In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the French state tried to suppress the use of Breton. In a 1928 survey, the scholar Roparz Hemon estimated there were 1.2 million people using Breton as their daily means of communication (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2008). As reported by Childers (2014), in 1972, the president of France at that time, Georges Pompidou, declared: “There is no room for regional languages in a France that is destined to set its seal on Europe.” Ten years later, J.P. Chevenement, the Minister of Education under president Francois Mitterrand, said in reference to the Corsican language that “teaching the youth languages that offer them no perspective is not doing them a good service.” According to Hornsby (2010), these statements reflect the strong centralism of the French state against national minorities, as well as the strong “one-nation-one-language” ideology that is common in France. The French language is seen as superior, and minority/regional languages are seen as a threat to the French state. Childers (2014) reports that Breton is estimated nowadays to have around 500,000 speakers. It is likely that the number of active speakers is much lower than that. In 1986, it was thought that there were 50,000-100,000 active users of the language. So, the number of Breton speakers has been steadily declining for a very long time and the traditional local varieties of Breton, which are spoken in rural areas in Brittany, can be looked upon as endangered. Childers (2014) writes that the use of Breton collapsed in the 1960s, following years of suppression by the French state. Newer generations stopped having access to the Breton language, making it impossible for Breton to be passed down. People in urban areas in Brittany felt a sense of loss for the Breton language that had been a part of their culture. This was the start of the activist movement to revive (= revitalize) Breton.
1) Blogging Brittany (6 May 2016). Ar Redadeg. Retrieved from https://bloggingbrittany.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/ar-redadeg/
2) Blogging Brittany (3 July 2016). Language activists take on the SNCF. Retrieved from https://bloggingbrittany.wordpress.com/category/language-revitalization/
3) Childers, G. (3 December 2014). Defying the odds: The resurgence of Breton through education and media. EUC BlogLinguis Europae. Retrieved from http://eucenterillinois-language.blogspot.jp/2014/12/defying-odds-resurgence-of-breton.html
4) 大場静枝（発行年不明）『フランスの言語政策と地域語教育運動—ブレイス語を事例として―』国際言語文化研究所〈https://www.waseda.jp/inst/cro/assets/uploads/2010/03/b85db14613fbec321910ced448fe48a0.pdf〉
5) 鶴巻泉子（発行年不明）『少数民族と「新しい地域主義」をめぐって：ブレイス語の場合』〈https://nagoya.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=pages_view_main&active_action=repository_view_main_item_detail&item_id=14301&item_no=1&page_id=28&block_id=27〉
6) Encyclopaedia Britannica (2008). Breton language. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Breton-language
7) Hornsby, M. (2010). From the Periphery to the Centre: recent debates on the place of Breton (and other regional languages) in the French Republic. Retrieved from https://www.abdn.ac.uk/pfrlsu/documents/Hornsby,%20From%20the%20Periphery%20to%20the%20Centre.pdf
8) The Guardian (15 April 2011). Endangered languages: the full list. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/apr/15/language-extinct-endangered
9) UNESCO (no date). UNESCO Atlasof the World's Languages in Danger. Breton. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/index.php
10) 三木一彦（2007）『フランスにおける地域言語の推移と現状—アルザス・アキテーヌ・ブルターニュを事例として』〈https://www.bunkyo.ac.jp/faculty/lib/klib/kiyo/edu/e41/4103.pdf〉
11) 松井真之介（発行年不明）『フランスのマイノリティにおける言語教育—ブレイス語のディワン学校と在仏アルメニア学校を例に―』〈http://web.cla.kobe-u.ac.jp/group/IReC/pdf/201203_matsui.pdf〉
12) 原聖（1989）『フランスにおける諸言語のとらえ方について：方言と少数言語の復権のために』一橋大学機関リポジトリ〈https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/rs/bitstream/10086/11124/1/ronso1020200690.pdf〉
13) 原野昇（2015）『多言語国家フランス—フランスの少数話者言語』広島大学マスターズ〈https://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/nharano/tagengokokkafrance.pdf〉