. Non parlo ancora fluentemente. Ma sento di aver avuto un vantaggio grazie al gallese e all'inglese.
Only scottish gaelic, manx, and welsh sounds authentic. without the phonetics of the colonial languages. Seriously breton… no effort by the journalist she is like hon hon hon oui la baguette du fromage hon hon hon
This comparison would have been more authentic if the speakers were having a conversation rather than reading a script. I lived in West Wales and Welsh is commonly spoken on the streets and in shops etc. In Oban, I once heard two old ladies speaking Scottish Gaelic. You can hear the difference between a native speaker and someone who has learnt the language proficiently. I speak French fairly fluently but French speakers know I'm not French.
Welsh and Manx sound like they have the least foreign influence in terms of pronunciation. Other ones are pretty obvious there is English and French influence in their phonology.
All the people saying these languages sound like something else 😂 no your languages sound like theses ones that are older than majority of the spoken languages in Europe Irish is not like Dutch you would say Dutch is like Irish , Irish is the oldest written language on earth it can’t be based off of modern languages
@@gregkerna7410 “Irish is one of the oldest written and historical languages in the world.” Source udaras Sumerian is a dead language not related to any on earth and has no roots in any language on earth it might as well been cave man noises Basque is oldest spoken Irish is oldest written.
@@user-ze8yy8jg1f irish is celtic, celts are from the Iron age (wich started around a thousand years bc) mainly and even then it took quite some time for celts to reach ireland. Sumerian may be dead but it's the oldest written language from the beginning of history (-3000 bc), with the first writings (the epic of gilgamesh) being in this language, it's also far from caveman speech lmao idk where you got that from it's not that bad. Recent studies showed basques had a primitive alphabet.
@@gregkerna7410 what tf does sumarian haft to do with me saying people are comparing our languages to theirs none of them speak sumarian The language didn’t begin in Ireland it comes from Switzerland And read my main comment “modern languages “ You come here with info that is not relevant trying to sound smart. Stick to the subject
as a welsh speaker the irish and cornish stand out to me the most. I have never really hear anyone speak irish so it sound like someone with an irish accent talking gibberish, whereas the cornish one sound very similar to when my friends and family completly butcher the pronounciation of welsh words and put 0 accent on lol.
That's because Cornish is a revived language that went extinct a few hundred years ago and modern speakers refuse to trill their r's like their Manx, Scottish and Welsh cousins. If you want to hear what the language is supposed to sound like, look up the song "Gwrello Glaw" by the band "The Changing Room." It sounds so much more proper when they speak it.
Loves this vid. Never heard any of these spoken before. Must admit.. the Scottish Gaelic part looks dubbed . maybe the video is choppy in relation to the sound of the language spoken, so it doesn't look like his mouth id producing those sounds.
All sound way off and too "englished" (or "Frenched" in the case of Breton) except Welsh and Manx. Second-language speakers of these languages should stop polluting these beautiful Celtic languages with their English/French phonetics. Then it sounds like english or french gibberish and not like Celtic language.
That’s what happens when a language is strangled to near extinction, the majority of speakers are non-native, and it’s going to effect pronunciation. The last thing we need is to gate keep the languages with creepy purity bollocks, just people speaking them.
The Scottish Gaelic example seemed strange to me. It seemed as if it was being spoken but with quite a posh English inflection. When I've looked at Scottish Gaelic during times of lazy study, I've found that to read it, you would need to be able to read in a Scottish accent (or so I thought), but this seems to suggest that it can be spoken without a Scottish accent. Seeing Breton in this regard was fascinating as it is obviously closer to any of the other Gaelic languages, yet the accent was undoubtably the accent of a French speaker. Really cool vid anyway!
Why would the presenter be speaking Scottish Gaelic in a none Gaelic area Fairly obvious he is in a Scottish Gaelic region Example il live in Glasgow the news is in English Do you get the point ?
@@nomad4ilm822 Well we are all related if you go back far enough, but the 2 groups are not. Our languages are not mutually intelligble at all. There is a possibility the Swiss and Germans have Continental Celt blood but West Celts (Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons) have zero relation to the Germanic people
The Irish speaker has a very mild accent, with no noticeable dialect features. She does not give full "weight" to the sounds in Irish that are different to English, using their Hiberno-English equivalents instead. I expect that is intentional, to make it easier for L1 English, L2 Irish speakers to understand her. Perhaps the other speakers do this (accommodation to their L2 speakers) as well. I understood the gist of the Scots Gaelic report. Manx had sounds like Irish but was more difficult to understand. Welsh sounds distinctive and the accent is easy on the ear. The sounds of the words are familiar (Celtic?) but, like Cornish and Breton, I did not understand what was being said.
I am Polish and all celtic languages sounds for me similar to scandinavian germanic, just breton, she sounded absolutely french like she wasn't native speaker
I think the reason Welsh sounds the coolest here is because it's spoken by someone who's fluent in it. Wales has done a good job in preserving their language (~1/3 of Wales speaks Welsh) whilst the other Celtic languages have been poorly preserved, and there are only a handful of people left who speak Cornish fluently.
It sounds like Hebrew too me, my opinion is that Celtic isn't European at all, it came from Middle East and Historians have manipated and fabricated evidence into be European instead, If u speak some types of Hebrew like Classic, u can understand both languages even if both languages are different Celtic languages had more connections to Hebrew than other European languages, VSO is biggest example, European languages don't have this Hebrew has VSO and so does all other types, Ancient Coelbren is Ancient Welsh that has actually been found in Egyptian tombs
@@Ha-young_is_Just_Too_Fine What connection do they have with Hebrew? I speak Irish. Hebrew and Irish are very very different. Irish is an Indo-European language, whereas Hebrew is a Semitic language.
Fascinating as my mother was Irish and we lived in Wales so some bits were familiar. However, how come the Cornish sounded like no Cornish accent I've ever heard. It sounded like an English guy very much from elsewhere attempting to speak Cornish 🤔 Breton just sounded French to me, I wouldn't have realised it wasn't French for some time I would think. 😊
Nah he's deffo Cornish, all be it with a softer accent. You can tell when he says his Rs and some of his vowels are more rounded, like the oo sound, whilst others are pretty harsh, like the aa sound.
I think it's the R sound. Unlike in other British accents where the R is said at the front of the mouth, Cornish has a the weird bunched R where the tongue is further towards the back. It's also because the softer vowel sounds you normally associate with English accents aren't present. For example, the longer "Aa" sound said in words like "bath" or "grass" is substituted for the shorter and quick "a" sound.
