Saturday has been quiet for the most part. I slept in, made a pot of potato soup for myself, and watched How I Met Your Mother in French. After lunch, I got dressed to go out and profit from the warmth and sun that decided to pay Brittany a visit for the weekend. I stopped in Eurodif, a clothes and home goods store, only to find that there was a huge sale going on! I bought towels and rugs pretty damn cheaply, but since I don’t have the keys to my apartment yet, I didn’t want to go overboard. Yet, now I’m considering heading back and getting sheets and other supplies so that I can save money later… It’ll just be annoying to move things eventually.
I talked to my parents for about an hour in the afternoon just to catch up on things. Plus, PA texted me throughout the day to comment on the student group he is assisting with; they’re getting lectures on historical things in little Norman cities from the prof with the group. His job is mostly to herd them on when they stop to take pictures.
Dinner with assistants tonight at 7 at Creperie Ste-Anne, right below my future apartment! Hopefully, I’ll get to know some more people so that I’ll have things to do on these quiet weekends.
Also, if you are considering visiting me, I work Tuesday-Friday, but I may be able to arrange long weekends if I change my hours. And here is my vacation schedule:
-Vacances de la Toussaint: Saturday 23 October to Wednesday 3 November
-Vacances de Noël (Christmas): Saturday 18 December to Sunday 2 January (though I’m already planning to spend New Year’s with friends)
-Vacances d'hiver (Winter): Saturday 26 February to Sunday 13 March
-Vacances de Printemps (Spring): Saturday 23 April to 7 June, when I leave for the States
It has been awhile since my last cultural lesson, so today I’ll introduce you to the language of Breton! Yes, Brittany has its own Gaelic-derivative language, and there are even some schools where Breton is still taught. Here is the information that I have gleaned for you:
“Breton is spoken in Lower Brittany [which means farther west on the peninsula than where I am]…It comes from a Celtic language community between Great Britain and Armorica (present-day Brittany), and even Galicia. It was the language of the upper classes until the 12th century. However, afterwards it was only the language of the people of West Brittany (Breizh Izel), while the nobility, followed by the bourgeoisie, adopted French. As a written language, the Duchy of Brittany used Latin, switching to French in the 15th century. There exists a limited tradition of Breton literature. Some Old Breton vocabulary remains in the present day as philosophical and scientific terms in Modern Breton…
“Today, despite the political centralization of France and the important influence of the media, Breton is still spoken as an everyday language by about 200,000 people. This is, however, down from 1.3 million in 1930. At the beginning of the 20th century, half of the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton, the other half being bilingual. By 1950, there were only 100,000 monolingual Bretons, and a rapid decline since with only small handfuls of elderly monolingual speakers as of 2009. A statistical survey in 1997 found around 300,000 speakers in Breizh izel, of which about 190,000 were aged 60 or over…
“Few of those of the 15-19 year-old age group spoke Breton, which is now considered to be an endangered language…In 1977, Diwan schools were founded to teach Breton by immersion. In 2010, 13,391 students (about 1.48% of all students in Brittany) attended Diwan, Div Yezh and Dihun schools, a number rapidly growing yearly… There are also schools in secondary education (collèges and lycées) offering courses of Breton (given as either foreign language or option, instead of e.g. German, Spanish, ...), and there are about 5,000 pupils in the universities in Brittany who take this option. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breton_language)”
Just wandering around town, you will notice that all road/street/information signs are in French and Breton, including all of the city names:
 |
| Bilingual signage in Quimper/Kemper. |
Breton | English |
degemer mat | welcome |
deuet mat oc'h | you're welcome |
Breizh | Brittany |
brezhoneg | Breton (language) |
ti, "ty" | house |
ti-kêr | town hall |
kreiz-kêr | town centre |
da bep lec'h | all directions |
skol | school |
skol-veur | university |
bagad | pipe band (nearly) |
fest-noz | lit. "night fête", a fest deiz or "day fête" also exists |
kenavo | goodbye |
krampouezh | pancakes (a pancake = ur grampouezhenn) |
chistr | cider |
chouchenn | Breton mead |
yec'hed mat | Cheers! |
war vor atao | always at sea |
kouign amann | rich butter and sugar cake |
There is even a minor separatist movement that lives on in Brittany that wants to leave France. I’m sure that will never happen, but it was exploited by the Nazis during WWII who encouraged any subversive actions against the French government. I’ll explain this further in another post!
I've bought myself a big Brittany flag to hang in my apartment too:
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