SUPPORT THE WORK
GetWiki
Cornish language
ARTICLE SUBJECTS
being →
database →
ethics →
fiction →
history →
internet →
language →
linux →
logic →
method →
news →
policy →
purpose →
religion →
science →
software →
truth →
unix →
wiki →
ARTICLE TYPES
essay →
feed →
help →
system →
wiki →
ARTICLE ORIGINS
critical →
forked →
imported →
original →
Cornish language
please note:
- the content below is remote from Wikipedia
- it has been imported raw for GetWiki
{{Short description|Brythonic Celtic language spoken in Cornwall}}{{For|the Cornish dialect and accent of English|Cornish dialect}}{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2021}}- the content below is remote from Wikipedia
- it has been imported raw for GetWiki
| factoids | |
|---|---|
- {{IPA|kw|kəɾˈnuËÉ™k|}} {{Small|()}}
- {{IPA|kw|kəɾˈnɛʊək|}} {{Small|()}}
- {{IPA|kw|kəɹˈnuËÉ™k|}} {{Small|()}}
- {{IPA|kw|kəɹˈnɛʊək|}} {{Small|()}}
- {{IPA|kw|kəɾˈnɔʊək|}} {{Small|()}}
- {{IPA|kw|kəɹˈnɔʊək|}} {{Small|()}}
Classification
Cornish is a Southwestern Brittonic language,BOOK, Schrijver, Peter, Peter Schrijver,weblink Studies in British Celtic historical phonology, 1995, Rodopi, 9051838204, Amsterdam, 12, 33209243, a branch of the Insular Celtic section of the Celtic language family, which is a sub-family of the Indo-European language family.WEB, Glottolog 4.4 - Cornish,weblink 21 September 2021, Glottolog, Brittonic also includes Welsh, Breton, Cumbric and possibly Pictish, the last two of which are extinct. Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Manx are part of the separate Goidelic branch of Insular Celtic.Joseph Loth viewed Cornish and Breton as being two dialects of the same language, claiming that "Middle Cornish is without doubt closer to Breton as a whole than the modern Breton dialect of Quiberon [] is to that of Saint-Pol-de-Léon []."JOURNAL, Williams, Nicholas J. A., The Preterite in Cornish, Cornish Studies, 2010, 18, Second Series, 201, 10.1386/corn.18.1.179_1, Also, Kenneth Jackson argued that it is almost certain that Cornish and Breton would have been mutually intelligible as long as Cornish was a living language, and that Cornish and Breton are especially closely related to each other and less closely related to Welsh.{{sfn|Jackson|1953|p=12}}History
(File:Cornish language shift.svg|right|thumb|upright=1.1|A map showing the westward decline of Cornish, 1300–1750)Cornish evolved from the Common Brittonic spoken throughout Britain south of the Firth of Forth during the British Iron Age and Roman period. As a result of westward Anglo-Saxon expansion, the Britons of the southwest were separated from those in modern-day Wales and Cumbria, which Jackson links to the defeat of the Britons at the Battle of Deorham in about 577.{{sfn|Jackson|1953|p=18}} The western dialects eventually evolved into modern Welsh and the now extinct Cumbric, while Southwestern Brittonic developed into Cornish and Breton, the latter as a result of emigration to parts of the continent, known as Brittany over the following centuries.{{sfn|Jackson|1953|p=19}}Old Cornish
The area controlled by the southwestern Britons was progressively reduced by the expansion of Wessex over the next few centuries. During the Old Cornish (){{sfn|George|2009|p=343}} period (800–1200), the Cornish-speaking area was largely coterminous with modern-day Cornwall, after the Saxons had taken over Devon in their south-westward advance, which probably was facilitated by a second migration wave to Brittany that resulted in the partial depopulation of Devon.{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|pp=410–468}}(File:Vocabularium Cornicum BL MS Cotton Vespasian A xiv 7r.jpg|thumb|right|The first page of , a 12th-century Latin-Cornish glossary)The earliest written record of the Cornish language comes from this period: a 9th-century gloss in a Latin manuscript of by Boethius, which used the words . The phrase may mean "it [the mind] hated the gloomy places",WEB,weblink Oxford scholars detect earliest record of Cornish, 15 June 2006, 8 February 2016, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20060925181724weblink">weblink 25 September 2006, JOURNAL, Sims-Williams, P., Patrick Sims-Williams, Winter 2005, A New Brittonic Gloss on Boethius: ud rocashaas, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 50, 77–86, or alternatively, as Andrew Breeze suggests, "she hated the land".JOURNAL, Breeze, A., 1 December 2007, The Old Cornish Gloss on Boethius,weblink Notes and Queries, 54, 4, 367–368, 10.1093/notesj/gjm184, 0029-3970, Other sources from this period include the Saints' List, a list of almost fifty Cornish saints,JOURNAL, Olson, B. Lynette, 1996, Note: The tenth-century List of Cornish parochial saints' names in Codex Vaticanus Reg. Lat. 191,weblink Parergon, 13, 2, 179–181, 10.1353/pgn.1996.0016, 144542278, 1832-8334, the Bodmin manumissions, which is a list of manumittors and slaves, the latter with mostly Cornish names,JOURNAL, Stokes, Whitley, The manumissions in the Bodmin Gospels, Revue Celtique, 1, 332–345, and, more substantially, a Latin-Cornish glossary (the or Cottonian Vocabulary), a Cornish translation of Ælfric of Eynsham's Latin-Old English Glossary,BOOK, Blom, Alderik H., Multilingualism in Medieval Britain (C. 1066-1520), Multilingualism and the Vocabularium Cornicum, 2012,weblink Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 15, 59–71, Turnhout, Brepols Publishers, 10.1484/m.tcne-eb.1.100793, 9782503542508, 18 September 2021, which is thematically arranged into several groups, such as the Genesis creation narrative, anatomy, church hierarchy, the family, names for various kinds of artisans and their tools, flora, fauna, and household items.JOURNAL, Mills, Jon, 2013, The Vocabularium Cornicum: a Cornish vocabulary?,weblink 60, 1, 141–150, 10.1515/zcph.2013.009, 161927698, 1865-889X, JOURNAL, Padel, Oliver, 2014, The nature and date of the Old Cornish Vocabulary, 61, 1, 191, 10.1515/zcph.2014.009, 164677429, 1865-889X, The manuscript was widely thought to be in Old Welsh until the 18th century when it was identified as Cornish by Edward Lhuyd.{{sfn|Padel|2014}} Some Brittonic glosses in the 9th-century colloquy were once identified as Old Cornish, but they are more likely Old Welsh, possibly influenced by a Cornish scribe.{{citation |first=Alexander |last=Falileyev |title=De raris fabulis |encyclopedia=Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia |editor-first=John C. |editor-last=Koch |publisher=ABC-CLIO |date=2006 |pages=575–577}}.