I read many wrong statements about the Breton language in the comments from English-speaking persons, and even French people, so here's some elements I bring to your reflexion : 1) The Breton lady is Goulwena an Henaff. She was born in Lokorn, Bro-Gerne (Breton Cornwall, one of the regions of Brittany). She is a Breton-speaking-born TV presenter. 2) She speaks Breton with a good Breton accent, she doesn't have a French accent especially. 3) I see 2 reasons why so many commentators say she has a strong French accent. Firts many English-speaking commentators think they hear a French accent because they are used to hear the Celtic languages of the British Isles, which are often spoken with an ENGLISH accent, something they got so used to they don't notice it anymore. Secondly : Goulwena an Henaff pronounces some people's names distinctively the French way, because their names are French. That brings certainely a French colour to her Breton for many English-speaking not-used-to-hear-French commentators's ears. 4) The Breton pronounciation has been influenced by French in the last two centuries at the least, it's true, but like the Cornish and Welsh by English... Among the 4 main dialects of Breton, the stress is on the second to last syllabus for 3 of them, only the Breton of bro-Gwened is stressed on the last syllabus like French, the sound of Gwened Breton is closer to French than the other three. Goulwena an Henaff stresses on the second to last syllabus (she's from Kerne). 5) The Breton spoken today is too much influenced by French, it's true. The level of knowledge is generally low. The political pressure of Paris against the Breton revival is strong. People have to struggle everyday to speak their own language. France defends cultural and linguistic diversity in the world except in Brittany, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Corsica, Alsace, Savoy, Provence, the Flanders, Lorraine, Occitania, Normandy and the Nice region, not to mention its overseas colonies in America, Africa and the Pacific region.
As a Cornish person from Penzance I speak English but know a few Cornish words that are passed down. I can’t really understand what the Breton lady is saying but the speech pattern and how she pronounces words with the emphasis on the later syllables of a word sounds familiar to how my family speak English
The Welsh part is funny to me because the news anchor is speaking about how a man has killed his friend in cold blood in order to cover up an affair that he was having an affair with the friend's wife. And in court he pleaded that he had followed the plan of someone called Manon to kill the friend. What a weird report to choose in order to showcase the different languages
🤣🤣
doesn’t she say manwl and not Manon lol?
@@ejones8360 Yep, she said that he followed a detailed plan to kill him, nobody named manon is mentioned.
@@ahuman9940 oni’n meddwl lol
Made me chuckle too
My mother was an Irish speaker from Connemara. When I took her on holiday to the north of Scotland we met a Scottish couple who spoke Gaelic. They chatted away with little problem in understanding the other's Celtic tongue.
how long ago?
That’s really cool. I’m a Texan. I went to Italy and couldn’t speak Italian, but I can speak some Spanish. I chatted to a really sweet man one night who helped lift my spirits when I was home sick.
@@Killybillee About 1982 or so. I should point out the Scots were an elderly couple.
I think that because both Irish and Scottish belong the Goidelic branch of Celtic. Welsh meanwhile belong to the Brythonic branch together with Cornish and Breton :)
A good friend of mine spoke fluent Scottish Gaelic and I’m Irish. We sometimes spoke to each other in our languages and noticed some similarities
Of them all the Welsh lady sounded most as if she used the language all the time and wasn't just putting it on for the telly.
It was relaxed and natural sounding.
i dont know manx but that sounded pretty natural compared to the others too
Welsh person here and while I don’t mean to put down the other Celtic languages as they’re all still very much alive, Wales is the only one that you could say is thriving still. Welsh is a very popular first language in Wales and most people can at least speak enough to hold a conversation. There were a lot of efforts in history to fight back against English oppression of Wales’ culture and language that have carried over to today so it’s become a language that refuses to die.
Cymraeg is a lived language and a world case study as how to revive an indigineous language. There are over 850,000 who can speak and understand it [working on getting that number past 1million by 2050] in Cymru [Wales] alone, where as of 2020 every school child will be taught Cymraeg as a first language alongside English, and anyone with a child in early education or anyone under the age of 26 has access to free lessons in Cymraeg - as well as having hundreds upon thousands of people learning online/via apps. Where, it shouldn't really be a shock to understand that: people from Wales speak Welsh - not everyone can, but close to 1/3 of our populous are able to [and all of us when singing our national anthem].
Come and visit and see for yourself! Our language is upon all our road signs, but to hear more Cymraeg - go to the North [the highest density of Welsh speakers], but you will be able to hear it spoken and used amongst the South [the highest population of Welsh speakers]. Cariad fawr o Gymru - much love from Wales x
Just what I noticed too.
The Cornish sounded like he was violently struggling to speak in the language and his accent most certainly did not seem Cornish at all 🤷♀️
Breton sounds like a French person reading Welsh using French phonetics
Thats because the Bretons are descended from the ancient Britons, as are the Welsh and Cornish.
And Irish sounds like an American person using American English phonetics
Oui
I'm pretty sure that the presenter is speaking Breton with a heavy non-native (French) accent. Actually, except for the Welsh presenter, they're all second-language speakers. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
@@gwenn145 that's exactly what I wrote previously. I m French myself and I ve been to Bretagne and this woman is definitely a non native speaker . She sounds like me trying to speak Breton 😊. Ive heard older people speak Breton, and it didn't sound THAT FRENCH . People need to understand that the French government did everything to forbid people to speak what we call the regional languages of France in order to have a unique national language. So new generations are all native French speakers ( some of them learn Breton at school now as a second language but they don't use it as often as French)
I think the one speaking Breton has a very strong French accent. I am French and even though I don't understand her, I can tell that French is her first language. Maybe an older Breton would sound different
Really. I have recently heard to breton radio. Breton language on the radio sounds without strong french accent.
Certainly, not maybe. I have them around me and they don't sound French at all. Native versus second, that's key
Breton is native to France originally, so that makes sense.
As a Cornishman, I ac understand her.
@@banab6829 we arrived between the 4th and 7th centuries
Scottish Gaelic and Irish are mutual intelligible to a decent level. But then, it depends: a Scottish Gaelic speaker would generally communicate easier with an Irish speaker from the north (County Donegal or Northern Ireland) and would struggle a bit more with someone from County Kerry.
Let’s be honest, everyone struggles to understand people from Kerry.
@@lovelandfrog5692 regardless of English or Gaelic being uttered...
Makes sense. Historically I understand towards the end of Roman rule in Britain, what is now Western Scotland was invaded by Celtic tribes from Northern Ireland, pushing the Picts Eastward and bringing Gaelic to Scotland. It makes absolute sense that there would be greater similarity between Scots Gaelic and Ulster Irish, rather than Munster Irish.
@@joemulhall5202 There was also a large migration from Scotland into Ireland at one point, might've been after the Expulsion of the Crofters.
@Meme Master For sure, but I think the original source was Ireland 2000 years ago or so, then Scots Gaelic came back to NI with the Ulster Plantation in late Tudor times.
It’s very heartening to see Celtic languages on TV and radio. It’s good to see these languages being kept alive.
No one speaks them as a first language. I think
@@henrineumann literally 10s of thousands speak Welsh as a first language and 1000s speak the others aside from Cornish and Manx please don’t speak on things you obviously don’t know anything about
@@columnhi3352 sorry I was talking about irish. No one speaks that or scottish as a first language. Show me the source on that, most people learn it ws a second language.
