ThePublic Office for the Breton Language (Breton:Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg;French:Office public de la langue bretonne) was established on 15 October 2010 as a public institution, with state and regional cooperation and funding, to promote and develop teaching and use of theBreton language in daily life. It is an example of language revival efforts for minority languages in France.
One of its missions is to collect and distribute socio-linguistic data, in order to approach language revival with a basis in science and facts. Its remit is to collect data on the Breton language (Arsellva ar brezhoneg) and publish it, and advisecommunes on bilingual signage and place names.
It supports TermBret, the cooperative terminology service which publishesglossaries. In addition, it assists individuals, administrations and businesses who want to use the Breton language. (From 1 July 1999 to September 15, 1999, 42 administrations, associations or companies have made an appealed to the national government to allow use of Breton as an official language.)
It was established to replace theOfis ar Brezhoneg/Office de la langue bretonne, which had been created on 1 May 1999 by theRegion of Brittany. That office had a similar mission and worked mostly to promote use of Breton in daily life. In 2001 it initiatedYa d'ar brezhoneg (French:Oui au breton, English:Yes to Breton), an effort to encourage businesses to adopt use of Breton and provide bilingual resources, as well as to encourage communes to establish bilingual signs and tourist materials.
The Office is now anÉtablissement public de coopération culturelle [fr], a public institution run by a board of directors. They represent local authorities and the French state. It was presided over by Lena Louarn, a councillor elected in theRegional Council of Brittany until October 2021, when she was succeeded by regional councillor and deputy Paul Molac. The Office is based inCarhaix, where its director Fulup Jacq works. The Observatory of the Breton Language (l'Observatoire de la langue bretonne), led by the deputy director Olier ar Mogn, is located inRennes.
Before October 2010, the OPB was an independent regional association, led by Lena Louarn between 1999 and 2010. Its budget of €1 million was primarily funded by the Brittany Region.
The Office participates in the promotion of Breton courses for adults. It has published data on participation in and centers for Breton courses for adults:
In the year 1998–1999, 9,300 adults followed a course (e.g. evening courses, correspondence). Of those, 1,200 were inUpper Brittany (550 inIlle-et-Vilaine and 462 inLoire-Atlantique). At the time, a total of 165 organizations organised evening courses in Brittany and 28 outside Brittany (of the latter, 15 are in the region of Paris).
In 2003, the Office prepared and published a road map ofBrittany in the Breton language. (The map includesLoire-Atlantique, which was historically considered part of the region until 1941.)[1]
In June 2024, the Office opened "Desketa", its free website for learning Breton.[2]
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