No single phonological feature distinguishes Cornish from both Welsh and Breton until the beginning of the assibilation of dental stops in Cornish, which is not found before the second half of the eleventh century,{{sfn|Jackson|1953|p=21}} and it is not always possible to distinguish Old Cornish, Old Breton, and Old Welsh orthographically.BOOK, Chaudhri, Talat,weblink Studies in the consonantal system of Cornish, 2007, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 2–3, 828579430,
Middle Cornish
(File:Origo Mundi kynsa gwersow.jpg|thumb|right|The opening verses of , the first play of the (the of medieval Cornish literature), written by an unknown monk in the late 14th century)File:Beunans Meriasek (The life of St Meriasek) (f.56v.) Middle Cornish Saint's Play.jpg|thumb| (The life of St. MeriasekMeriasekThe Cornish language continued to flourish well through the Middle Cornish (){{sfn|George|2009|p=343}} period (1200–1600), reaching a peak of about 39,000 speakers in the 13th century, after which the number started to decline.JOURNAL, George, Ken, Ken George, 1986, How many people spoke Cornish traditionally?, Cornish Studies, 14, 67–70, This period provided the bulk of traditional Cornish literature, and was used to reconstruct the language during its revival. Most important is the , a cycle of three mystery plays, , and . Together these provide about 8,734 lines of text. The three plays exhibit a mixture of English and Brittonic influences, and, like other Cornish literature, may have been written at Glasney College near Penryn.{{citation |last=Padel |first=O.J. |title=Ordinalia |date=3 August 2017 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118396957.wbemlb247 |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain |pages=1–2 |editor1-last=Rouse |editor1-first=Robert |place=Oxford, UK |publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd |doi=10.1002/9781118396957.wbemlb247 |isbn=9781118396957 |access-date=16 September 2021 |editor2-last=Echard |editor2-first=Sian |editor3-last=Fulton |editor3-first=Helen |editor4-last=Rector |editor4-first=Geoff}} From this period also are the hagiographical dramas (The Life of Meriasek) and (The Life of Ke), both of which feature as an antagonist the villainous and tyrannical King Tewdar (or Teudar), a historical medieval king in Armorica and Cornwall, who, in these plays, has been interpreted as a lampoon of either of the Tudor kings Henry VII or Henry VIII.BOOK, Mills, Jon, 2012, Depiction of Tyranny in the Cornish Miracle Plays: Tenor, Code Switching and Sociolinguistic Variables, Ilteangach, ilseiftiúil: FéilscrÃbhinn in ómós do Nicholas Williams – A festschrift in Honour of Nicholas Williams, 139–157,weblink 10.13140/RG.2.1.1558.0882, Others are the Charter Fragment, the earliest known continuous text in the Cornish language, apparently part of a play about a medieval marriage,BOOK, Toorians, Lauran,weblink The Middle Cornish: Charter endorsement: the making of a marriage in medieval Cornwall, 1991, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 614930826, and (The Passion of Our Lord), a poem probably intended for personal worship, were written during this period, probably in the second half of the 14th century.BOOK,weblink The Charter fragment and Pascon agan arluth, 2020, Alan M., Kent, Michael, Everson, Nicholas, Williams, 9781782011828, Dundee, 1144791918, Evertype, Another important text, the , was realized to be Cornish in 1949, having previously been incorrectly classified as Welsh. It is the longest text in the traditional Cornish language, consisting of around 30,000 words of continuous prose. This text is a late 16th century translation of twelve of Bishop Bonner's thirteen homilies by a certain John Tregear, tentatively identified as a vicar of St Allen from Crowan,JOURNAL, Frost, D. H., 1 May 2007, Glasney's Parish Clergy and the Tregear Manuscript,weblink Cornish Studies, 15, 1, 27–89, 10.1386/corn.15.1.27_1, 1352-271X, and has an additional catena, Sacrament an Alter, added later by his fellow priest, Thomas Stephyn.BOOK, Classen, Albrecht,weblink Handbook of Medieval Studies Terms - Methods - Trends, De Gruyter Lexikon, De Gruyter, 29 November 2010, 9783110215588, 371–372, 775645348, In the reign of Henry VIII, an account was given by Andrew Boorde in his 1542 . He states, ""BOOK, Jenner, Henry, Henry Jenner, 1904, A Handbook of the Cornish Language Chiefly in Its Latest Stages with Some Account of Its History and Literature, London, David Nutt, When Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity 1549, which established the 1549 edition of the English Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal form of worship in England, including Cornwall, people in many areas of Cornwall did not speak or understand English. The passing of this Act was one of the causes of the Prayer Book Rebellion (which may also have been influenced by the retaliation of the English after the failed Cornish Rebellion of 1497), with "the commoners of Devonshyre and Cornwall" producing a manifesto demanding a return to the old religious services and included an article that concluded, "and so we the Cornyshe men (whereof certen of us understande no Englysh) utterly refuse thys newe Englysh."BOOK, Fletcher, Anthony, Diarmaid, MacCulloch,weblink Tudor rebellions, 2008, Pearson Longman, 9781405874328, 5th, Harlow, Essex, 152, 213080705, In response to their articles, the government spokesman (either Philip Nichols or Nicholas Udall) wondered why they did not just ask the king for a version of the liturgy in their own language.BOOK, Ó hAnnracháin, Tadgh, Armstrong, Robert Matthew,weblink Christianities in the Early Modern Celtic World, 30 July 2014, 9781137306340, 76, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1020678113, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer asked why the Cornishmen should be offended by holding the service in English, when they had before held it in Latin, which even fewer of them could understand.BOOK, Ridley, Jasper, Jasper Ridley,weblink Thomas Cranmer, 2013, 9781447241287, Bello, London, 970603152, Anthony Fletcher points out that this rebellion was primarily motivated by religious and economic, rather than linguistic, concerns.BOOK, Fletcher, Anthony,weblink Tudor rebellions, 2008, Pearson Longman, Diarmaid, MacCulloch, 9781405874328, 5th, Harlow, Essex, 65, 213080705, The rebellion prompted a heavy-handed response from the government, and 5,500 people died during the fighting and the rebellion's aftermath. Government officials then directed troops under the command of Sir Anthony Kingston to carry out pacification operations throughout the West Country. Kingston subsequently ordered the executions of numerous individuals suspected of involvement with the rebellion as part of the post-rebellion reprisals.BOOK, A. L. Rowse, Rowse, A. L., Tudor Cornwall: Portrait of a Society, Jonathan Cape, London, 1941, 282–286, The rebellion eventually proved a turning-point for the Cornish language, as the authorities came to associate it with sedition and "backwardness". This proved to be one of the reasons why the Book of Common Prayer was never translated into Cornish (unlike Welsh), as proposals to do so were suppressed in the rebellion's aftermath. The failure to translate the Book of Common Prayer into Cornish led to the language's rapid decline during the 16th and 17th centuries.BOOK, James Whetter, Whetter, James, The History of Glasney College, Tabb House, 1988, JOURNAL, Mills, Jon, 2010, Genocide and Ethnocide: The Suppression of the Cornish Language,weblinkweblink 12 October 2018, live, Interfaces in Language, 189–206, 10.13140/2.1.1439.5843, Peter Berresford Ellis cites the years 1550–1650 as a century of immense damage for the language, and its decline can be traced to this period. In 1680 William Scawen wrote an essay describing 16 reasons for the decline of Cornish, among them the lack of a distinctive Cornish alphabet, the loss of contact between Cornwall and Brittany, the cessation of the miracle plays, loss of records in the Civil War, lack of a Cornish Bible and immigration to Cornwall.BOOK,weblink The Cornish Language and Its Literature, Peter Berresford, Ellis, Peter Berresford Ellis, 1 January 1974, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Google Books, 9780710079282, Mark Stoyle, however, has argued that the 'glotticide' of the Cornish language was mainly a result of the Cornish gentry adopting English to dissociate themselves from the reputation for disloyalty and rebellion associated with the Cornish language since the 1497 uprising.BOOK, Stoyle, Mark,weblink West Britons: Cornish identities and the early modern British state, 2002, University of Exeter Press, 0859896870, 45, 48154341,Late Cornish
(File:Lether Bodinar.jpg|thumb|right|upright|William Bodinar's letter, dated 3 July 1776)By the middle of the 17th century, the language had retreated to Penwith and Kerrier, and transmission of the language to new generations had almost entirely ceased. In his Survey of Cornwall, published in 1602, Richard Carew writes:[M]ost of the inhabitants can speak no word of Cornish, but very few are ignorant of the English; and yet some so affect their own, as to a stranger they will not speak it; for if meeting them by chance, you inquire the way, or any such matter, your answer shall be, "," "I [will] speak no Saxonage."BOOK, Carew, Richard, Carew's Survey of Cornwall: to which are added, notes illustrative of its history and antiquities,weblink 13 February 2013, 1811, T. Bensley for J. Faulder, 152, Google Books, The Late Cornish (){{sfn|George|2009|p=343}} period from 1600 to about 1800 has a less substantial body of literature than the Middle Cornish period, but the sources are more varied in nature, including songs, poems about fishing and curing pilchards, and various translations of verses from the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed.{{sfn|Chaudhri|2007|pp=10-11}} Edward Lhuyd's Archaeologia Britannica, which was mainly recorded in the field from native speakers in the early 1700s, and his unpublished field notebook are seen as important sources of Cornish vocabulary, some of which are not found in any other source.{{sfn|Chaudhri|2007|p=9}} Archaeologia Britannica also features a complete version of a traditional folk tale, John of Chyanhor, a short story about a man from St Levan who goes far to the east seeking work, eventually returning home after three years to find that his wife has borne him a child during his absence.BOOK, Lhuyd, Edward, Edward Lhuyd, Archaeologia Britannica, 1: Glossography, 1707, 251–253, In 1776, William Bodinar, who describes himself as having learned Cornish from old fishermen when he was a boy, wrote a letter to Daines Barrington in Cornish, with an English translation, which was probably the last prose written in the traditional language. In his letter, he describes the sociolinguistics of the Cornish language at the time, stating that there are no more than four or five old people in his village who can still speak Cornish, concluding with the remark that Cornish is no longer known by young people.JOURNAL, Pool, P. A. S.,weblink William Bodinar's letter, 1776, 1975, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 927038181, However, the last recorded traditional Cornish literature may have been the Cranken Rhyme,BOOK, Zafar, Chaudhri Talat,weblink Studies in the consonantal system of Cornish, 17, 1119992761, BOOK, Lipoński, Wojciech,weblink Landmarks in British History and Culture: A Monograph of Selected Issues, 2016, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM / Adam Mickiewicz University, "Seria Filologia Angielska" No. 47, 9788323231103, 2nd, Poznań, 54, 986071821, a corrupted version of a verse or song published in the late 19th century by John Hobson Matthews, recorded orally by John Davey (or Davy) of Boswednack, of uncertain date but probably originally composed during the last years of the traditional language. Davey had traditional knowledge of at least some Cornish.JOURNAL, Payton, Philip, 1 May 2011, Introduction,weblink Cornish Studies, 19, 1, 1–8, 10.1386/corn.19.1.1_2, 1352-271X, John Kelynack (1796–1885), a fisherman of Newlyn, was sought by philologists for old Cornish words and technical phrases in the 19th century.NEWS, Death of Mr John Kelynack, of Newlyn, The Cornishman, 356, 14 May 1885, 5,Decline of Cornish speakers between 1300 and 1800
