Breton grammar
The Breton language is a Celtic and Indo-European language, and its grammar has many traits common with these languages. Like most Indo-European languages, it has gender, number, articles and inflections. Breton has masculine and feminine genders. In addition to plurals, it also has an unusual singulative marker. The language has both a definite and indefinite article.
Nouns
Gender
Breton nouns have genders, masculine and feminine. The neuter, which existed in Brythonic, survives in a few words such as tra considered as masculine but behaving as if they were feminine.The gender of a noun is mostly arbitrary and can often vary from dialect to dialect. However, certain groups of word tend to belong to a particular gender, for example, names of countries and cites are feminine whereas most divisions of time are masculine. Some suffixes also have the same gender:
- Masculine suffixes include: -ach, -adur, -aj, -eg, -er, -our, -lec'h, -ti, -va.
- Feminine suffixes include: -eg, -ell, -enn , -enti, -er, -ez, -ezh, -ezon, -i.
Number
As well as having a regular plural form, certain parts of the body display relics of a dual system, for example, singular lagad "eye", plural lagadoù "eyes", dual daoulagad " eyes". Dual forms themselves can have a plural form, for example, daoulagadoù " eyes".
Singulative
A distinctive and unusual feature of Brythonic languages is a singulative marker, which is in Breton marked with the feminine suffix -enn. While the noun gwez means "trees ", the word gwezenn means " tree". The latter can even be made into a regular plural gwezennoù meaning "several trees ".Diminutive
Breton forms diminutive nouns using the suffix -ig with the plural formed by reduplication of the suffix -où, for example, prad "meadow", pradig "little meadow", pradouigoù "little meadows".Articles
In Breton, the article has both definite and indefinite forms. This is unlike other Celtic languages, which have only definite articles. The definite article is an before dentals, vowels and unpronounced h, al before l and ar elsewhere. Examples of this include an tan "the fire", al logodenn "the mouse", ar gador "the chair". The indefinite article, derived from the number un "one", follows the same pattern of final consonants: un tan "a fire", ul logodenn "a mouse", ur gador "a chair".The definite article may contract with preceding prepositions, for instance e "in" + an gives en "in the".
Adjectives
can be inflected for comparison with the suffixes -oc'h, -añ and -at. These suffixes cause preceding consonants to undergo provection. Mat "good" and drouk "bad" are examples of adjectives that can have irregular forms.| positive | comparative | superlative | exclamative |
| bras "big" | braso'ch "bigger" | brasañ "biggest" | brasat " big!" |
| gleb "wet" | glepo'ch "wetter" | glepañ "wettest" | glepat " wet!" |
| ruz "red" | ruso'ch "redder" | rusañ "reddest" | rusat " red!" |
| mat "good" | gwell "better" | gwellañ "best" | gwellat " good!" |
| drouk "bad" | drouko'ch, gwasho'ch "worse" | droukañ, gwashañ "worst" | droukañ, gwashañ " bad!" |
In addition to the above forms, some adjetives can have separate equative forms, for example, kement "as big", koulz "as good", ken gwazh "as bad". More regular equatives ar formed with ken "as", for example ken gleb "as wet", ken drouk "as bad".
Adverbs
do not inflect.Prepositions
Like in other Celtic languages, prepositions in Breton are either simple or complex and may or may not inflect for person, number and gender. Historically, inflected prepositions derive from the contraction between a preposition and a personal pronoun.In general, simple prepositions that inflect take one of two possible groups of suffixes. The stem employed for the third person forms may be different to that of other persons. Inflected prepositions distinguish gender in the third person singular.
| i endings | o endings | |
| uninflected | gant "with" | evit "for" |
| 1sg | ganin "with me" | evidon "for me" |
| 2sg | ganit "with you" | evidout "for you" |
| 3sg | gantañ "with him" | evitañ "for him" |
| 3sg | ganti "with her" | eviti "for her" |
| 1pl | ganimp "with us" | evidomp "for us" |
| 2pl | ganeoc'h "with you" | evidoc'h "for you" |
| 3pl | ganto, gante "with them" | evito, evite "for them" |
| impersonal | ganeor "with one" | evidor "for one" |
Simple prepositions that do not inflect include eus and deus "from", kent "before" and goude "after".
