Customer Reviews

A Grammar of Modern Breton

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PRESENTATION: HARDBACK without dustjacket, cloth covered.
Print is not a standard printed script. It does look like an ( admittedly ) good typewritten face.
The accuracy of the Breton is good ( apart from the " howler " page 297+ to translate into standard Breton, then into English, the original line in Gwenedeg / Vannetais dialect of the poem ÁR EN DEULIN by Y. P. Kalloh / Calloc'h:
" Ar peur ne gan dén é glodeu " , as " An aon ne gan den e glodoù ", then as " No man sings the glories of fear ",[ obviously having been at a loss how to interpret the Gwenedeg " peur " and going for the assimilation of it with the French word " peur " ( fear / fright ), when all translations by native speakers that I have seen ( in print and on-line ) agree that it has nothing to do with it, and that Gw " peur " is standard Breton " paour ", easily / obviously enough the English " poor " ! So the line should translate in English something as " The poor, no-one sings their glories ".
Also Gwe " diglod " in the previous line should be " diglot " ( been an adjective ) in standard Breton.
Also page 273/274 the words " an deiz kentañ ar bloaz " should translated as " the first day of the year " not " month " !! ( just a mistake of inattention here ).
These 2 small points, quite forgivable, in the whole book, and quite understandable for a non-native speaker. To be fair, no other mistake in this book, that I can see.
The reader will obviously need to have some / a medium knowledge of grammar, in general, to be able to access this book. It is not a simple grammar for learners of Breton.
Others like the short " Breton Grammar " by Roparz Hemon / Michael Everson, Evertype publishers 2007, or the grammar portions in the bigger " Breton, the complete course for beginners " by Ian Press and Herve ar Bihan, Routledge publishers 2004, are more appropriate for them. However it is not necessary to be a professional grammarian / linguist professional to be able to access this book.( apart maybe from the morphosyntactic glosses [ a sort of " parsing " ].
This book would be useful both to the knowledgeable amateur, and still of use to the professional grammarian, linguist of Breton / Celtic languages / general linguistics. however the price of the book as new will put it out of reach of most interested amateurs ( unless they have quite a good income ), or ( well paid anyway ) professional / higher students who need it for their courses.