File:Dorothy Pentreath.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.15|alt=A black and white engraving of a woman in 18th century clothing with a bonnet. Fish, a crab, a crustacean and a jug are belowIt is difficult to state with certainty when Cornish ceased to be spoken, due to the fact that its last speakers were of relatively low social class and that the definition of what constitutes "a living language" is not clear cut. Peter Pool argues that by 1800 nobody was using Cornish as a daily language and no evidence exists of anyone capable of conversing in the language at that date.BOOK, Pool, Peter, The Death of Cornish, 1975, County Museum, Truro,weblink 16 January 2022, However, passive speakers, semi-speakers and rememberers, who retain some competence in the language despite not being fluent nor using the language in daily life, generally survive even longer.The traditional view that Dolly Pentreath (1692–1777) was the last native speaker of Cornish has been challenged, and in the 18th and 19th centuries there was academic interest in the language and in attempting to find the last speaker of Cornish. It has been suggested that, whereas Pentreath was probably the last monolingual speaker, the last native speaker may have been John Davey of Zennor, who died in 1891.BOOK, Grenoble, Lenore A.,weblink Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization, 2006, Lindsay J., Whaley, 9780511130892, Cambridge University Press, 46, 62410803, However, although it is clear Davey possessed some traditional knowledge in addition to having read books on Cornish, accounts differ of his competence in the language. Some contemporaries stated he was able to converse on certain topics in Cornish whereas others affirmed they had never heard him claim to be able to do so. Robert Morton Nance, who reworked and translated Davey's Cranken Rhyme, remarked, "There can be no doubt, after the evidence of this rhyme, of what there was to lose by neglecting John Davey."JOURNAL, Lowenna, Sharon, 1 May 2011, Charles Rogers' 'Vocabulary of the Cornish Language', the Rylands Vocabulary, and gatherers of pre-'Revival' fragments,weblink Cornish Studies, 19, 1, 105–122, 10.1386/corn.19.1.105_1, 1352-271X, The search for the last speaker is hampered by a lack of transcriptions or audio recordings, so that it is impossible to tell from this distance whether the language these people were reported to be speaking was Cornish, or English with a heavy Cornish substratum, nor what their level of fluency was. Nevertheless this academic interest, along with the beginning of the Celtic Revival in the late 19th century, provided the groundwork for a Cornish language revival movement.Notwithstanding the uncertainty over who was the last speaker of Cornish, researchers have posited the following numbers for the prevalence of the language between 1050 and 1800.JOURNAL, Stalmaszczyk, Piotr, 1997, Cornish Language and Literature: A brief introduction,weblink Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Anglica, 3, 1999, 117–127, {| class="wikitable"Revived Cornish
{{See also|Cornish language revival}}In 1904, the Celtic language scholar and Cornish cultural activist Henry Jenner published A Handbook of the Cornish Language. The publication of this book is often considered to be the point at which the revival movement started. Jenner wrote about the Cornish language in 1905, "one may fairly say that most of what there was of it has been preserved, and that it has been continuously preserved, for there has never been a time when there were not some Cornishmen who knew some Cornish."JOURNAL, Jenner, Henry, 1905, Cornwall a Celtic Nation,weblink The Celtic Review, 1, 3, 234–246, 10.2307/30069809, 30069809, The revival focused on reconstructing and standardising the language, including coining new words for modern concepts, and creating educational material in order to teach Cornish to others. In 1929 Robert Morton Nance published his Unified Cornish (){{sfn|George|2009|p=343}} system, based on the Middle Cornish literature while extending the attested vocabulary with neologisms and forms based on Celtic roots also found in Breton and Welsh, publishing a dictionary in 1938.BOOK, Mills, Jon,weblink A Short History of Cornish Lexicography, 2016, Jagiellonian University Press, 1078987354, Nance's work became the basis of revived Cornish (){{sfn|George|2009|p=343}} for most of the 20th century. During the 1970s, criticism of Nance's system, including the inconsistent orthography and unpredictable correspondence between spelling and pronunciation, as well as on other grounds such as the archaic basis of Unified and a lack of emphasis on the spoken language,BOOK, Richard, Gendall,weblink Kernewek bew, 1972, Kesva an Taves Kernewek, 1169991198, resulted in the creation of several rival systems. In the 1980s, Ken George published a new system, ('Common Cornish'), based on a reconstruction of the phonological system of Middle Cornish, but with an approximately morphophonemic orthography.BOOK, Williams, N. J. A., Celtic Linguistics / Ieithyddiaeth Geltaidd, A Problem in Cornish Phonology, 1990,weblink Current Issues in Linguistic Theory No. 68, 68, 241, Ball, Martin J., Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 10.1075/cilt.68.20wil, 9789027235657, 18 September 2021, Fife, James, Poppe, Erich, Rowland, Jenny, It was subsequently adopted by the Cornish Language Board{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=757}} and was the written form used by a reported 54.5% of all Cornish language users according to a survey in 2008,BOOK, Burley, Stuart, 2008, Report on the Cornish language survey conducted by the Cornish language Partnership, but was heavily criticised for a variety of reasons by Jon Mills and Nicholas Williams, including making phonological distinctions that they state were not made in the traditional language {{circa|1500}}, failing to make distinctions that they believe were made in the traditional language at this time, and the use of an orthography that deviated too far from the traditional texts and Unified Cornish.BOOK, Reconstructive Phonology and Contrastive Lexicology: Problems with the Gerlyver Kernewek Kemmyn, Mills, 1999, University of Exeter Press, 1078438372, BOOK, Cornish today: An examination of the revived language, Williams, Nicholas, 2006, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 9781904808077, 3rd, Westport, Co. Mayo, 80332199, Also during this period, Richard Gendall created his Modern Cornish system (also known as Revived Late Cornish), which used Late Cornish as a basis,BOOK, Grenoble, Lenore A.,weblink Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization, 2009, Cambridge University Press, 9780521816212, 1225224133, {{rp|46}} and Nicholas Williams published a revised version of Unified;{{rp|46}} however neither of these systems gained the popularity of Unified or Kemmyn.The revival entered a period of factionalism and public disputes, with each orthography attempting to push the others aside. By the time that Cornish was recognised by the UK government under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2002, it had become recognised that the existence of multiple orthographies was unsustainable with regards to using the language in education and public life, as none had achieved a wide consensus. A process of unification was set about which resulted in the creation of the public-body Cornish Language Partnership in 2005 and agreement on a Standard Written Form in 2008.NEWS, Morris, Jonathan,weblink Breakthrough for Cornish language, BBC News Online, 19 May 2008, 11 November 2012, NEWS,weblink Standard Cornish spelling agreed, BBC News Online, 19 May 2008, 11 November 2012, In 2010 a new milestone was reached when UNESCO altered its classification of Cornish, stating that its previous label of "extinct" was no longer accurate.Geographic distribution and number of speakers