@@henrineumann an estimated 170,000 people speak Irish or Scots Gaelic as a first language, the majority living in Gaeltacht zones
@@Scuttlerofwhimsey yeah I don't get your point.
The guy speaking Manx seems like he’s reading a story to a child, it is very calming. It’s a striking difference from the tone of the others!
I felt the same way! He has a great storyteller voice.
I agree as well. Hope he has a voice training course. I would enroll in it.
I missed out on schooling in Cornwall introducing optional Cornish lessons, left a couple years before they introduced them. Tried to learn it myself while doing my undergraduate degree at a Welsh uni and it was pretty fun but also difficult. Wrote all my xmas cards in Cornish one year and it was funny to see them all try to pronounce the words!
Yeah, lived in Cornwall/Devon my whole life and it isn’t as much of a dead language as many make it out to be, with some of my local shops ect having signs and people speaking in Cornish but more generally the older generations :)
@@Megs.. i live down cornwall as well, and i dont think its as dead as people think iver . just go to a family run farm, or a hidden away pub. i can understand cornish but not that good at speeking it.
the Cornish speaker here sounded very insecure, didn't he.
@@helenswan705 Because even those who speak it don't have nearly as much opportunity to use it on a daily basis. The language actually died out and had to be rebuilt with no living speakers left.
growing up in cornwall, i really wish they would teach us cornish at my school. sometimes you see it on some signs or on the side of the bus but i havent heard anyone speak it here :(
May these deeply fascinating and beautiful languages never die
cornish is already technically extinct. whoever was speaking it clearly wasnt a native speaker. All native speakers are dead
🙏🏻
Anything that's not used enough, inevitably dies
Gaelic and Welsh still remain with British television as well.
Celts:
*speak their languages*
English, french and romans:
*SO YOU HAVE CHOSEN OPPRESSION*
Piper down!
Literally
Saxons also.
Nah romans did not committed any genocide against celts. Bri ' ish did.
@@suozzierislegend5298 hundreds of thousands of celts were slaughtered by the romans.
Welsh sounds so poetic, just rolls off the tongue.
She's talking about a murder!
I love that part!!! So interesting!!
Diolch! Mae rhaid i chi dysgu Cymraeg!
No wonder Tolkien borrowed Welsh phonology while creating his elvish language.
@@catrinmari3117 so poetic
as an English speaker, Irish sounds like what I imagine English sounds like to non-English speakers…
I just showed Irish to my parents,they dont speak english but they did thought it was english lol
as an irish speaker, irish sounds like irish
As a native french speaker, I can confirm, this is literally what I was going to comment lmao. Back when I was a child and didn't speak english yet, this is what music sounded like to me
@@guilhermejrmarin damn I just did the exact same and thought I was the first to do it lol
True. lol.
I have read the comments and what no-one seems to appreciate is that the languages are different but there are elements that I, as a Welshman, can pick up on so that, after a while, I get a good idea of what is being said. I haven’t spoken Welsh since my grandmother died - in the fifties - and I haven’t lived in Wales since 1963 so I can no longer claim to be a fluent Welsh speaker.
I know that, when the man with the onions came from Brittany, as he did every year, he and my mother could converse quite happily, each speaking their own language.
American here, it's slightly comforting to know that no matter what language/dialect is spoken, the speech pattern for the news is basically still the same. 😂
Yes is Universal mode/pattern Speech
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Irish
0:40 Welsh
1:06 Breton
1:27 Scottish Gaelic
2:00 Cornish
2:29 Manx
As a French person, the Breton clip felt really jarring. It almost sounds like a French person having a stroke or saying incoherent stuff in their sleep. Pretty sure Breton used to sound a lot different before the French educational system tried to kill it.
Yes, Breton used to sound much more like Welsh. But its phonology became French. This is true of modern Cornish and Irish (though not always) as well, in terms of influence from the dominant language, as you can hear a lot of English phonetics. From what you see here in this video, the Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, and Manx examples in the video have retained more of the original Celtic phonology. Irish does too, just not in the news broadcast type of "taught Irish" you typically hear. You have to go to the Gaeltacht to hear more authentic Irish.
To me it sounds just like french, i could never tell.
I am French and my grandparents spoke Breton and they had many difficulties with French.
In the video, it is clear that all celtics are english speaking people, except the Breton woman. She does not "sound" Breton. Yet if you would have heard my grandparents, from what I could remember, you would have immediately recognized they lived in the French side of the sea. Even if they spoke Breton as their native dialect and they did not master French.
@@arnobozo9722lol it sounds french!
Mec tu remarques pas l'accent sur l'avant dernière syllabe ??? tu sais que le breton est lié au français depuis plus de 1000 ans ?
tysm for including cornish, its usually ignored but it still exists
Excellent. I think that Manx pronunciation is closer to Scottish Gaelic than Irish. It was great hearing songs in some of the languages, particularly Manx and Cornish. Now you also need to include Jerriais or the Channel Island French, which is close to Norman French and Ch’ti. I’m impressed by your pronunciation of Scottish Gaelic. Doric is worth including too. Most Scots outside the NE find it difficult to understand.
That's because the Irish speaker wasn't speaker with proper inflection. She was speaking with a fair amount of English pronunciation..
yeah the irish media has a bad habit of taking the wrong people to represent the language.
The Irish speaker is from the Kerry Gaeltacht and is a native speaker
They're less people than a medium sized town.
@@patrickdestaic Example of linguistics erosion, even Irish native speakers start to sound English when they are encircled by English speakers.
As a Russian native and German, English learnt speaker, I must admit and convey my absolute love for the Welsh language... This tongue sounds so beautiful to me, I could never ever express... I even tried to learn it with BBC helpful tutorials. It's a pity Welsh is so minor speaking language, yet so beautifully sounding ❤ Cymraeg
As a Czech I find it extremely beautiful too
I’m Slavic, are these languages mutually intelligible with German?
As an outsider, they sound quite similar to German
@@BudgetGainsByJJ Welsh is not intelligible with any Germanic language.
they aren't, they are very distinct from eachother, but they are more closely related to eachother than they are to slavic languages@@BudgetGainsByJJ
These languages are so pretty, I’m learning them all - my current levels are...
