Breton Alphabet & Letters

Breton (brezhoneg) is a Celtic language of Brittany in western France, written in the Latin alphabet. Today it is almost always written in the unified spelling, peurunvan, agreed in 1941 to bring the dialects of Kernev, Leon and Treger together with the very different Gwened (Vannes) speech. Its alphabet is A B CH C’H D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z.

Two things stand out. CH and C’H are letters in their own right and come after B in dictionaries, so a plain c never stands alone in a Breton word, and neither does q. X turns up only in names and borrowed words. And the alphabet has three marked letters: Ê ê, Ñ ñ and Ù ù, which sort with E, N and U.

Breton spelling also shows its famous initial mutations: the first consonant of a word changes after certain words, so tad (father) becomes ma zad (my father) and da dad (your father). A dictionary search often means undoing the mutation first.

Breton letters: ch, c’h, zh, ñ, ê and ù

CH sounds like English sh: chom (to stay), chistr (cider). C’H is the throaty sound of Scottish loch or German Bach, softer in many areas: c’hoari (to play), merc’h (girl, daughter), Yec’hed mat! (Cheers!). The apostrophe is what keeps the two apart.

ZH is the badge of the unified spelling. Most of Brittany says a z there and the Vannes area says an h, so Breizh (Brittany) and brezhoneg are written to suit both pronunciations. You see it in .bzh, the internet domain of Brittany.

Ñ is not a consonant at all, unlike the Spanish ñ. It tells you the vowel before it is nasal, as in French an or on: bremañ (now), emañ (is, of place), ar c’hi-mañ (this dog). Without it, an in Breton would be read as a vowel plus a full n.

Ê marks a long open e in a few words, the best known being kêr (town), as on the Ti-kêr (town hall) signs. Ù appears especially in the plural ending -où. Capitals keep their marks: BREMAÑ, KÊR.

Breton punctuation: « », and the apostrophe in c’h

Breton printed in France follows French typography: quotations go in angle quotes « », with a thin space inside in careful typesetting, and “ ” serve for quotes inside quotes. Dialogue in novels often opens with a dash —.

The apostrophe matters more than in most languages because it is part of a letter. Print uses the curly ’ (c’h), keyboards give the straight ' (c'h), and both are accepted. There is also ʼ, the modifier letter apostrophe (U+02BC), which Unicode counts as a letter, so software treats c’hoari as one unbroken word. The apostrophe also marks dropped vowels: n’eo ket (it is not).

How to type Breton letters: ñ, ê, ù and c’h

Windows: hold Alt and type on the number pad ñ 0241, Ñ 0209, ê 0234, Ê 0202, ù 0249, Ù 0217, « 0171, » 0187, ’ 0146, € 0128. On the United States-International layout type ~ then n for ñ, ^ then e for ê, ` then u for ù. A French AZERTY keyboard already has ù on its own key and ê through the ^ dead key, but no ñ.

Mac: hold the letter and pick from the pop-up, or on the U.S. (ABC) layout press Option + N then n for ñ, Option + I then e for ê, Option + ` then u for ù, Option + \ for « and Option + Shift + \ for ». Phones: long-press n, e or u to get ñ, ê and ù.

Linux ships a real Breton layout, Breton (France), nicknamed C’HWERTY: the key where AZERTY has A types c’h in one stroke, and ch, ñ and ù have their own keys. In HTML write ñ for ñ, ê for ê, ù for ù and ’ for ’.

Where Breton is spoken, and its Celtic cousins

Breton is spoken in Brittany (Breizh), above all in the west, Breizh-Izel (Lower Brittany), around Brest, Quimper, Morlaix and Carhaix. CLDR gives Breton a literate, functional language-population estimate of about 570,000 for France 🇫🇷; surveys of fluent speakers give lower numbers, many of them older people. UNESCO lists Breton as severely endangered, and the Diwan immersion schools, open since 1977, and the Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg work to pass it on. Brittany pays in euros: 5 €.

It is not a dialect of French but a Brythonic Celtic language brought from Britain by settlers in the early Middle Ages. Its closest relative is Cornish, the other south-western Brittonic language, while Welsh is the nearest of the Celtic languages spoken without a break since the Middle Ages. Many words still match: Breton kalon and Welsh calon (heart), Breton tad and Welsh tad (father). Irish is a more distant cousin. Our Welsh, Irish and French letter pages sit alongside this one.