File:Penzansagasdynerghcrop.jpeg|thumb|right|Cornish can be seen in many places in CornwallCornwallSpeakers of Cornish reside primarily in Cornwall, which has a population of 563,600 (2017 estimate). There are also some speakers living outside Cornwall, particularly in the countries of the Cornish diaspora, as well as in other Celtic nations. Estimates of the number of Cornish speakers vary according to the definition of a speaker, and is difficult to determine accurately due to the individualised nature of language take-up. Nevertheless, there is recognition that the number of Cornish speakers is growing. From before the 1980s to the end of the 20th century there was a sixfold increase in the number of speakers to around 300.JOURNAL, Ferdinand, Siarl, 2 December 2013, A Brief History of the Cornish Language, its Revival and its Current Status,weblink E-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies, 2, 199–227, 1540-4889, 11 July 2018, One figure for the number of people who know a few basic words, such as knowing that "Kernow" means "Cornwall", was 300,000; the same survey gave the number of people able to have simple conversations as 3,000.BOOK, Rebuilding the Celtic Languages: Reversing Language Shift in the Celtic Countries, Diarmuid, O'Neill, 242,weblink Y Lolfa, 0862437237, 2005, Google Books, The Cornish Language Strategy project commissioned research to provide quantitative and qualitative evidence for the number of Cornish speakers: due to the success of the revival project it was estimated that 2,000 people were fluent (surveyed in spring 2008), an increase from the estimated 300 people who spoke Cornish fluently suggested in a study by Kenneth MacKinnon in 2000.NEWS, 'South West: TeachingEnglish: British Council: BBC,weblink 9 February 2010, 2010, TeachingEnglish.orgn, BBC / British Council, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20100108190250weblink">weblink 8 January 2010, NEWS, First Cornish-speaking creche is inspired by example set in Wales,weblink 18 January 2010, 16 January 2010, WalesOnline, Welsh Media Ltd, WEB,weblink Mode of Use,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090327121248weblink">weblink 27 March 2009, Jenefer Lowe of the Cornish Language Partnership said in an interview with the BBC in 2010 that there were around 300 fluent speakers.NEWS,weblink Cornish language no longer extinct, says UN, BBC News, 7 December 2010, Bert Biscoe, a councillor and bard, in a statement to the Western Morning News in 2014 said there were "several hundred fluent speakers".WEB, Brooks, Richard, The Cornish Language: In Danger or Flourishing?,weblink 23 July 2019, 18 November 2014, Cornwall Council estimated in 2015 that there were 300–400 fluent speakers who used the language regularly, with 5,000 people having a basic conversational ability in the language.NEWS, Harley, Nicola, Council splashes out £180,000 to try to stop the Cornish language dying out,weblinkweblink 12 January 2022, subscription, live, 1 July 2017, The Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2015, {{cbignore}}A report on the 2011 Census published in 2013 by the Office for National Statistics placed the number of speakers at somewhere between 325 and 625.WEB,weblink Language in England and Wales: 2011, ons.gov.uk, Office for National Statistics, 7 April 2017,weblink 29 July 2014, dead, In 2017 the ONS released data based on the 2011 Census that placed the number of speakers at 557 people in England and Wales who declared Cornish to be their main language, 464 of whom lived in Cornwall.WEB, Number of Welsh, Gaelic, Irish and Cornish speakers from the 2011 Census,weblink ONS.gov.uk, Office for National Statistics, 2 June 2018, 9 June 2017, The 2021 census listed the number of Cornish speakers at 563.WEB, Main language (detailed),weblink ONS.gov.uk, Office for National Statistics, 18 August 2023, (UK 2021 Census)A study that appeared in 2018 established the number of people in Cornwall with at least minimal skills in Cornish, such as the use of some words and phrases, to be more than 3,000, including around 500 estimated to be fluent.JOURNAL, Ferdinand, Siarl, The Promotion of Cornish in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly: Attitudes towards the Language and Recommendations for Policy, 2018, Studia Celtica Fennica, 19, 107–130, 10.33353/scf.79496, free, The Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter is working with the Cornish Language Partnership to study the Cornish language revival of the 20th century, including the growth in number of speakers.WEB, Celtic Revival,weblink Humanities.Exeter.ac.uk, University of Exeter, 3 July 2018,Legal status and recognition
File:View south from Carn Brea beacon, West Penwith - geograph.org.uk - 51844.jpg|thumb|The view from Carn Brea beacon () in Penwith (), near Crows-an-Wra (), looking towards the village of Treave () with PorthcurnoPorthcurnoIn 2002, Cornish was recognized by the UK government under Part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=769}} UNESCO's Atlas of World Languages classifies Cornish as "critically endangered". UNESCO has said that a previous classification of 'extinct' "does not reflect the current situation for Cornish" and is "no longer accurate".Within the UK
Cornwall Council's policy is to support the language, in line with the European Charter. A motion was passed in November 2009 in which the council promoted the inclusion of Cornish, as appropriate and where possible, in council publications and on signs.WEB, Birch, Sophie, Cornwall cultural strategy evidence report,weblink Cornwall Council, 19 April 2018, 24, March 2010, This plan has drawn some criticism.WEB,weblink Dyslexic councillor says Cornish language road signs could prove dangerous for drivers, Plymouth Herald, 21 July 2014, 29 July 2014,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140729230737weblink">weblink 29 July 2014, dead, In October 2015, The council announced that staff would be encouraged to use "basic words and phrases" in Cornish when dealing with the public.NEWS, Elgot, Jessica, Cornwall council plans to encourage staff to speak Cornish,weblink The Guardian, 7 October 2015, In 2021 Cornwall Council prohibited a marriage ceremony from being conducted in Cornish as the Marriage Act 1949 only allowed for marriage ceremonies in English or Welsh.NEWS,weblink Couple cannot have a Cornish language wedding, 26 February 2021, BBC News, In 2014, the Cornish people were recognised by the UK Government as a national minority under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.NEWS, Milmo, Cahal, Cornish to be recognised as a national minority along with Scots, Welsh and Irish,weblink 3 February 2019, The Independent, 23 April 2014, The FCNM provides certain rights and protections to a national minority with regard to their minority language.BOOK,weblink Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 1 February 1995, In 2016, British government funding for the Cornish language ceased, and responsibility transferred to Cornwall Council.NEWS, Cornish language funding stopped by government,weblink BBC News, 21 April 2016,Orthography
{{Further|International Phonetic Alphabet#Brackets and transcription delimiters}}Old Cornish orthography
Until around the middle of the 11th century, Old Cornish scribes used a traditional spelling system shared with Old Breton and Old Welsh, based on the pronunciation of British Latin.{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=495}}{{sfn|Jackson|1953|p=67}} By the time of the , usually dated to around 1100, Old English spelling conventions, such as the use of thorn (Þ, þ) and eth (Ã, ð) for dental fricatives, and wynn (Ç·, Æ¿) for /w/, had come into use, allowing documents written at this time to be distinguished from Old Welsh, which rarely uses these characters, and Old Breton, which does not use them at all.{{sfn|Jackson|1953|pp=67-68}} Old Cornish features include using initial ⟨ch⟩, ⟨c⟩, or ⟨k⟩ for /k/, and, in internal and final position, ⟨p⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨c⟩, ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩, and ⟨g⟩ are generally used for the phonemes /b/, /d/, /É¡/, /β/, /ð/, and /É£/ respectively, meaning that the results of Brittonic lenition are not usually apparent from the orthography at this time.{{sfn|Jackson|1953|p=68}}{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=495}}Middle Cornish orthography
Middle Cornish orthography has a significant level of variation, and shows influence from Middle English spelling practices.JOURNAL, Bock, Albert, 2010, Nucleus Length and Vocalic Alternation in Cornish Diphthongs, Die Sprache, 48, 1–2, 34–43, 10.13173/SPR.48.1-2.034, Yogh (Èœ È) is used in certain Middle Cornish texts, where it is used to represent a variety of sounds, including the dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/, a usage which is unique to Middle Cornish and is never found in Middle English.{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=496}}BOOK, Mills, Jon,weblink Reconstructive Phonology and Contrastive Lexicology: Problems with the Gerlyver Kernewek Kemmyn, 1999, University of Exeter Press, 1078438372, Middle Cornish scribes tend to use ⟨c⟩ for /k/ before back vowels, and ⟨k⟩ for /k/ before front vowels, though this is not always true, and this rule is less consistent in certain texts.{{sfn|Williams|2016}} Middle Cornish scribes almost universally use ⟨wh⟩ to represent /Ê/ (or /hw/), as in Middle English. Middle Cornish, especially towards the end of this period, tends to use orthographic ⟨g⟩ and ⟨b⟩ in word-final position in stressed monosyllables, and ⟨k⟩ and ⟨p⟩ in word-final position in unstressed final syllables, to represent the reflexes of late Brittonic /É¡/ and /b/, respectively.BOOK, Williams, Nicholas,weblink The Cornish consonantal system: Implications for the revival, 2016, Evertype, 9781782011859, 1017761062,Late Cornish orthography
Written sources from this period are often spelled following English spelling conventions since many of the writers of the time had not been exposed to Middle Cornish texts or the Cornish orthography within them. Around 1700, Edward Lhuyd visited Cornwall, introducing his own partly phonetic orthography that he used in his , which was adopted by some local writers, leading to the use of some Lhuydian features such as the use of circumflexes to denote long vowels, ⟨k⟩ before front vowels, word-final ⟨i⟩, and the use of ⟨dh⟩ to represent the voiced dental fricative /ð/.{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|pp=496–497}}Revived Cornish orthography
After the publication of Jenner's Handbook of the Cornish Language, the earliest revivalists used Jenner's orthography, which was influenced by Lhuyd's system. This system was abandoned following the development by Nance of a "unified spelling", later known as Unified Cornish, a system based on a standardization of the orthography of the early Middle Cornish texts.JOURNAL, Davies-Deacon, Merryn, 28 August 2017, Names, Varieties and Ideologies in Revived Cornish, Studia Celtica Posnaniensia, 2, 1, 85, 10.1515/scp-2017-0005, 171451822, 2451-4160, free, Nance's system was used by almost all Revived Cornish speakers and writers until the 1970s.BOOK, Williams, Nicholas,weblink Clappya Kernowek: an introduction to Unified Cornish Revised, 1997, Agan Tavas, the Society for the Promotion of the Cornish Language, 1901409015, 5, 38886149, Criticism of Nance's system, particularly the relationship of spelling to sounds and the phonological basis of Unified Cornish, resulted in rival orthographies appearing by the early 1980s,JOURNAL, Davies-Deacon, Merryn, 28 August 2017, Names, Varieties and Ideologies in Revived Cornish, Studia Celtica Posnaniensia, 2, 1, 81–95, 10.1515/scp-2017-0005, 171451822, 2451-4160, free, including Gendal's Modern Cornish, based on Late Cornish native writers and Lhuyd, and Ken George's Kernewek Kemmyn, a mainly morphophonemic orthography based on George's reconstruction of Middle Cornish {{circa|1500}}, which features a number of orthographic, and phonological, distinctions not found in Unified Cornish.BOOK, George, Ken,weblink The pronunciation and spelling of revived Cornish., 1986, Kesva an Taves Kernewek, 868707844, Kernewek Kemmyn is characterised by the use of universal ⟨k⟩ for /k/ (instead of ⟨c⟩ before back vowels as in Unified); ⟨hw⟩ for /hw/, instead of ⟨wh⟩ as in Unified; and ⟨y⟩, ⟨oe⟩, and ⟨eu⟩ to represent the phonemes /ɪ/, /o/, and /œ/ respectively, which are not found in Unified Cornish. Criticism of all of these systems, especially Kernewek Kemmyn, by Nicolas Williams,BOOK, Williams, Nicholas,weblink Cornish today: an examination of the revived language, 2006, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 9781904808077, 3rd, Westport, Co. Mayo, 80332199, resulted in the creation of Unified Cornish Revised, a modified version of Nance's orthography, featuring: an additional phoneme not distinguished by Nance, "ö in German ", represented in the UCR orthography by ⟨ue⟩; replacement of ⟨y⟩ with ⟨e⟩ in many words; internal ⟨h⟩ rather than ⟨gh⟩; and use of final ⟨b⟩, ⟨g⟩, and ⟨dh⟩ in stressed monosyllables.{{sfn|Williams|1997|p=12–13}} A Standard Written Form, intended as a compromise orthography for official and educational purposes, was introduced in 2008, although a number of previous orthographic systems remain in use and, in response to the publication of the SWF, another new orthography, Kernowek Standard, was created, mainly by Nicholas Williams and Michael Everson, which is proposed as an amended version of the Standard Written Form.BOOK, Nicholas, Williams,weblink Desky kernowek: a complete guide to Cornish, 2012, xx-xxi, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 9781904808992, 793690262,Phonology