- intermediate level in Old Norse / Icelandic / Welsh
- writer level in English + native speaker level in Spanish
- upper advanced level in Dutch + advanced level in Norwegian
- mid intermediate level in German / Swedish / Portuguese / French / Italian
- beginner level in Breton / Hungarian / Gothic / Latin / Faroese / Galician / Danish / Slovene
- total beginner in Cornish / Manx / Irish / Scottish Gaelic / Aranese / Elfdalian / Gallo / Limburgish / Occitan / Luxembourgish / Catalan / East Norse / Ripuarian / Swiss German / Alemanic / Austrian German / PlatDeitsch / Greenlandic Norse / Friulian / Pretarolo / Sardinian / Neapolitan / Sicilian / Venetian / Esperanto / Walloon / Ladin / Guernsey / Norn / Burgundian / West Frisian / North Frisian / East Frisian / Yiddish / Afrikaans / Finnish / Latvian / Estonian etc (and the other languages based on Dutch / German / Norwegian / Italian / French that are referred to as ‘dialects’ but are usually a different language with different spelling etc)
(I highly recommend learning Welsh / Breton / Irish etc 2gether with Dutch / Icelandic + Norse + Faroese / Norwegian etc as they are so magical, as pretty / refined / poetic as English - all other pretty languages on my list are also gorgeous, so they are all a great option!)
There's something very mysterious and attractive about the Welch language.
It was heavily influenced by poets, which makes it sound glorious but also an absolute bitch to write correctly
Welsh sounds beautiful and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so from what I'm seeing in the comments
Thanks, glad you like our language, Diolch. 🏴
@@emmahowells8334nad yw i'n hôff or Gymraeg ...
Wow, I love these languages!
I am a fluent speaker of Irish, Welsh, & Breton.
Greetings from an Albanian person in Vannes, France! 🇦🇱🏴🏴🇮🇲🇮🇪🇨🇵
Damn an Albanian of all people speaking Celtic languages. Nice.
good for you i guess
@@pawelzawrotniak3826 yes good for him
dia duit!
@@robloccnmeme969 Dia duit conas ata tu?
Interesting how Manx Gaelic and Welsh sound the most natural (without English/French accent)
Yeah, the English accent in Irish and the French in Breton are really audible.
@@FaithfulOfBrigantia that's actually just an Irish accent. That's how our language sounds. Mind you, I can't understand that woman at all despite being a fluent speaker because she has a thick southern accent.
@@MWBlueNoodles Grim
As an Irish person that had to learn Irish (or Gaeilge) in primary and secondary school, I have found great similarity with written Scots Gaelic...the spoken word harder due to accent and pronunciation I think. However I could never find anything like the same similarity in Welsh. Then I found out that Irish and Scots Gaelic are from the same branch of the Celtic language tree, but Welsh while still a proud and beautiful Celtic language is from a very different branch.
Yeah, Welsh and Cornish are close, although the Cornish didn't go crazy when deciding what letters to use 😀
Diolch yn fawr i chi
Yes because Scots were an Irish tribe from northern Ireland that moved to Scotland.
@@globally123Tá tú an failte romhat a chara!
The Cornish speaker doesn't sound like he's very fluent.
I expected the Manx would sound more like Irish, but I couldn't follow a word despite being able to speak Irish.
You must remember that Kernewek died out almost completely, with only a handful of people speaking some of the language. Sadly there is no one presently who could claim to be 100% fluent in the language and most probably no one who only speaks Cornish. All speakers would still have to use English on a daily basis to get by. However, the numbers of speakers are rising, and the battle for official status of the language is continuing. Yes the gentleman may not have been very fluent but, when one is struggling with words in a language, it doesn't sound the best. Just listen to Boris Johnson, educated at Eton and a university "graduate". Struggle with his language.
Má d’fholaghaim tú an Caighdeán nó Gaeilge na Mumhan nó Gaelige Conamara b’fhéidir sin cén tuige char thuig tú rud ar bith mar tá Gaelige Mhanann níos cóngaraí le Gaelige Uladh agus Gaeilge na hAlbain, táimse i ndán focail a tuiscint ach níl mé 100% cinnte má tá an gist agam lol sílim cúrsaí tithíochta ach Níl mé cinnte ar chór ar bhith lol
I picked out Slanriu at the end of the Manx at the end meaning goodbye or see you again?
@@grahamnancledra7036 Literally Gwenno is an L1 speaker and 100% fluent I don't really know where you got this from, but there's quite a few people who can speak fluently. Matthi ab Dewi (the person speaking in the video) Is quite a hesitant speaker in both Cornish and English.
If you couldn't understand a word of Manx, then you don't speak Irish. I'd no difficulty with Scots Gaelic or Manx. They are both Irish languages after all.
0:14 Don't tell me you don't hear a Sim line here!!
Breton sounds like French to someone who doesn’t speak French. It’s like I know I’m hearing French, but I don’t understand a word!
Reminds me of the situation with the Basque language. It should be completely different from Spanish since it's not even Indo-European (and as far as grammar and vocabulary goes, it is) but it sounds completely Spanish to me (I speak neither Spanish nor Basque).
Not related to French at all. It comes from Welsh. But split off and developed differently during the so called Dark ages.
As a Swede, I agree both on Breton sounding French and Basque sounding Spanish. Sprachbund?
@@Arissef It doesn't sound like Spanish for native speakers
Well to me irish or cornish sound english. If i don"t pay attention, I would think its english. Dominating language usually have strong influence on dominated languague's phonetics
As a french speaker, Breton sounds like what I imagine french sounds like to non-french speakers…
Tu trolles non ? (j'ai un doute sur ton sérieux ou non haha)
i think that's just because she's speaking Breton with a heavy French accent
@@Ash-vt5cp i believe it is
@@osyre5336 que cette vidéo en particulier à cause de son très grand accent français
@@osyre5336 as someone learning french, yeah it does sound like french
Welsh sounds like music -- the others I can't get a word, but the Welsh is so lovely, especially considering what she was talking about!
The french accent is super thick in that lady's breton. I don't speak Breton myself, but even my grandparents, who don't speak Breton as first language, have a lighter french accent when they speaj Breton. If you hear at the radio, it's very different. On the main difference is that the stressing in Breton is on the penultimate syllab while it is on the last syllab in French, and it makes a huge difference when you hear it.
Also, there are different dialects of Breton even inside of Brittany, and they don't even have a similar pronunciation of the "R" sound. Some pronounce it like a french "R", the guttural way, and some do it the more usual way, like in other celtic languages. My grandparents do it the french way, but it might also be because they didn't learn it as first tongue, while most Breton singer I listen to tend to "roll" it.
As a Welsh speaker, Breton sounds like Welsh with a French accent,while Cornish sounds like Welsh with a west country English accent!
As a Cornish person who speaks English, the guy speaking Cornish sounds like a bloke from Penzance after 15 pints
Welsh sounds like the ultimate invented language for any RPG setting.
funny you should say that - it's what Tolkien based Elvish from
@@Ash-vt5cp Elvish is actually mostly based on Finnish.
@@artistsanomalous7369 Quenyan is Finnish.
Sindarin was Welsh.
