Gallo

Gallo is the Romance speech of Upper Brittany, the eastern half of the Breton peninsula around Rennes, Nantes and Saint-Malo, and its speakers are Bretons whose vernacular grew from the Vulgar Latin of Armorica rather than the Celtic of British migrants.

Breton had once been spoken across the east too but ceased to dominate there from around 900, leaving Gallo in contact with Celtic, from which it took words, idioms and pronunciation; its name comes from the Breton word gall for a Romance-speaking foreigner and is attested in writing as early as 1358. To the east it forms a dialect continuum with Norman and other neighbouring speeches.

Largely an oral language without institutional patrons, Gallo served town and countryside through the later Middle Ages and the ducal period, but after Brittany's union with France in 1532 and the spread of Parisian French in administration, it was increasingly reduced to a rural patois beneath the standard language.