The phonological system of Old Cornish, inherited from Proto-Southwestern Brittonic and originally differing little from Old Breton and Old Welsh, underwent various changes during its Middle and Late phases, eventually resulting in several characteristics not found in the other Brittonic languages. The first sound change to distinguish Cornish from both Breton and Welsh, the assibilation of the dental stops {{IPA|/t/}} and {{IPA|/d/}} in medial and final position, had begun by the time of the , {{circa|1100}} or earlier.{{sfn|Jackson|1953|p=699}} This change, and the subsequent, or perhaps dialectical, palatalization (or occasional rhotacization in a few words) of these sounds, results in orthographic forms such as Middle Cornish 'father', Late Cornish (Welsh ), Middle Cornish 'believe', Late Cornish (Welsh ), and Middle Cornish 'leave', Late Cornish (Welsh ).{{sfn|Chaudhri|2007}} A further characteristic sound change, pre-occlusion, occurred during the 16th century, resulting in the nasals {{IPA|/nn/}} and {{IPA|/mm/}} being realised as {{IPA|[ᵈn]}} and {{IPA|[ᵇm]}} respectively in stressed syllables, and giving Late Cornish forms such as 'head' (Welsh ) and 'crooked' (Welsh ).{{sfn|Chaudhri|2007}}As a revitalised language, the phonology of contemporary spoken Cornish is based on a number of sources,BOOK, Mills, Jon,weblink Reconstructive Phonology and Contrastive Lexicology: Problems with the Gerlyver Kernewek Kemmyn, 1999, University of Exeter Press, 1078987283, including various reconstructions of the sound system of middle and early modern Cornish based on an analysis of internal evidence such as the orthography and rhyme used in the historical texts,{{sfn|Schrijver|1995}}BOOK, Wmffre, Iwan,weblink Late Cornish, 1998, Lincom Europa, 9783895861222, 249114049, comparison with the other Brittonic languages Breton and Welsh,BOOK, Ball, Martin J.,weblink Celtic Linguistics/ Ieithyddiaeth Geltaidd: Readings in the Brythonic Languages. Festschrift for T. Arwyn Watkins., 1990, John Benjamins Pub. Co., 9789027278302, 242, 759101335, BOOK, Ellis, Peter Berresford, Peter Berresford Ellis,weblink The Cornish language and its literature, 1974, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 0710079281, London, 194, 1256181, and the work of the linguist Edward Lhuyd, who visited Cornwall in 1700 and recorded the language in a partly phonetic orthography.BOOK, Lhuyd, Edward, Edward Lhuyd, Dewi W., Evans, Brynley F., Roberts, Brynley F. Roberts,weblink Archaeologia Britannica: Texts & Translations, 2009, Celtic Studies Publications – Cymru Cyf, 9781891271144, Aberystwyth, 339162016, {{sfn|Chaudhri|2007|p=68}}Vocabulary
Cornish is a Celtic language, and the majority of its vocabulary, when usage frequency is taken into account, at every documented stage of its history is inherited direct from Proto-Celtic,{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=532}} either through the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language, or through vocabulary borrowed from unknown substrate language(s) at some point in the development of the Celtic proto-language from PIE.BOOK, Matasović, Ranko,weblink Etymological dictionary of proto-Celtic, 2009, Brill Publishing, 9789004173361, Leiden, 2, 262430534, Examples of the PIE > PCelt. development are various terms related to kinship and people, including 'mother', 'aunt, mother's sister', 'sister', 'son', 'man', 'person, human', and 'people', and words for parts of the body, including 'hand' and 'tooth'.BOOK, Klein, Jared, Joseph, Brian, Brian Joseph, Fritz, Matthias, Wenthe, Mark,weblink Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics: an International Handbook., 2016, De Gruyter Mouton, 9783110261288, Berlin / Boston, 1251, 1004563249, {{harvid, Klein et al., 2016, }} Inherited adjectives with an Indo-European etymology include 'new', 'broad, wide', 'red', 'old', 'young', and 'alive, living'.{{sfn|Klein et al.|2016|p=1252}}Several Celtic or Brittonic words cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European, and are suggested to have been borrowed from unknown substrate language(s) at an early stage, such as Proto-Celtic or Proto-Brittonic. Proposed examples in Cornish include 'beer' and 'badger'.{{sfn|Klein et al.|2016|p=1254}}Other words in Cornish inherited direct from Proto-Celtic include a number of toponyms, for example 'hill', 'fort', and 'land',{{sfn|Klein et al.|2016|p=1255}} and a variety of animal names such as 'mouse', 'wether', 'pigs', and 'bull'.{{sfn|Klein et al.|2016|p=1256}}During the Roman occupation of Britain a large number (around 800) of Latin loan words entered the vocabulary of Common Brittonic, which subsequently developed in a similar way to the inherited lexicon.{{sfn|Klein et al.|2016|p=1255}} These include 'arm' (from British Latin ), 'net' (from ), and 'cheese' (from ).BOOK,weblink Multilingualism in medieval Britain (c. 1066–1520): Sources and analysis, 2013, Jefferson, Judith, 9782503542508, Turnhout, Brepols, 62, 827952091, A substantial number of loan words from English and to a lesser extent French entered the Cornish language throughout its history. Whereas only 5% of the vocabulary of the Old Cornish Vocabularium Cornicum is thought to be borrowed from English, and only 10% of the lexicon of the early modern Cornish writer William Rowe, around 42% of the vocabulary of the whole Cornish corpus is estimated to be English loan words, without taking frequency into account. (However when frequency is taken into account this figure for the entire corpus drops to 8%.){{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=532}} The many English loanwords, some of which were sufficiently well assimilated to acquire native Cornish verbal or plural suffixes or be affected by the mutation system, include 'to read', 'to understand', 'way', 'boot' and 'art'.{{sfn|Jefferson|2013|p=62}}{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=532}}Many Cornish words, such as mining and fishing terms, are specific to the culture of Cornwall. Examples include 'mine waste' and 'to mend fishing nets'. and are different types of pastries. is a 'traditional Cornish dance get-together' and is a specific kind of ceremonial dance that takes place in Cornwall.JOURNAL, Mills, Jon, The Vocabularium Cornicum: A Cornish vocabulary?, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 60, 1, 10.1515/zcph.2013.009, 2013, 141–150, 161927698, Certain Cornish words may have several translation equivalents in English, so for instance may be translated into English as either 'book' or 'volume' and can mean either 'hand' or 'fist'.As in other Celtic languages, Cornish lacks a number of verbs commonly found in other languages, including modals and psych-verbs;{{sfn|Padel|2014}} examples are 'have', 'like', 'hate', 'prefer', 'must/have to' and 'make/compel to'. These functions are instead fulfilled by periphrastic constructions involving a verb and various prepositional phrases.Grammar
The grammar of Cornish shares with other Celtic languages a number of features which, while not unique, are unusual in an Indo-European context. The grammatical features most unfamiliar to English speakers of the language are the initial consonant mutations, the verb–subject–object word order, inflected prepositions, fronting of emphasised syntactic elements and the use of two different forms for 'to be'.Morphology
Mutations
Cornish has initial consonant mutation: The first sound of a Cornish word may change according to grammatical context. As in Breton, there are four types of mutation in Cornish (compared with three in Welsh, two in Irish and Manx and one in Scottish Gaelic). These changes apply to only certain letters (sounds) in particular grammatical contexts, some of which are given below:{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|pp=510-513}}- Lenition or "soft" mutation:
- Feminine singular nouns are lenited after 'the':
- 'cat' > 'the cat'
- Feminine singular nouns are lenited after 'the':
- Spirantization or "aspirate" mutation:
- Nouns are spirantized after 'my':
- 'father' > 'my father'
- Nouns are spirantized after 'my':
- Provection or "hard" mutation:
- Verbs are provected after the verbal particle (approximately English "-ing"):
- 'see' > 'seeing'
- Verbs are provected after the verbal particle (approximately English "-ing"):
- Lenition followed by provection (usually), or "mixed" mutation:
- Type 1 mixed mutation:
- Occurs after the affirmative particle :
- Type 1 mixed mutation:
- Type 2 mixed mutation:
- Occurs after 2nd person singular infixed pronoun :
Articles
Cornish has no indefinite article. can either mean 'harbour'ENCYCLOPEDIA, Ken, George, Ken George, 2009, porth, 533, An Gerlyver Meur: Cornish-English; English-Cornish Dictionary, Kesva an Taves Kernewek, 9781902917849, or 'a harbour'. In certain contexts, can be used, with the meaning 'a certain, a particular', e.g. 'a certain harbour'. There is, however, a definite article 'the', which is used for all nouns regardless of their gender or number, e.g. 'the harbour'.{{sfn|Williams|1997|pp=17-18}}Nouns
Cornish nouns belong to one of two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, but are not inflected for case. Nouns may be singular or plural. Plurals can be formed in various ways, depending on the noun:BOOK, Toorians, Lauran,weblink Towards a grammar of Middle Cornish, 2011, 1075291123,- Vowel change:
- 'hole' > 'holes'
- Addition of a specific plural suffix:
- 'angel' > 'angels'
- 'father' > 'fathers'