Or backyards I dunno if I got the two elvish reversed
Thats because alot of the fantasy genre was inspired by welsh mythology ,our culture language ect , the story of king arthur and the excalibur sword in the stone is brythonic , he was a Celtic briton (welsh, cornish , breton) and he fought against the Anglo Saxons (english) who were invading from germany 🇩🇪 during the 5th century ,the story of the lord of the rings was also inspired by brythonic mythology
King Arthur = king Aragorn
Merlin = gandalf
Excalibur = anduril
Welsh = elvish
Lord Leodegrance of Cameliard = lord elrond of rivendell
Guinevere = Arwin
Mordred = sauron
Tolkien studied the Mabinogion, a collection of Celtic myths and Arthurian legends from medieval Welsh manuscripts, and wove some of their themes into his works. In fact, he claimed that The Lord of the Rings was his own translation of the mythical ‘Red Book of Westmarch’ - based on the real-life Red Book of Hergest, one of the oldest and most important Welsh manuscripts
Alot of the stuff you see in the witcher comes from welsh mythology too like the lady of the lake , and in the books ciri goes to Arthur's realm at the end and goes to a mountain called snowdon and meets sir Galahad before meeting Arthur , snowdon is a real life location here in wales
@Welsh-Cymru That’s right, The Witcher even used Cymro names for the fort Like Kaer (Caer) Morhen and called their card Game “Gwent” the Kingdom in which King Arthur is said to come from Within Wales. The reason why people aren’t aware that most mythology used comes from Wales is because those people are under the false pretence that Wales is a Part of England. So just assume it’s English, many Americans do the same thing British origin surnames. They automatically think they are English because their Welsh ancestors emigrated from London, Bristol or Liverpool, without realising their ancestors also emigrated to England from Wales.
I like Welsh. Both here and the accent when they speak English. Sounds nice to my ears.
This is true 👍
I heard that Welsh language had VSO structure. So special. Plz make it survive, keep it alive no matter what!
English is strawberry juice. And Cornish is also that strawberry but with orange flavor.
So does Irish ☘️
All Celtic languages have VSO.
@@Ψυχήμίασμα Does Breton too?
We're trying to keep it alive! Difficult but there are still lots of communities where welsh is spoken first language in Wales, and many other parts can speak Welsh but choose not to because most conversations are started in English first.
I was tinkering with the three Celtic languages on Duolingo (Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic), and that was one of the first patterns I noticed. I'm comparing languages from different branches, and that still stood out to me.
Tolkien definitely took inspiration from the Welsh when making his elf languages
I think he used Irish too
@@kcurran9913 I think it was mainly welsh and Finnish
@@barn4930 I heard a rumour about the character Gollum being named after Pollnagollum in Clare. So he might have taken some inspiration from Ireland.
i mean tolkien got his inspiration from insular celtic cultures and old anglo saxon cultures
Welsh, Old Norse and Suomi (Finnish). This he has said himself.
My step great grandfather spoke cornish and as a 8/9 yr old found it amusing my father being Irish didn’t speak irish Celtic but now I live in oz i find it fascinating as my two great grandchildren in wales will now learn welsh in school
My theory to why french sounds so different than other romance languages and so similar to breton is that french is basically just a gallic accent of latin when the romans conquered gallia and romanized them. That's why it sounds so similar to breton the only surviving continental celtic language. So basically every french person is just a celt who speaks a former language with an ingrained accent.
Hello ! It was my theory as well, until I got to know French (my language) got its modern phonetics from some ways the "Parisian bourgeoisie" had in their speaking, mainly durong the XIXth century : before the end of XVIII century, "r" was rolled ; before XVIIth century, they were diphtongues ("de l'eau" like "de l'owe"), nasal wowel were really nasals, etc.
Actually, they can now tell with some certainty how the Gallic population spoke around the VIth century - and it has nothing to do with what sounds "French" now !
Unfortunately the problem with this is that Breton isn't a continental Celtic language. While it's obviously spoken on the mainland European continent, it's a Brythonic language spoken by the descendants of Cornish settlers on the peninsula. The nasalisation in Breton is largely due to French influence on the language.
The Frankish were actually Germanic speakers, and France's position and history has seen significant linguistic influence from a whole range of groups that the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese didn't really face. Spanish, Portuguese and some minority languages/dialects of Italy too have seen different external influences (Arabic and semitic languages), and Romanian has exposure to Slavic, Turkic and Uralic languages.
Being closely related isn't necessarily indicative of a similar sound inventory - Portuguese is often said to sound close to Russian given the range of sounds used, European Spanish to Greek etc. In fact, Brazilian Portuguese is, soundwise, much closer to French than European Portuguese, even though they're the same language.
@@ml07rwh You're 100% right, thank you for this. Merci !
Your theory is shared by no linguist and certainly not by specialists of Gaulish on one side and specialists of the French and Romance languages on the other side. The specificity of French is due to the Germanic influence, not to the Celtic one.
This really reminds you that language is part of culture.
Decided to listen to this without looking, and Scottish Gaelic resembled Dutch a lot to my native English-speaking ears. Breton gave me German vibes even though it logically shouldn't. As someone brought up in Wales I'm so familiar with Welsh that I had zoned out during it and thought the video didn't include it when the video finished.
Cornish and Breton was obviously spoken by a non-fluent Englishman and French speaker, respectively.
Irish, Scots and Manx all stem from the same Gaelic branch. Whereas, Welsh, Breton and Cornish share the same Brythonic root.
I can speak a bit of Welsh and could pick out pieces of the Cornish. Didn't get anything from the Breton, though.
It's Scottish Gaelic, not 'Scots', which is related to English; Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx are from the Goidelic branch of the Celtic language family.
Nope that's just what breton sounds like. It might sound French to you but it would sound like gibberish as a French speaker probably. And for cornish the english sounding accent is probably because it has been revived
@@kmfw72 Yup, Scots is a Germanic language
And also pretty sure the "r" in Irish is supposed to be pronounced as a trill/tap, not as an approximant
The Cornishman is likely Matthi Ab Dewi, he's fluent billingually. He just speaks slowly to ensure he gets it all correct and that it's easily listenable as it's an radyo and a learning resource.
I primarily float between Classical and Romance languages, but since starting Irish almost a decade ago, I've become more interested in Celtic languages too!
Yay!!
As a Scottish Gaelic speaker, the Manx sounded more familiar sound wise, but I actually understood far more of the Irish. And the Cornish sounded like a badly pronounced version of Gaelic to me lol
Same I'm irish and I can understand Scottish perfect Welsh just bits I can recognise
The Irish speaker wasn't that great. She speaks very slowly and with a lot more prosody between words than a more natural speaker has, and clearly has a "Dublin Irish" accent (which is to say, learned through school rather than living). Obviously Manx and Scottish Gaelic were quite easy to understand for me too, but the Cornish was like he was reading Irish with no knowledge of how the letters sound!
I hope to learn Welsh when I get time in between Ukrainian and Spanish. I want to re-connect with my Welsh heritage :)
What's sense to learn ukrainian? 😮
@@0range2un even though here the reason is probably just virtue signaling, it's not the worst pick for learning a language. Decent amount of native speakers, some literature, and you'll have a significant headstart for Russian, Polish and Belarusian if you ever feel like learning those
Nice!
