The Cornish language

Q. Ny gonvedhaf Kernewek. Do you

A. Probably not, unless you're one of the few people who have taken it upon themselves to revive the ancient - though now officially 'dead' - Celtic language of Cornwall.

Q. How come Cornish died out while other Celtic languages survived

A. Cornwall, or Kernow, is the second smallest Celtic nation after the Isle of Man. It soon came under the sphere of influence of the Saxons after the 5th century and became an English county after the Norman Conquest - so, unlike the bigger and more powerful Celtic nations, its unique identity came under threat early on.

However, anyone who's been there, as well as the Cornish people themselves, will tell you how different it is to any other English county. Cornwall is a country within a country, and its people have a very strong regional identity - and there are those who still regard Cornwall as an occupied Celtic nation.

Welsh and Breton are the two closest languages to Cornish, or Kernewek, and Wales and - to a lesser extent - Brittany, are recognised as nations in their own right, giving the distinct cultures and languages greater chances of survival.

Q. When did Cornish die out

A. Cornish developed from Brithonic, the Celtic language spoken in what is now England, Wales and southern Scotland up to the period of the Germanic invasions following the Roman withdrawal in the 4th century. Cornish became a language distinct from Welsh some time in the 6th century and over the next 1,000 years developed into a modern European language.

It first came under serious threat from English during the 17th century. Factors involved in its decline included the introduction of the English prayer book, the rapid introduction of English as a language of commerce and most particularly the negative association with what was considered even by Cornish people themselves as the language of the poor.

Q. Dolly Pentreath is known as the last native Cornish speaker. Was she

A. Yes - and no. In 1768, the English antiquary Daines Barrington made a trip to West Cornwall in his search for Cornish speakers. He found no one at Land's End, but was introduced to an old fisherwoman in Mousehole near Penzance. This was the famous Dolly Pentreath, and to Barrington she 'spoke in an angry tone of voice for two or three minutes, and in a language which sounded very like Welsh'. Two other old women close by told him that Dolly had been abusing him for supposing she could not speak her native tongue.

Dolly had lived in poverty all her life, but as a result of her meeting with Barrington she became a celebrity in her later years. After her death in December 1777 her reputation of being the last speaker of Cornish endured, but the truth is that, while she may have been the last person to be raised to speak only Cornish, others continued to use the language in addition to English after she died.

Q. What about Barrington

A. It is a tragedy that Barrington never returned to record all that Dolly knew, and all her valuable knowledge of Cornish died with her, irretrievably lost. The only phrase of hers that has survived is an insult she hurled at a local squire who had upset her basket of fish, calling him an cronnack hagar du: the ugly black toad!

Barrington still held an interest in Cornish even after Dolly's death, however, and he wrote an article on the language that contained information on other Cornish speakers. Two that he had known of were dead, but three were still alive. These were an unnamed inhabitant of Truro (probably an engineer called Tompson), a John Nancarrow of Marazion (who emigrated to Philadelphia) and William Bodinar, a Mousehole fisherman.

Barrington printed a letter from Bodinar in both Cornish and English in July 1776. The Cornish text of this is the last piece of authentic, native Cornish writing to survive. Bodinar spoke excellent Late Cornish, and he outlived Dolly by 12 years, dying in 1789. It should be mentioned, however, that unlike Dolly, Bodinar had learnt Cornish as a second language later in his childhood.

Q. But people speak it now, don't they How was it reborn

A. A Mrs W. J. Rawlings from Hayle had learnt to say the Lord's Prayer and Creed in Cornish at a school in Penzance, and later on in life she became the mother-in-law of the Cornish scholar Henry Jenner, the 'father of the Cornish Language Revival'. Jenner also learnt some Cornish from Bernard Victor of Mousehole in 1875, who had learnt it from his father, and, using Welsh and Breton as models, Jenner went on to begin the revival of the language that is still growing to this day.

Modern Standard Cornish was developed from Jenner's work, culminating in the first full set of grammars, dictionaries and periodicals. Eastern and Western forms of pronunciation are recognised as are distinct colloquial and literary forms of the language.

A couple of sites relating to the Cornish language are worth a look

http://www.clas.demon.co.uk/

http://www.kernewek.currantbun.com/

See also the article on the Welsh language

For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

By Simon Smith