Brythonic | |
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Geographic distribution: | Brittany Wales Cornwall Cumbria Scotland |
Linguistic classification: | Indo-European
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Subdivisions: |
Cumbric
Pictish
|
The Brythonic languages are a language family of the Celtic languages. They are spoken in Brittany, Wales and Cornwall. While going extinct in the rest of the British Isles, the (recognised) regions include: Cumbria and Scotland, while still debated, Common Brittonic[1] was widely spoken across England.
There are three Brythonic languages:
And three extinct languages
Cornish (Kernowek) is an extinct language.[2][3] A Cornish revival movement introduced the language to 557 people. Cornish is mainly a L2 (second language) for most, if not all, Cornish speakers.
Breton (Brezhoneg) is spoken mostly in Brittany,[4] With small communities of speakers in North-West regional France, although it is "severely endangered" .
Welsh (Cymraeg) is spoken by around 20% of the total population of Wales. Welsh has over 700,000 speakers in the whole of the United Kingdom. Welsh and English are both official languages in Wales.