@@0range2unwhat sense in learning languages ?
The Welsh example is so dark 😂
Welsh, scottish gaelic and manx are the only ones that seem to me to have been pronounced properly. Maybe it's just because of the guy speaking but scottish gaelic was really relaxing. Manx sounded like a fairy tale being read, also nice (I don't speak any of them, it's just an impression).
If everyone spoke only one language we wouldn’t be able to comprehend how strange we sound from the outside.it makes me wonder what other things are like that, but we just have no idea about it because we all share it, as if we all spoke one language but in a different sense.
Recently I started learning Irish💚 Also, I like the sound of Welsh and Manx so much🤩
Somehow I feel like only the Scottish Gaelic, the Welsh and the Manx examples were authentic and spoken without an accent!
I would like the languages to be shown, but not that big so that they cover the words being written in the bottom. It’s fun to look at and see how they write it
Celtic languages sound mysterious and beautifull!
Welsh and Manx sound beautiful. Breton sounds like it was infused with French. And at first I thought the Scottish Gaelic guy was speaking English with an insanely thick Scottish accent.
Gura mie ayd 😊
➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖
the woman speaking Breton in the video is Goulwena A' Henaff. She is very famous to young breton speakers.
I read that many thought she has a strong French accent. I must tell you that for a French speaker, the others have a strong English accent.
In my opinion, the most beautiful accents I have heard are those of the Welsh and Manx speakers.
I understood some things from the cornish speaker. ✚🤝🏻〓〓
➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖ ➤❖
Unfortunately it's just the truth that modern Breton speakers sound very French and the native accent has been lost. But you're right, the same thing happens with all the other Celtic languages even when there are still pockets of native speakers. The "Cornish" guy particularly had a very obvious southern English accent, basically no attempt at sounding native at all, but since Cornish was literally resurrected there's nobody to use as a reference.
Could anyone please tell me the name of the irish channel
Imagine being a non native English speaker having spent years studying English and become able to speak it fluently, only to take a trip to the British isles and be hit with this.
Welsh is in reality, the British language! As Wales is the only country founded by thee British.
@@ernestmostly8156 Bretons are Welsh people who migrated to France to escape English rule. Cornish are Welsh people who diverged from Wales in the middle ages and became more Anglicised. Scots are mostly descended from Welsh Picts and Strathclyde Britons who became assimilated into Gàidhlig culture before being Anglicised.
@@ivandinsmore6217 A fair share of Highlanders have Irish ancestry too though.
@indeed Ivan, more evidence for that is the major place names in Scotland. They come from Brythonic and the Scoti didn’t change them, which implies the Britons played a major role in Scotland for far longer than academia admits.
You mean being hit by the native languages?
As a French speaker from Québec both Breton and Irish (and Cornish) sounded like an English or French speaking a foreign language. The accent was there. But for Welsh it sounded more... Welsh. One point for Welsh! Gaelic was good too but with a bit of a stronger English accent. Manx also deserves a point though!
I agree with you!
As an Italian, Breton sounds like a French person trying speaking English
As a Welsh person the Breton sounds like a French speaker trying to speak Welsh. Having known some French people who have learned our language the Breton sounds like them. Can pick out words in the Breton that are similar or same as Welsh but can't comprehend what is being said.
While there is an easy political definition of what a nation is, culturally and geographically its' much more complex. The bretons of france frequently interacted with the basques of france and spain, who interacted with the celts of galicia(spain). Making a triangle connection. Many of these ancient roots were forgotten somewhat in 19th century romantic nationalism, but before then, europe was essentially a continent of trade routes and fortified cities.
Nationalisme mostly fortified dominant cultures within a country and stamped out any minority they could find, like the Basques, Bretons, Welsh, Irish, etc..
For some reason the languages sounded similar to English or French for Breton, Welsh was the only one to sound like a totally different language.
Welsh is quite clearly the only one that is spoken daily by the news anchor. The others obviously can speak their languages fluently, but you can guarantee just by how they're talking they speak English/French as soon as they are off camera.
No mate the Celtic speaking peoples I each region speak their own language
The Scottish Gaelic sounded much softer than I expected it to be, but that and the Manx sounded the most natural, conversational wise.
As an English speaker with only a very beginner French vocabulary, this was the first time hearing Breton and it sounds very very similar to French to me!
As a french speaker, the Breton one was very confusing because it sounded like french but I couldn‘t understand anything. Probably she‘s not a native breton speaker and just has a strong french accent
maybe in phonetics but the vocabulary is still very different, especially names they work differently.
Non-welsh speakers watching this video: wow, that's a really interesting sounding language.
Welsh speakers: jesus Christ that's messed up
Being an Irish person (who can speak Irish!) This was really interesting! Go raibh maith agat! :-)
I honestly did not know these languages are still so alive to have their own news channels.
I must admit I cringed a bit with this Breton speaker. I know it's not her fault and the overwhelming French influence over the language has completely hijacked its original phonetic system, but god damn....
The Welsh and Manx on the other hand sounded the most natural and free from foreign influence, I'm happy to hear that some Celtic languages still resist assimilation!
For me, as a non-Celtic speaker, Irish sounds like English and Breton like French, but with all words made up. Scottish Gaelic has some Scandinavian accent or melody in it. Cornish was spoken by a man whose first language was English and it seemed as if he struggled with speaking Cornish in the first place. Only Welsh and Manx sounded somehow "genuinly" Celtic to me.
Imagine Celtic languages were once the most spoken languages in Europe...
With Cornish it's rather understandable though. There are literally zero recordings of native speakers and how they sounded. They basicly had to revive a dead language without almost any reference. The fact that they have gotten as far as they got at the moment is already amazing.
Yes. The Breton speaking lady had a definite French inflection. The Scottish speaker a British English lilt. The rest I couldnt say.
The person they have speaking irish isn't doing it in a common irish accent, it's a news reported so she sounds quite anglicised
@@andrewhammel5714 she has a more pronounced french accent than I do and my mum's family isn't from brittany at all lol
Matthi Ab Dewi is fluent in Cornish, he sorta just speaks like that. It's also an Radyo and a learning resource, so he's speaking conversationally slow deliberately for learners to pick out each word. You can hear him speak in "real time" on Radyo An Gernewegva.
I'm irish and struggle with irish I want to learn it so bad biggest regret was getting a language exemption ill figure out how to remove it or get a tutor in irish
I liked scotish and irish, i wonder if any of these are mutually intelligable?