- 'peddler' > 'peddlers'
- Suppletion:
- 'man' > 'men, people'
- 'grass' > 'a blade of grass'
- 'willow-trees' > 'a willow tree'
Verbs
Verbs are conjugated for person, number, tense and mood. For example, the verbal noun 'see' has derived forms such as 1st person singular present indicative 'I see', 3rd person plural imperfect indicative 'they saw', and 2nd person singular imperative 'see!'BOOK,weblink An Outline of the Standard Written Form of Cornish, 3 June 2008, Cornish Language Partnership, Albert, Bock, Benjamin, Bruch, 9781903798560, 1st, 76–77, 436976273, Grammatical categories can be indicated either by inflection of the main verb, or by the use of auxiliary verbs such as 'be' or 'do'.{{sfn|Williams|1997|p=166}}Prepositions
Cornish uses inflected (or conjugated) prepositions: Prepositions are inflected for person and number. For example, (with, by) has derived forms such as 'with me', 'with him', and 'with you (plural)'.{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=516}}Syntax
Word order in Cornish is somewhat fluid and varies depending on several factors such as the intended element to be emphasised and whether a statement is negative or affirmative. In a study on Cornish word order in the play Bewnans Meriasek ({{circa|1500}}), Ken George has argued that the most common word order in main clauses in Middle Cornish was, in affirmative statements, SVO, with the verb in the third person singular:BOOK, George, Ken J., Notes on word order in Beunans Meriasek, 1991, Studies in Brythonic Word Order, "Current Issues in Linguistic Theory" series, 83, 205, Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing, 10.1075/cilt.83.06geo, 9789027235800, {{interlinear|indent=3|lang=kw-kkcor|My a wel an gath|1SG PTCL see-PRES.3SG DEF cat|'I see the cat.'{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=529}}}}When affirmative statements are in the less common VSO order, they usually begin with an adverb or other element, followed by an affirmative particle, with the verb inflected for person and tense:{{interlinear|indent=3|lang=kw-kkcor|Ev a grys y hwelav an gath|3SG.M PTCL believe-PRES.3SG PTCL see-PRES.1SG DEF cat|'He believes that I see the cat.'{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=529}}}}In negative statements, the order was usually VSO, with an initial negative particle and the verb conjugated for person and tense:{{interlinear|indent=3|lang=kw-kkcor|Ny welav an gath|NEG see-PRES.1SG DEF cat|'I do not see the cat.'{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=529}}}}A similar structure is used for questions:{{interlinear|indent=3|lang=cnx|a glewsyugh why?|PTCL hear-{{gcl|PLUPERF|pluperfect}}.2PL 2PL|'Did you hear?'{{sfn|MacAulay|1992|p=348}}}}Elements can be fronted for emphasis:{{interlinear|indent=3|lang=kw-kkcor|an gath my a wel|DEF cat 1SG PTCL see-PRES.3SG|'I see the cat.'{{sfn|Ball|Müller|2009|p=239}}}}Sentences can also be constructed periphrastically using auxiliary verbs such as 'be, exist':{{interlinear|indent=3|lang=cnx|Yma ow kelwel ely|be-PRES-AFF.3SG PTCL call-VN Ely|'(He) is calling Ely.'{{sfn|MacAulay|1992|p=351}}}}As Cornish lacks verbs such as 'to have', possession can also be indicated in this way:{{interlinear|indent=3|lang=cnx|'ma 'gen ehaz nyi dhen|be-PRES-AFF.3SG 1PL health 1PL to+us|'We have our health.'{{sfn|Williams|1997|p=147}}}}Enquiring about possession is similar, using a different interrogative form of :{{interlinear|indent=3|lang=cnx|Hostes, ues boues dewhy?|Hostess be-PRES-INTERR-INDEF.3SG food to+you|'Hostess, have you [any] food?'{{sfn|Williams|1997|p=153}}}}Nouns usually precede the adjective, unlike in English:BOOK, Norris, Edwin, The Ancient Cornish Drama, Oxford University Press, 1859, 22, {{interlinear|indent=3|lang=cnx|Benyn vas|woman good|'[A] good woman.'{{sfn|Norris|1859|p=22}}}}Some adjectives usually precede the noun, however:{{interlinear|indent=3|lang=cnx|Drog den|evil man|'[An] evil man.'JOURNAL, Williams, N. J. A., 1 May 2013, Adjectival and Adverbial Prefixes in Cornish,weblink Cornish Studies, 21, 1, 33–75, 10.1386/corn.21.1.33_1, 1352-271X, }}Culture
File:AnGofPlaqueBlackheath.jpg|thumb|right|Commemorative plaque in Cornish and English for Michael Joseph the Smith () mounted on the north side of Blackheath common, south east London, near the south entrance to Greenwich Park]]The Celtic Congress and Celtic League are groups that advocate cooperation amongst the Celtic Nations in order to protect and promote Celtic languages and cultures, thus working in the interests of the Cornish language.There have been films such as , some televised, made entirely, or significantly, in Cornish. Some businesses use Cornish names.WEB, Cornish (Kernewek/Kernowek/Kernuak/Curnoack),weblink Omniglot, 4 September 2016, WEB, Business Use,weblink MagaKernow.org.uk, Cornish Language Partnership, 4 September 2016,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160917143538weblink">weblink 17 September 2016, dead, Cornish has significantly and durably affected Cornwall's place-names as well as Cornish surnames and knowledge of the language helps the understanding of these ancient meanings. Cornish names are adopted for children, pets, houses and boats.NEWS, Helping promote the Cornish language,weblink 19 September 2021, The Falmouth Packet, 29 November 2012, There is Cornish literature, including spoken poetry and song, as well as traditional Cornish chants historically performed in marketplaces during religious holidays and public festivals and gatherings.There are periodicals solely in the language, such as the monthly , and . BBC Radio Cornwall has a news broadcast in Cornish and sometimes has other programmes and features for learners and enthusiasts. Local newspapers such as the Western Morning News have articles in Cornish, and newspapers such as The Packet, The West Briton, and The Cornishman have also been known to have Cornish features. There is an online radio and TV service in Cornish called , publishing a one-hour podcast each week, based on a magazine format. It includes music in Cornish as well as interviews and features.WEB, Aagan Towlennow / Our Programmes,weblink Radyo an Gernewegva, 28 November 2019, The language has financial sponsorship from sources including the Millennium Commission. A number of language organisations exist in Cornwall: (Our Language), the Cornish sub-group of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, , (the Cornish Language Board) and (the Cornish Language Fellowship).CONFERENCE, Mills, Jon, Linguistic Relativity and Linguistic Determinism: Idiom in 20th Century Cornish, New Directions in Celtic Studies Conference, November 2000,weblink 24 April 2017, JOURNAL, Stoyle, Mark, October 1999, The Dissidence of Despair: Rebellion and Identity in Early Modern Cornwall, Journal of British Studies, 38, 4, 423–444, 175946, 10.1086/386202, 162279176, There are ceremonies, some ancient, some modern, that use the language or are entirely in the language.File:Truro Cathedral welcome cropped.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Welcome sign at Truro CathedralTruro CathedralCultural events
Cornwall has had cultural events associated with the language, including the international Celtic Media Festival, hosted in St Ives in 1997. The Old Cornwall Society has promoted the use of the language at events and meetings. Two examples of ceremonies that are performed in both the English and Cornish languages are Crying the NeckWEB,weblink Crying the Neck in Cornwall, Newquay.oldcornwall.org.uk, 11 November 2012, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120708232916weblink">weblink 8 July 2012, and the annual mid-summer bonfires.WEB,weblink Bonfire, RedruthOldCornwall.org, Redruth Old Cornwall Society, 26 May 2012, 11 November 2012, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20121114202557weblink">weblink 14 November 2012, Since 1969, there have been three full performances of the Ordinalia, originally written in the Cornish language, the most recent of which took place at the plen-an-gwary in St Just in September 2021. While significantly adapted from the original, as well as using mostly English-speaking actors, the plays used sizable amounts of Cornish, including a character who spoke only in Cornish and another who spoke both English and Cornish. The event drew thousands over two weeks, also serving as a celebration of Celtic culture. The next production, scheduled for 2024, could, in theory, be entirely in Cornish, without English, if assisted by a professional linguist.WEB, The Centuries-old Plays Helping to Revitalize a Once-lost Language,weblink Atlas Obscura, 18 November 2021, 30 November 2021, NEWS, Cornwall to stage rare performance of 14th-century Ordinalia cycle,weblink The Guardian, 4 February 2021, 1 December 2021, NEWS, 'The Passion': review of the second play in St Just Ordinalia trilogy,weblink Sam, Beamish, 17 September 2021, The Cornishman, CornwallLive, NEWS, Ordinalia Trilogy UK's oldest plays to be performed in St Just,weblink The Falmouth Packet, 19 August 2021, 1 December 2021, Outside of Cornwall, efforts to revive the Cornish language and culture through community events are occurring in Australia. A biennial festival, Kernewek Lowender, takes place in South Australia, where both cultural displays and language lessons are offered.WEB, Lowender, Kernewek, 9 May 2023, Home: Kernewek Lowender,weblink 9 May 2023, Kernewek Lowender Copper Coast Cornish Festival,Study and teaching
