'Natural' Breton speakers don't have a French accent. Unfortunately, the authentic accent is more and more replaced by the French one nowadays. A few examples of authentic Breton speakers. (Click on 'Voir le média')Hello, I'm a native Welsh speaker and I don't understand Breton. To my ears it sounds much more like French than it does a Celtic language. It's possible this is because of French's strong dominance, or because a lot of Breton speakers could possibly be learners who's native language is actually French, so they speak Breton with a French accent.
I've just watched both of those videos, and (with only one exception) all of the speakers (curiously even including the foreigners you mentioned) sound "French" to me, in varying degrees.'Natural' Breton speakers don't have a French accent. Unfortunately, the authentic accent is more and more replaced by the French one nowadays. A few examples of authentic Breton speakers. (Click on 'Voir le média')
LINK 1
LINK 2
(In the second link, a Welshman, an American and a Japanese speak a perfectly idiomatic Breton, amazing !)
You are perfectly right. There are loads of French loans in Breton.Only the word "beo" stood out for me in Gaelic ; however I felt I understood several French loan words in those recordings, is that possible?
The only person with some French accent in my opinion is the second speaker of the first video. And indeed, the man from Kleder (the first one) has a genuine breton accent! As for the vowels, breton not only has the eu and u of French, but this has nothing to do with borrowing, for the following reasons: 1. Cornish has the same series of vowels; 2. breton has not exactly the same pair of those vowels as French (for instance it has two different 'u', an more open and a close one (French only has the 'open' one, which is not so open actually.). You can't call those French vowels, then.I've just watched both of those videos, and (with only one exception) all of the speakers (curiously even including the foreigners you mentioned) sound "French" to me, in varying degrees.
The one exception is the first man being interviewed in the first video. His accent sounds almost Scottish-like to my ears, although I can hear a few French-sounding vowels in there too.
Bear in mind this is my opinion as a native English speaker who has never heard Breton before (although I am familiar with how Welsh and Irish Gaelic sound).
I have never heard any Irish speakers speaking Irish with an English accent - perhaps the videos you saw were of people from England who had learnt Irish? (Even non-Irish speaking people from Ireland do not speak with English accents - they have Irish accents...)I was once involved in a discussion at the Irish forum about the English accent of many Irish Gaelic speakers I heard in Youtube recordings. I was rebuked by many, teaching me that genuine Irish Gaelic has nothing in common with English in sounds, accent or intonation.
Hi Tegs,...- perhaps the videos you saw were of people from England who had learnt Irish? ...
Takes an Aussie to do a good British accent! Haha.I went to the trouble of getting permission to link some audio to allow comparission. If someone could link Guy Pearce doing the "Abdication speech" in the recent film "The King's speech", for an authentic sound of English, that should put an end to this particular debate.
I agree with you.Breton and Cornish must have been mutually intelligible until the last native Cornish speaker died, both languages seem to be so close to one another that they look more like dialects of the same language.
Most speakers of Irish these days are learners, not true native speakers as you say. It follows that the Irish English accent(s) carries over into Irish (and it is immediately obvious to the trained ear). That's not to say that true Irish-speaking native speakers with traditional prounciation(s) don't exist (they do) but the power of English is such that there's not much that can be done. In France, Breton is in an even more difficult position than Irish is but local volunteers do sterling work trying to preserve the language.I must agree that if french people learning Breton have a french accent it’s also true for Irish speaking people learning Irish language (refer. Irish former president Mary McAleese). Unfortunately... the accent of our grandparents are disappearing in these country where the Celtic language isn’t the most used language anymore.
I observed the exactly same thing while listening to Youtube recordings with Irish speaking people. When I took this topic up at the Wordreference forum I was contradicted by people assuring that it was pure Irish, without English accent. The funny thing is that I don't hear any English accent in Scots speaking Gaelic.Most speakers of Irish these days are learners, not true native speakers as you say. It follows that the Irish English accent(s) carries over into Irish (and it is immediately obvious to the trained ear). That's not to say that true Irish-speaking native speakers with traditional prounciation(s) don't exist (they do) but the power of English is such that there's not much that can be done. In France, Breton is in an even more difficult position than Irish is but local volunteers do sterling work trying to preserve the language.
My knowledge of Gaelic is so marginal that I don't notice differences in production of consonants or vowels, but I can hear a unique prosody typical only for English dialects, and not heard in any other language on Earth.I presume that there are less Scots learning Gaelic outside the Highlands than there are Irish people learning Irish (the Irish language is mandatory in all schools in the Republic of Ireland and Irish-speaking schools are quite popular; I don't think this is true to the same extent in Scotland vis-à-vis Scottish Gaelic).
I've listened to BBC Alba a little and I hear no influence of Scottish English on the accents of the presenters. That being said, if one watches TG4 (Irish-language television) or listens to Raidió na Gaeltachta, most presenters have pure accents untainted by English because they are native-speakers from Irish-speaking areas. But if one listens to Irish-language programming on the main English language channels in Ireland, it becomes immediately obvious that many people learned their Irish at school (and can't pronounce the words in the manner of true native-speakers).