Complex prepositions inflect by means of interfixes, whereby the nominal second element is preceded by a pronomial form. This is similar to how instead can become in my stead in archaic English. Mutations may be triggered following the various pronomial forms.
| uninflected | diwar-benn "about" | e-kichen "near" |
| 1sg | diwar ma fenn "about me" | em c'hichen "near me" |
| 2sg | diwar da benn "about you" | ez kichen "near you" |
| 3sg | diwar e benn "about him" | en e gichen "near him" |
| 3sg | diwar he fenn "about her" | en he c'hichen "near her" |
| 1pl | diwar hor penn "about us" | en hor c'hichen "near us" |
| 2pl | diwar ho penn "about you" | evidoc'h "near you" |
| 3pl | diwar o fenn "about them" | en o c'hichen "near them" |
| impersonal | diwar ar penn "about one" | er c'hichen "near one" |
Pronouns
Personal
may be strong, post-clitic head or pre-clitic head. Strong pronouns have the same distribution as a full noun phrase and may be subjects, objects or prepositional objects. Post-clitic head pronouns tend to follow finite verbs, nouns or inflected prepositions. Pre-clitic head pronouns function as object pronouns preceding verb phrases and possessive determiners preceding noun phrases. The use of the "new" personal pronouns is more restricted. They derive from inflection of the partitive preposition a "of" and can function as an object pronoun, for example, E kêr e welas Yannig anezho "Yannig saw them in town", more literally "In the town Yannig saw of them", and occasionally function as subjects.| strong | post-clitic head | pre-clitic head | "new" | |
| 1sg | me | me | ma, am | ac'hanon |
| 2sg | te | te | az, da | ac'hanout |
| 3sg | eñ | eñ | e | anezhañ |
| 3sg | hi | hi | he | anezhi |
| 1pl | ni | ni | he | ac'hanomp |
| 2pl | c'hwi | hu, c'hwi | hon, hol, hor | ac'hanoc'h |
| 3pl | int | i, int | o | anezho |
Demonstrative
are post-head clitics used in conjunction with the definite article.| clitic | example | |
| near the speaker | -mañ "here" | ar stêr-mañ "this river" |
| near the listener | -se "there" | an ti bihan-se "that little house" |
| far from speaker and listener | -hont "over there, yonder" | al lent-hont "that lake over there" |
Indefinite
may be positive, such as re "some, ones" and holl "all" and negative, such as netra "nothing" and neblec'h "nowhere" and may be preceded by a determiner, for example an re "some" and da re "your".Verbs
Regular conjugation
Breton verbs can be conjugated to show tense, aspect, mood, person and number by adding suffixes to the verbal stem, seen in the following table.Additional suffixes may form the verbal noun. The most common of these are:
- -out as in lavarout "say", gallout "can, be able", klevout "hear, smell"
- -añ as in evañ "drink", gwiskañ "dress", skrivañ "write"
- -iñ as in debriñ "eat", deskiñ "learn", reiñ "give"
Verbs also have a past participle formed with a suffix and a present participle form comprising the verbal noun preceded by the particle o, which causes a mixed mutation.
Most verbs are regular and stray little from the usual patterns. The table shows and example of the regular verb debriñ "eat".
Irregular conjugation
A few verbs are irregular, one example of which is ober "do".Bezañ is another irregular verb, which is conjugated for additional tense/aspect distinctions.
Another common irregular verb is eus "have", which combines a person marker with the tensed form. Eus is historically derived from bezañ and a similar development is seen in Cornish.
Composed forms
Ober, bezañ and eus can all be used as auxiliary verbs.In the present, Breton distinguishes between the simple and progressive present. The simple present is formed by either conjugating the verb or using the verbal noun with the present of ober. The progressive present, on the other hand, is formed with the present situative of bezañ combined with present participle. In addition to these two aspectual distinctions, Breton has a habitual present which utilises the present habitual of bezañ and the present participle.
Combining the past participle with either eus or bezañ is the usual way of forming the past tense, the conjugated forms being restricted to more literary language. The choice between eus or bezañ depends on whether the past participle is that of a transitive or intransitive verb respectively.
Negation
Non-tensed verbs are negated with ne... ket either side of the verb.Numbers
Cardinal numbers
Similar to other Celtic languages, Breton has an underlying vigesimal counting system. "One" is un, ul, ur before a noun. "Two", "three" and "four" and derivative numbers have separate masculine and feminine forms. An interesting irregularities in the system are triwec'h "eighteen", literally "three sixes", and hanter kant "fifty", literally "half a hundred".Ordinal numbers
Again, a gender distinction can be shown with some ordinal numbers.Mutations
The main mutations cause the following changes:| Unmutated | Soft | Spirant | Hard | Mixed |
| p | b | f | ||
| t | d | z | ||
| k | g | c'h | ||
| b | v | p | v | |
| d | z | t | t | |
| g | c'h | k | c'h | |
| gw | w | kw | w | |
| m | v | v |