Cornish is taught in some schools; it was previously taught at degree level at the University of Wales, though the only existing course in the language at university level is as part of a course in Cornish studies at the University of Exeter.WEB, About the Institute,weblink Humanities.Exeter.ac.uk, Institute of Cornish Studies, University of Exeter, In March 2008 a course in the language was started as part of the Celtic Studies curriculum at the University of Vienna, Austria.The University of Cambridge offers courses in Cornish through its John Trim Resources Centre, which is part of the university's Language Centre.WEB,weblink The Language Centre, LangCen.Cam.ac.uk, University of Cambridge, In addition, the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (which is part of the Faculty of English) also carries out research into the Cornish language.WEB,weblink The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, ASNC.Cam.ac.uk, University of Cambridge, In 2015 a university-level course aiming at encouraging and supporting practitioners working with young children to introduce the Cornish language into their settings was launched. The Cornish Language Practice Project (Early Years) is a level 4 course approved by Plymouth University and run at Cornwall College. The course is not a Cornish-language course but students will be assessed on their ability to use the Cornish language constructively in their work with young children. The course will cover such topics as Understanding Bilingualism, Creating Resources and Integrating Language and Play, but the focus of the language provision will be on Cornish. A non-accredited specialist Cornish-language course has been developed to run alongside the level 4 course for those who prefer tutor support to learn the language or develop their skills for use with young children.WEB, Kevren,weblink 24 January 2015, MagaKernow.org.uk, Cornish Language Partnership, December 2014, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20150128112341weblink">weblink 28 January 2015, Cornwall's first Cornish-language crèche, , was established in 2010 at Cornwall College, Camborne. The nursery teaches children aged between two and five years alongside their parents to ensure the language is also spoken in the home.A number of dictionaries are available in the various orthographies, including A Learners' Cornish Dictionary in the Standard Written Form by Steve Harris (ed.), by Ken George,{{sfn|George|2009}} by Nicholas Williams and A Practical Dictionary of Modern Cornish by Richard Gendall. Course books include the three-part series, , and , as well as the more recent and . Several online dictionaries are now available, including one organised by An Akademi Kernewek in SWF.WEB,weblink Gerlyver Kernewek, WEB,weblink Dictionary: English – Cornish, Glosbe, Classes and conversation groups for adults are available at several locations in Cornwall as well as in London, Cardiff and Bristol.WEB, Find a Class,weblink Learn Cornish Now, Cornish Language Office, 11 December 2017, 17 September 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20170917032404weblink">weblink dead, Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic a number of conversation groups entitled have been held online, advertised through Facebook and other media. A surge in interest, not just from people in Cornwall but from all over the world, has meant that extra classes have been organised.WEB,weblink Learn Cornish in your own home as part of an exciting new online course, University of Exeter, 2 August 2021, WEB,weblink Ertach Kernow – Keep it Kernewek, Cornwall Heritage,weblink 5 April 2022, NEWS,weblink Cornish language has new learners after pandemic moves courses online, BBC News, 9 February 2022, Martha, Dixon,Cornish studies
William Scawen produced a manuscript on the declining Cornish language that continually evolved until he died in 1689, aged 89. He was one of the first to realise the language was dying out and wrote detailed manuscripts which he started working on when he was 78. The only version that was ever published was a short first draft but the final version, which he worked on until his death, is a few hundred pages long.JOURNAL, Spriggs, Matthew, 1 May 2005, William Scawen (1600-1689) - A Neglected Cornish Patriot and Father of the Cornish Language Revival,weblink Cornish Studies, 13, 1, 98–125, 10.1386/corn.13.1.98_1, 1352-271X, At the same time a group of scholars led by John Keigwin (nephew of William Scawen) of Mousehole tried to preserve and further the Cornish language and chose to write in Cornish. One of their number, Nicholas Boson, tells how he had been discouraged from using Cornish to servants by his mother.ODNB, Boson family (per. c. 1675–1730), preservers of the Cornish language,weblink 20 September 2021, 2004, 10.1093/ref:odnb/74428, 9780198614128, This group left behind a large number of translations of parts of the Bible, proverbs and songs. They were contacted by the Welsh linguist Edward Lhuyd, who came to Cornwall to study the language.BOOK, Ellis, Peter Berresford, Peter Berresford Ellis, The Cornish Language and Its Literature, 1974, Routledge, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 9780710079282, 82–94, 100–108, Early Modern Cornish was the subject of a study published by Lhuyd in 1707,BOOK, Lhuyd, Edward, Edward Lhuyd, 1707, Archæologia Britannica: Giving some account additional to what has been hitherto publish'd, of the languages, histories and customs of the original inhabitants of Great Britain, from collections and observations in travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland, and Scotland; Vol. I. Glossography, Oxford, Edward Lhuyd and Mr. Bateman, and differs from the medieval language in having a considerably simpler structure and grammar. Such differences included sound changes and more frequent use of auxiliary verbs.{{sfn|Wmffre|1998|p=4}} The medieval language also possessed two additional tenses for expressing past events and an extended set of possessive suffixes.John Whitaker, the Manchester-born rector of Ruan Lanihorne, studied the decline of the Cornish language. In his 1804 work the Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall he concluded that: "[T]he English Liturgy, was not desired by the Cornish, but forced upon them by the tyranny of England, at a time when the English language was yet unknown in Cornwall. This act of tyranny was at once gross barbarity to the Cornish people, and a death blow to the Cornish language."BOOK, Jago, Fred W. P., Fred W. P. Jago, 1882, The Ancient Language and the Dialect of Cornwall, New York, AMS Press, 1983, 4, Originally published in Netherton and Worth, Truro.Robert Williams published the first comprehensive Cornish dictionary in 1865, the . As a result of the discovery of additional ancient Cornish manuscripts, 2000 new words were added to the vocabulary by Whitley Stokes in A Cornish Glossary. William C. Borlase published Proverbs and Rhymes in Cornish in 1866 while A Glossary of Cornish Names was produced by John Bannister in the same year. Frederick Jago published his English–Cornish Dictionary in 1882.In 2002, the Cornish language gained new recognition because of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Conversely, along with government provision was the governmental basis of "New Public Management", measuring quantifiable results as means of determining effectiveness. This put enormous pressure on finding a single orthography that could be used in unison. The revival of Cornish required extensive rebuilding. The Cornish orthographies that were reconstructed may be considered versions of Cornish because they are not traditional sociolinguistic variations. In the middle-to-late twentieth century, the debate over Cornish orthographies angered more people because several language groups received public funding. This caused other groups to sense favouritism as playing a role in the debate.JOURNAL, Sayers, Dave, 2012, Standardising Cornish: The Politics Of A New Minority Language,weblink Language Problems and Language Planning, 36, 2, 99–119, 10.1075/lplp.36.2.01say, 143909573, 24 April 2017, A governmental policymaking structure called New Public Management (NPM) has helped the Cornish language by managing public life of the Cornish language and people. In 2007, the Cornish Language Partnership MAGA represents separate divisions of government and their purpose is to further enhance the Cornish Language Developmental Plan. MAGA established an Ad-Hoc Group, which resulted in three orthographies being presented. The relations for the Ad-Hoc Group were to obtain consensus among the three orthographies and then develop a "single written form". The result was creating a new form of Cornish, which had to be natural for both new learners and skilled speakers.JOURNAL, Review of Faction and Faith. Politics and Religion of the Cornish Gentry before the Civil War; Law, Order and Government in Caernarfonshire, 1558–1640 by Anne Duffin; Law, Order and Government in Caernarfonshire, 1558–1640. Justices of the Peace and the Gentry by John Gwynfor Jones, Holmes, Clive, The English Historical Review, 1998, 113, 450, 177–179, 576240, 10.1093/ehr/CXIII.450.177,Literature
Recent Modern Cornish literature
In 1981, the Breton library edited (Passion of our lord), a 15th-century Cornish poem.WEB,weblink Passyon Agan Arluth, Preder.net, 22 October 2009, 11 November 2012, The first complete translation of the Bible into Cornish, translated from English, was published in 2011. Another Bible translation project translating from original languages is underway. The New Testament and Psalms were posted on-line on YouVersion (Bible.com) and Bibles.org in July 2014 by the Bible Society.A few small publishers produce books in Cornish which are stocked in some local bookshops, as well as in Cornish branches of Waterstones and WH Smith, although publications are becoming increasingly available on the Internet.WEB,weblink Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek Cornish Language Stock List, Examples of Kas ha Dial and Winni-an-Pou ebooks Printed copies of these may also be found from Amazon. The Truro Waterstones hosts the annual literary awards, established by to recognise publications relating to Cornwall or in the Cornish language.WEB,weblink Holyer an Gof Awards, 21 January 2015, In recent years, a number of Cornish translations of literature have been published, including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2009),WEB,weblink Alys in Pow an Anethow, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, Around the World in Eighty Days (2009),WEB,weblink Adro dhe'n Bÿs in Peswar Ugans Dëdh, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, Treasure Island (2010),WEB,weblink Enys Tresour, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, The Railway Children (2012),WEB,weblink Flehes an Hens Horn, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, Hound of the Baskervilles (2012),WEB,weblink Ky Teylu Baskerville, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, The War of the Worlds (2012),WEB,weblink Gwerryans an Planettys, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, The Wind in the Willows (2013),WEB,weblink An Gwyns i'n Helyk, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, Three Men in a Boat (2013),WEB,weblink Tredden in Scath (Heb Gwil Mencyon a'n Ky), Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (2014),WEB,weblink Alys y'n Vro a Varthusyon ha Der an Gweder-Mires, Kesva an Taves Kernewek, and A Christmas CarolWEB,weblink Karol Nadelik, Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek, (which won the 2012 award for Cornish Language books), as well as original Cornish literature such as WEB,weblink Jowal Lethesow, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014, (The Lyonesse Stone) by Craig Weatherhill. Literature aimed at children is also available, such as (Where's Spot?), (The Beast of Bodmin Moor), three Topsy and Tim titles,WEB,weblink Topsy and Tim, Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek, two Tintin titles and (Briallen and the Alien), which won the 2015 award for Cornish Language books for children.WEB,weblink Briallen ha'n Alyon, Ors Sempel, In 2014 , Nicholas Williams's translation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, was published.WEB,weblink An Hobys, pò An Fordh Dy ha Tre Arta, Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype, Evertype, 3 December 2014,
