The best English language introduction to Breton

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Product Description

Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study and class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Breton. No prior knowledge of the language is required.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1616930 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Language Notes
Text: English

About the Author
Herve ar Bihan teaches in the Department of Breton and Celtic Studies at the University of Rennes II in France. Ian Press is Professor in russian at the University of St Andres and teaches a Breton module at St. Andrews. He is also the author of the only English-language grammar of modern standard Breton.

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Customer Reviews

A Good Introduction to Breton for English Speakers
The English-speaking learner of Breton faces three challenges: 1) As a Celtic language influenced by French, Breton is very different from English. 2) There are four major dialects and no universal standard. 3) There are several spelling systems in use, and you have to know the language enough to sound things out and guess at alternate spellings if the text you have uses a different system from your dictionary. Colloquial Breton addresses all three challenges well: 1) The grammar explanations are clear and rooted in understanding what's going on, not mastering theory. 2) It teaches a hybrid of the three major dialects that will give you entrée into the particular dialects, rather than getting hung up on presenting dialectical variations. 3) It uses the most common spelling system, so outside resources (especially on the web) are more likely to be approachable.

If you're looking for a safe gateway to learning Breton, this is your best bet.

Note that Breton is hard to sound out before you've heard it. If you're willing to put in extra work, you can find a free course with audio at [...]. But if you want to stick with the book, it's a good idea to get the accompanying CDs.

Waiting for a better Breton
I believe this is the only book of its type about the Breton Language intended for the use of English speakers.
Unfortunately, it's also rather a big disappointment.
Colloquial Breton is organized much like the other Colloquial-series language books, which is what attracted me to it in the first place. I've been very pleased with Routledge's other books of the series. And, as I said, I don't believe there are any other textbooks of Breton for English speakers, so I wouldn't have had any choice. I do speak French, so I could have used Le Breton sans Peine from Assimil, but it's very expensive. Routledge's Colloquial series are, for my money, the best and most reasonably-priced self-study language courses on the market.
However, Colloquial Breton isn't entirely like the other Colloquial books I've seen. It throws rather a lot of information at you, rather too fast. You are exposed to a great deal of vocabulary from the outset (there are several dialogues and reading selections in each chapter) and the grammatical explanations are rapid fire and cursory. You have to read everything very carefully or you'll miss a word, a structure, an explanation, or something. The description of the sounds of the language is sketchy at best, but it does manage to drive firmly into the ground the notions that there are lots of exceptions and irregularities, and that "You really do need to buy the recordings to get the most out of this book"! Well, of course. The CDs (or cassettes) cost at least as much again as the book! Why offer the book for sale separately at all when what they really want you to do is pay full price for the book with CDs of tapes?
But the book does come separately- that's how I've bought it- and it's inadequate in many ways, even if one did have the recordings. Of course, it is a good idea to have sound recordings of a language you happen to be studying, but the book should be able to stand on its own. This one does not.
The exercises are really rather lame. There are no translation exercises, English to Breton, which is what I prefer- I realize some people don't like that kind of exercise, but it works for me quite well. But even the exercises the book does have provide little opportunity for application of all the grammar and vocabulary they throw at you. Instead, the exercises give me the impression that the authors needed to make a deadline, or else simply lacked the patience, the creativity, and the industry to make up any good ones. One type of exercise in the book consists of repeating the same two sentences over and over, the activity consisting of substitution of different personal names or different professions or whatever. I fail to see how this is supposed to teach me how to apply anything from the lesson except a few items of vocabulary. They don't teach you how to apply the grammatical concepts, nor, really, how to use the vocabulary effectively. Some of the exercises actually consist of
answering *in English* questions (the questions, too, are in English) about a reading passage! Some of these questions are actually in Breaton and/or meant to be answered in Breton, but not enough of them.