Aye, just about. I'm a Scottish Gaelic learner, not quite intermediate but getting there. When reading Irish I can pick out most of the nouns and verbs, some of the grammar is more difficult. Listening is a strange experience, it feels like I can almost understand it. People who are fluent can have full conversations just speaking their own languages, there's videos of it on UA-cam 👍
@@a.i.l1074 ah very interesting mate thanks very much, and good luck with learning Gaelic
If I remember right. Scottish Gaelic and Irish are closely related and Breton, welsh and Cornish are closely related. I have no idea about Manx though
@@languagenerd467 Manx is closely related to Irish/Scottish gaelic, it can look different because they use English orthography but it's easy enough to understand
@@a.i.l1074 thanks :)
The Cornish one sounds like an Englishman trying to speak Welsh, I can see why they are so closely related!
Cornish evolved out of Welsh after the Anglo Saxons cut off the Britons from each other
Al tempo dell'antica Roma il latino e la lingua dei Galli erano abbastanza simili (sono due rami indoeuropei vicini, italico e celtico). Nel proto-celtico c'erano parole simili al latino che ancora oggi sono confrontabili con gli equivalenti neolatini.
Al giorno d'oggi l'italiano e le lingue celtiche superstiti sono diventate totalmente inintelligibili, non sembrano neanche lontanamente imparentate. Un'evoluzione divergente notevole, non c'è che dire.
Sarebbe interessante fare il confronto tra le lingue celtiche e le lingue regionali del nordovest come il piemontese e il lombardo. Probabilmente qualche somiglianza ancora sarà rimasta.
Queste assolute stupidaggini dove le hai lette esattamente?
@@cranntara3741 Le ho constatate personalmente.
Quando mi sono trasferito in Italia non sapevo parlare una parola di italiano. Sono rimasto sorpreso da quante parole fossero simili al gallese. Per esempio: ponte=pont, fenestra-ffenestr, libro-llyfr, latte-llaeth, oro-aur, credo-credaf, Deus-Duw ecc. Anche molte parole simili all'inglese. Essendo cresciuto con il gallese e l'inglese, ho pensato che avrei potuto imparare l'italiano velocemente. Non parlo ancora fluentemente. Ma sento di aver avuto un vantaggio grazie al gallese e all'inglese.
i dont speak any of these yet i love how english with irish/scottish/welsh accents is sooo clearly rooted in these
Only scottish gaelic, manx, and welsh sounds authentic. without the phonetics of the colonial languages. Seriously breton… no effort by the journalist she is like hon hon hon oui la baguette du fromage hon hon hon
Irish sounds exactly like I expected. Also I am Cornish and this is the first time I've ever heard Cornish spoken
Irish sounds a bit like Dutch with an American accent
I can’t hear that but that could be because I speak Irish
@@callumpierce5097 i second this
As a Swede i think Manx sounded as you said.
This comparison would have been more authentic if the speakers were having a conversation rather than reading a script. I lived in West Wales and Welsh is commonly spoken on the streets and in shops etc. In Oban, I once heard two old ladies speaking Scottish Gaelic. You can hear the difference between a native speaker and someone who has learnt the language proficiently. I speak French fairly fluently but French speakers know I'm not French.
My mums from Brittany and I really want to learn Breton
Welsh and Manx sound like they have the least foreign influence in terms of pronunciation. Other ones are pretty obvious there is English and French influence in their phonology.
All the people saying these languages sound like something else 😂 no your languages sound like theses ones that are older than majority of the spoken languages in Europe
Irish is not like Dutch you would say Dutch is like Irish , Irish is the oldest written language on earth it can’t be based off of modern languages
actually the oldest written language in europe is basque, and in the world it seems like it's sumerian
@@gregkerna7410 “Irish is one of the oldest written and historical languages in the world.”
Source udaras
Sumerian is a dead language not related to any on earth and has no roots in any language on earth it might as well been cave man noises
Basque is oldest spoken Irish is oldest written.
@@user-ze8yy8jg1f irish is celtic, celts are from the Iron age (wich started around a thousand years bc) mainly and even then it took quite some time for celts to reach ireland. Sumerian may be dead but it's the oldest written language from the beginning of history (-3000 bc), with the first writings (the epic of gilgamesh) being in this language, it's also far from caveman speech lmao idk where you got that from it's not that bad. Recent studies showed basques had a primitive alphabet.
@@gregkerna7410 what tf does sumarian haft to do with me saying people are comparing our languages to theirs none of them speak sumarian
The language didn’t begin in Ireland it comes from Switzerland
And read my main comment “modern languages “
You come here with info that is not relevant trying to sound smart. Stick to the subject
@@gregkerna7410 I’m from Ireland I know what Irish is and no it’s Gaelic. We are not all the same Celtic is a mixed group
as a welsh speaker the irish and cornish stand out to me the most. I have never really hear anyone speak irish so it sound like someone with an irish accent talking gibberish, whereas the cornish one sound very similar to when my friends and family completly butcher the pronounciation of welsh words and put 0 accent on lol.
I am fluent in Irish and I love speaking it lol it's sounds so majestic
@@adamfinnegan735 It is a beautiful language but because I always think of the accent before the language it sounds strange to me 😅
every time i hear welsh it remind me of lord of the rings
Tolkien had it as one of the models for Quenya
@@wtc5198 Sindarin! Quenya was inspired by Finnish.
@@taffyducks544 yeah sorry
The Welsh language here being the most authentic,in it's pronunciation and representaion of the celtic languages.
I do not know how the Britons can call themselves brythonuc speaking like that
Very interesting 👌
In South Poland found some Celtic settlements and artefacts
2:14 it sounds like if a English person tried speaking welsh with his normal accent and then decided to trough some names in there as well
Cornish sounds to me precisely like typical English without one single understood word - the intonation, the absence of glottal stops and gutturals...
That's because Cornish is a revived language that went extinct a few hundred years ago and modern speakers refuse to trill their r's like their Manx, Scottish and Welsh cousins. If you want to hear what the language is supposed to sound like, look up the song "Gwrello Glaw" by the band "The Changing Room." It sounds so much more proper when they speak it.
At least in this video Cornish sounds like what English sounds like to people who don’t speak English
@@camrendavis6650 The Irish speaker pronounced the Rs as approximants
@@linkinparahybana9634 Irish language has two r sounds. One of them is the "slender r," which is a voiceless fricative.
@@camrendavis6650 Isn't the slender r a palatalized tap
Loves this vid. Never heard any of these spoken before. Must admit.. the Scottish Gaelic part looks dubbed . maybe the video is choppy in relation to the sound of the
language spoken, so it doesn't look like his mouth id producing those sounds.
All sound way off and too "englished" (or "Frenched" in the case of Breton) except Welsh and Manx. Second-language speakers of these languages should stop polluting these beautiful Celtic languages with their English/French phonetics. Then it sounds like english or french gibberish and not like Celtic language.
Learn the language properly and learn. to. fucking. pronounce. [r].
i think thats gonna be inevitable, on account of these languages basically all being close to death
@@michaelsalmon9832 NYNSYW MAROW!
That’s what happens when a language is strangled to near extinction, the majority of speakers are non-native, and it’s going to effect pronunciation. The last thing we need is to gate keep the languages with creepy purity bollocks, just people speaking them.
I'm living in Wales so I'm learning Welsh now. The Welsh part is still hard for me to understand.
Hope all the six Celtic languages could thrive!
Lijkt wel een beetje op Fries ;)
Greets from Holland 🇳🇱🧡
Are Celtic and Germanic languages related?
Are Celtic and Germanic cousins? Or even the same people to some extent?
The Scottish Gaelic example seemed strange to me. It seemed as if it was being spoken but with quite a posh English inflection. When I've looked at Scottish Gaelic during times of lazy study, I've found that to read it, you would need to be able to read in a Scottish accent (or so I thought), but this seems to suggest that it can be spoken without a Scottish accent. Seeing Breton in this regard was fascinating as it is obviously closer to any of the other Gaelic languages, yet the accent was undoubtably the accent of a French speaker.
Really cool vid anyway!
Why would the presenter be speaking Scottish Gaelic in a none Gaelic area
Fairly obvious he is in a Scottish Gaelic region
Example il live in Glasgow the news is in English
Do you get the point ?
On closer inspection it’s probably BBC Alba (Scottish Gaelic channel)
Hope it helps
I speak Irish so I understood the Irish and I got an easy understanding of the Scots Gaelic and Manx. But I can't understand the Brythonic languages
Are Celtic and Germanic languages related?
Are Celtic and Germanic cousins? Or even the same people to some extent?
@@nomad4ilm822 Well we are all related if you go back far enough, but the 2 groups are not. Our languages are not mutually intelligble at all. There is a possibility the Swiss and Germans have Continental Celt blood but West Celts (Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons) have zero relation to the Germanic people
The Irish speaker has a very mild accent, with no noticeable dialect features. She does not give full "weight" to the sounds in Irish that are different to English, using their Hiberno-English equivalents instead. I expect that is intentional, to make it easier for L1 English, L2 Irish speakers to understand her. Perhaps the other speakers do this (accommodation to their L2 speakers) as well.
I understood the gist of the Scots Gaelic report.
Manx had sounds like Irish but was more difficult to understand.
Welsh sounds distinctive and the accent is easy on the ear. The sounds of the words are familiar (Celtic?) but, like Cornish and Breton, I did not understand what was being said.
I am Polish and all celtic languages sounds for me similar to scandinavian germanic, just breton, she sounded absolutely french like she wasn't native speaker
Irish actually sounds pretty Slavic when it's not spoken by a native English person like here
I think the reason Welsh sounds the coolest here is because it's spoken by someone who's fluent in it. Wales has done a good job in preserving their language (~1/3 of Wales speaks Welsh) whilst the other Celtic languages have been poorly preserved, and there are only a handful of people left who speak Cornish fluently.
Hi there
Are Celtic and Germanic languages related?
Are Celtic and Germanic cousins? Or even the same people to some extent?
It sounds like Hebrew too me, my opinion is that Celtic isn't European at all, it came from Middle East and Historians have manipated and fabricated evidence into be European instead, If u speak some types of Hebrew like Classic, u can understand both languages even if both languages are different
Celtic languages had more connections to Hebrew than other European languages, VSO is biggest example, European languages don't have this
Hebrew has VSO and so does all other types, Ancient Coelbren is Ancient Welsh that has actually been found in Egyptian tombs
@@Ha-young_is_Just_Too_Fine
What connection do they have with Hebrew?
I speak Irish. Hebrew and Irish are very very different. Irish is an Indo-European language, whereas Hebrew is a Semitic language.
I like to find this in videos, since nobody did it, the I'm doing it.
Irish 0:01
Welsh 0:41
Breton 1:10
Scottish Gaelic 1:27
Cornish 2:00
Manx 2:27
Oh good. Because no one is here to watch the video.
Cheers to my Celtic brothers from Bretagne
I'm currently learning Breton, hopefully I'm able to understand them in a year
Fascinating as my mother was Irish and we lived in Wales so some bits were familiar. However, how come the Cornish sounded like no Cornish accent I've ever heard. It sounded like an English guy very much from elsewhere attempting to speak Cornish 🤔 Breton just sounded French to me, I wouldn't have realised it wasn't French for some time I would think. 😊
Nah he's deffo Cornish, all be it with a softer accent. You can tell when he says his Rs and some of his vowels are more rounded, like the oo sound, whilst others are pretty harsh, like the aa sound.
There’s something about the cadence of Cornish that sounds so familiar to an American accent.
I think it's the R sound. Unlike in other British accents where the R is said at the front of the mouth, Cornish has a the weird bunched R where the tongue is further towards the back.
It's also because the softer vowel sounds you normally associate with English accents aren't present. For example, the longer "Aa" sound said in words like "bath" or "grass" is substituted for the shorter and quick "a" sound.
Ní Éireannach mé ach ba mhaith liom an teanga seo a fhoghlaim.
Chi ffili
Why does Breton sound so much like French? I know it's mostly spoken in France but still.
I read many wrong statements about the Breton language in the comments from English-speaking persons, and even French people, so here's some elements I bring to your reflexion :
1) The Breton lady is Goulwena an Henaff. She was born in Lokorn, Bro-Gerne (Breton Cornwall, one of the regions of Brittany). She is a Breton-speaking-born TV presenter.
2) She speaks Breton with a good Breton accent, she doesn't have a French accent especially.
3) I see 2 reasons why so many commentators say she has a strong French accent. Firts many English-speaking commentators think they hear a French accent because they are used to hear the Celtic languages of the British Isles, which are often spoken with an ENGLISH accent, something they got so used to they don't notice it anymore. Secondly : Goulwena an Henaff pronounces some people's names distinctively the French way, because their names are French. That brings certainely a French colour to her Breton for many English-speaking not-used-to-hear-French commentators's ears.
4) The Breton pronounciation has been influenced by French in the last two centuries at the least, it's true, but like the Cornish and Welsh by English... Among the 4 main dialects of Breton, the stress is on the second to last syllabus for 3 of them, only the Breton of bro-Gwened is stressed on the last syllabus like French, the sound of Gwened Breton is closer to French than the other three. Goulwena an Henaff stresses on the second to last syllabus (she's from Kerne).
5) The Breton spoken today is too much influenced by French, it's true. The level of knowledge is generally low. The political pressure of Paris against the Breton revival is strong. People have to struggle everyday to speak their own language. France defends cultural and linguistic diversity in the world except in Brittany, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Corsica, Alsace, Savoy, Provence, the Flanders, Lorraine, Occitania, Normandy and the Nice region, not to mention its overseas colonies in America, Africa and the Pacific region.
As a Cornish person from Penzance I speak English but know a few Cornish words that are passed down. I can’t really understand what the Breton lady is saying but the speech pattern and how she pronounces words with the emphasis on the later syllables of a word sounds familiar to how my family speak English