is a monthly magazine published entirely in the Cornish language. Members contribute articles on various subjects. The magazine is produced by Graham Sandercock who has been its editor since 1976.WEB,weblink An Gannas – Cornish language magazine,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20190722104746weblink">weblink 22 July 2019,
Media
In 1983 BBC Radio Cornwall started broadcasting around two minutes of Cornish every week. In 1987, however, they gave over 15 minutes of airtime on Sunday mornings for a programme called ('Holdall'), presented by John King, running until the early 1990s.BOOK,weblink The Celtic languages, 1993, Ball, Martin, Routledge, New York / London, 0415010357, 652, 25205141, It was eventually replaced with a five-minute news bulletin called ('The News'). The bulletin was presented every Sunday evening for many years by Rod Lyon, then Elizabeth Stewart, and currently a team presents in rotation.WEB,weblink Cornwall – Connected – Hear the news read in Cornish, BBC, 28 May 2013, Pirate FM ran short bulletins on Saturday lunchtimes from 1998 to 1999. In 2006, Matthew Clarke who had presented the Pirate FM bulletin, launched a web-streamed news bulletin called ('Weekly News'), which in 2008 was merged into a new weekly magazine podcast (RanG).Cornish television shows have included a 1982 series by Westward Television with each episode containing a three-minute lesson in Cornish.{{sfn|Ball|1993|p=652}} , an eight-episode series produced by Television South West and broadcast between June and July 1984, later on S4C from May to July 1985, and as a schools programme in 1986.WEB,weblink An Canker-Seth, BroadcastForSchools.co.uk, 31 December 2011, 28 May 2013, Also by Television South West were two bilingual programmes on Cornish Culture called .{{sfn|Ball|1993|p=652}}In 2016 Kelly's Ice Cream of Bodmin introduced a light hearted television commercial in the Cornish language and this was repeated in 2017.NEWS, 20 May 2016, First Cornish TV ad to air weeks after language funding is axed,weblink 18 September 2021, The Guardian, The first episode from the third season of the US television program Deadwood features a conversation between miners, purportedly in the Cornish language, but really in Irish.WEB, The other American Celts - the Cornish,weblink 18 September 2021, IrishCentral.com, 23 February 2020, One of the miners is then shot by thugs working for businessman George Hearst who justify the murder by saying, "He come at me with his foreign gibberish."A number of Cornish language films have been made, including Hwerow Hweg, a 2002 drama film written and directed by Hungarian film-maker Antal Kovacs and Trengellick Rising, a short film written and directed by Guy Potter.Screen Cornwall works with Cornwall Council to commission a short film in the Cornish language each year, with their FilmK competition. Their website states "FylmK is an annual contemporary Cornish language short film competition, producing an imaginative and engaging film, in any genre, from distinctive and exciting filmmakers".WEB, FylmK,weblink 21 April 2022, Screen Cornwall, A monthly half-hour online TV show began in 2017 called (The Month). It contained news items about cultural events and more mainstream news stories all through Cornish. It also ran a cookery segment called "" ('Esther's Kitchen'). WEB, FylmK,weblink 4 May 2024, Radyo an Gernewegva,Music
English composer Peter Warlock wrote a Christmas carol in Cornish (setting words by Henry Jenner).WEB, Peter Warlock: Works,weblink The Peter Warlock Society, 2 December 2019, The Cornish electronic musician Aphex Twin has used Cornish names for track titles, most notably on his Drukqs album.Several traditional Cornish folk songs have been collected and can be sung to various tunes. These include "", "", and "".In 2018, the singer Gwenno Saunders released an album in Cornish, entitled , saying: "I speak Cornish with my son: if you're comfortable expressing yourself in a language, you want to share it."NEWS,weblink Holly, Williams, BBC News, The rebirth of Britain's 'lost' languages, 12 April 2018, 13 April 2018,Place-names and surnames
{{See also|Cornish surnames}}File:CornwallKernowMappa.png|thumb|right|Place-names translated into SWF ]]The Cornish language features in the toponymy of Cornwall, with a significant contrast between English place-names prevalent in eastern Cornwall and Cornish place-names to the west of the Camel-Fowey river valleys, where English place-names are much less common.BOOK, Pye, Cornish Place-names in the Landscape, University of Exeter, 2019, 393, Hundreds of Cornish family names have an etymology in the Cornish language, the majority of which are derived from Cornish place-names.BOOK,weblink The Oxford dictionary of family names in Britain and Ireland, 2016, Patrick, Hanks, Richard A., Coates, Peter, McClure, 9780192527479, 1st, Oxford University Press, xxxi, 964412220, Long before the agreement of the Standard Written Form of Cornish in the 21st century, Late Cornish orthography in the Early Modern period usually followed Welsh to English transliteration, phonetically rendering C for K, I for Y, U for W, and Z for S. This meant that place names were adopted into English with spellings such as 'Porthcurno' and 'Penzance'; they are written and in the Standard Written Form of Cornish, agreed upon in 2008. Likewise words such as ('island') can be found spelled as as at Ince Castle. These apparent mistransliterations can, however, reveal an insight into how names and places were actually pronounced, explaining, for example, how anglicised is still pronounced [ˈlansÇn] with emphasis on the first element,BOOK,weblink BBC pronouncing dictionary of British names, 1990, Oxford University Press, G. E., Pointon, 0192827456, 2nd, 140, 20669792, perhaps from Cornish , though the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names considers this unlikely.BOOK, Ekwall, Eilert,weblink The concise Oxford dictionary of English place-names, 1960, 0198691033, 4th, Claredon Press, Oxford, 289, 400936, The following tables present some examples of Cornish place names and surnames and their anglicised versions:{{col-begin}}{{col-2}}{| class="wikitable"! English (anglicised)place-name || Cornish place-name ||TranslationSamples
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:{|class="wikitable"! Cornish! TranslationSee also
- Anglo-Cornish, the Cornish dialect of the English language
- Bible translations into Cornish
- Cornish literature
- List of Celtic-language media
- Languages in the United Kingdom
- List of topics related to Cornwall
- Language revival
- The Cornish Language Council ()
- Manx, another Celtic language subject to revival efforts
- European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
- Irish language revival
- Breton language
References
{{Reflist|30em}}Bibliography
- Bruch, Benjamin; Bock, Albert (2008) An Outline of the Standard Written Form of Cornish. Cornish Language Partnership
- Hodge, Pol (2001) Cornish Names. Truro: Dyllansow Fentenwynn {{ISBN|1902917235}}
- Jago, F. W. P., A Cornish Dictionary (1887) English Cornish dictionary
- Jenner, Henry, (iarchive:handbookofcornis00jennuoft|A Handbook of the Cornish language: Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature (1904)) weblink weblink
- Ellis, Peter B. (1971) The Story of the Cornish Language. 32 p. Truro: Tor Mark Press
- Ellis, Peter B. (1974) The Cornish Language and its Literature. ix, 230 p. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
- Everson, Michael (2007) A Proposed Standard Written Form of Cornish. Cornish Language Partnership Process
- Ferdinand, Siarl (2013). Brief History of the Cornish language, its Revival and its Current Situation. E-Keltoi, Vol. 2, 2 Dec pp. 199–227 weblink
- Jackson, Kenneth (1953) Language and History in Early Britain: A chronological survey of the Brittonic languages, first to twelfth century a.D. Edinburgh Uuniverty Ppress; 2nd ed. Dublin: Four Courts Press (1994) has a new introduction by William Gillies
- Norris, Edwin, Sketch of Cornish grammar (1859) weblink weblink weblink
- Sandercock, Graham (1996) A Very Brief History of the Cornish Language. Hayle: {{ISBN|0907064612}}
- Stokes, Whitley, (iarchive:cu31924026878334| = The Creation of the World: A Cornish Mystery (1863))
- Weatherhill, Craig (1995) Cornish Place Names & Language. Wilmslow: Sigma Press (reissued in 1998, 2000 {{ISBN|1850584621}}; second revised edition 2007 {{ISBN|978-1-85058-837-5}})
- Weatherhill, Craig (2009) Concise Dictionary of Cornish Place-names; edited by Michael Everson. Westport, Co. Mayo: Evertype {{ISBN|9781904808220}}
- Williams, G. P, The preverbal particle Re in Cornish (1908)
External links
{{InterWiki|code=kw}}{{Wiktionary category|type=Cornish|category=Cornish language}}{{Commons category|Cornish language}}- A Handbook of the Cornish Language, by Henry Jenner A Project Gutenberg eBook
- weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20170112235606weblink">Cornish Language Partnership website
- Endangered Languages Project: Cornish
- A Cornish Internet radio station in nascent state featuring weekly podcasts in Cornish
- Spellyans – Standard Written Form Cornish discussion list
- UdnFormScrefys' site for the proposed compromise orthography, Kernowek Standard
- List of localised software in Cornish
- – A Taste of Cornish – basic Cornish lessons hosted by BBC Cornwall
- Cornish Language Fellowship
- Lyver Pysadow Kemyn (1980) Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Cornish
- Cornish today by Kenneth MacKinnon – from the BBC
- Bibel Kernewek Cornish Bible Translation Project
- An Index to the Historical Place Names of Cornwall
- A review of the Cornish revival
- Cornish language Sayings and Phrases
Dictionaries
- Gerlyver kernewek (Cornish dictionary)
- weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20151105003722weblink">An English-Cornish Glossary in the Standard Written Form – Cornish Language Partnership
- : a Dictionary of the Ancient Celtic Language of Cornwall by Robert Williams, Llandovery, 1865.
- content above as imported from Wikipedia
- "Cornish language" does not exist on GetWiki (yet)
- time: 9:19am EDT - Sat, May 18 2024
- "Cornish language" does not exist on GetWiki (yet)
- time: 9:19am EDT - Sat, May 18 2024
[ this remote article is provided by Wikipedia ]
LATEST EDITS [ see all ]
GETWIKI 23 MAY 2022
The Illusion of Choice
Culture
Culture
GETWIKI 09 JUL 2019
Eastern Philosophy
History of Philosophy
History of Philosophy
GETWIKI 09 MAY 2016
GetMeta:About
GetWiki
GetWiki
GETWIKI 18 OCT 2015
M.R.M. Parrott
Biographies
Biographies
GETWIKI 20 AUG 2014
GetMeta:News
GetWiki
GetWiki
CONNECT
© 2024 M.R.M. PARROTT | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED