Abstract
Breton, the only continental Celtic language, has undergone a dramatic drop of speakers throughout the 20th century, from an all-time peak of over a million before World War I to just a quarter of a million, mostly ageing, at the turn of the XXst century out of a total population of four million. While it has at last — despite tremendous institutional obstacles — managed to make its way to a small extent into the school system for the past twenty years, as an attempt by language aware families to palliate near-total extinction of intergenerational transmission, progress has been comparatively slower in the mostly state-controlled media area. It is often said that popular radio programmes made up for the Catholic Church's renouncement of Breton as the language of preaching after World War II. To what extent, however, have broadcast media — among a population that now hardly ever reads the language — acted as the vital link bridging the generational and dialectal gap, providing some form of standard, helping language maintenance? Do recent developments, such has all-Breton independent local radio stations and newly launched bilingual channel TV-Breizh, bide well for the eventual establishment of a fully comprehensive service?