#*cries in bad grammar carried over from english/french and false cognates with german* oh alain bouchart we are in it now ( ╥﹏╥)

[ardenrosegarden]

Yet it is during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that all the inhabitants of the duchy became known under the name of Bretons, despite their linguistic diferences. Hence, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach ascribed in his Parzival the war cry "Nantes!" to the Bretons. The terms Brittany and Bretons were now applied to all the territories and inhabitants under the authority of the dukes of Brittany, and now the Romance-speaking area – future Brittany gallo or Upper Brittany –was clearly the dominant part of the duchy both politically and linguistically. It is striking to note that the same phenomenon happened in Scotland. Originally, only the Gaelic speakers considered themselves and were considered as "Scots" until c. 1260 when the other linguistic communities politically united with this kingdom (English speakers, North "Welsh" speakers, etc.) also began to be named and to name themselves as "Scots". The "French" part of Brittany was now the leading part of the duchy, and, revealingly, the medieval custom composed for the whole duchy c. 1300 (La très ancienne coutume de Bretagne) was written in French and never translated into Breton. Consequently, the Breton speakers who needed to go outside Brittany bretonnante or had an activity that implied contacts with Bretons gallos and/or foreigners absolutely needed to learn French. They were usually sent to a family of Brittany gallo in order to do so. Jean Froissart even met a "Breton bretonnant originating from Vannes [who] knew well at least three or four languages: Breton, French, English and Spanish". However, not everybody was as gifted as this man and most of them were not totally at ease with French, as Alain Bouchart, himself originating from a bretonnant region, explained in 1514 to the readers of his Grande Chroniques de Bretaigne: "I beg them to be lenient if they find any language badly embellished by lack of elegance or pleasant style, because he is a native of Brittany. Breton and French are two languages which are very challenging to pronounce easily by one mouth." More than a century later (1637), Albert le Grand would write almost exactly the same remark for the readers of his Vie des saints de la Bretagne.

Guilhem Pépin, Does a Common Language Mean a Shared Allegiance? Language, Identity, Geography and their Links with Polities: The Cases of Gascony and Brittany