www.cornishlanguage.co.uk

 

A Brief History of Cornish

 

Cornwall and the Cornish

 

The Cornish are native Celtic British who have lived in Britain for the last 6,000 years. Originally there was a British language spoken all over Britain, known as Brythonic, which has for the last 1,500 years has been split into Cornish, Welsh and Breton.
Cornwall was once an ancient Kingdom, one of the four main kingdoms of Britain (see the Mappa Mundi and official mediaeval documents for proof). In 932AD the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan established the border of Cornwall at the River Tamar marking the boundary between Cornwall and England, this border is still current. There has been much confusion of the nature of Cornwall as the media refer to it as an English County, which is inaccurate. There was never any official union between Cornwall and England; it still legally is a separate entity. The Cornish head of state is the Duke of Cornwall and not the queen. The courts in Cornwall are still under the jurisdiction of Cornish Stannary Law.
After the Norman Conquest the English influence in Cornwall came stronger and stronger with the Cornish Language being pushed further and further westward. In the 15th and 16th century the Cornish rebelled against the English Government and as a result were slaughtered loosing many thousands of native speakers – 1 in 9 of the population were killed. Many Cornish, who went to England to fight, learned English and when they returned stuck to speaking English, preferring to be seen as English rather than Cornish.
 Cornish was dying because of the attitude towards it by the English. Sad but true, English society viewed the Cornish Language as a quaint peasant language and one that should not be spoken by anyone of any standing within society. This attitude was prevalent within Cornish itself. Cornish speakers refused to pass on the Cornish language to their Children insisting they learned only English and even in some cases they changed their name to a more English sounding one.  For instance Trellil became Thomas. 

 

In the late 17th Century a group of scholars wrote and studied to preserve as much of the language as they could. The works of one of them can be viewed on this site by looking at the Bible pages. We all owe them a great debt. The last native speaker of Cornish was John Davey who died in 1893 after the seeds of the revival had begun.

 

But the Cornish Language is a survivor. Its reported death was a classic example of media spin. Dolly Pentreath was one of the last native speakers of Cornish but not the last. There have always been people within Cornwall that have had knowledge of Cornish. Today more people speak Cornish that at any time in the last 250 years.

 

 

Mediaeval Period

 

During the medieval period Cornish plays were still performed and sermons preached such as:

 

Pascyon agan Arluth circa 1375 (The Passion of our Lord), A poem of 259 eight-line verses.

An Ordinale Kernewek (The Cornish Ordinalia) circa 1400 – A religious drama in three parts

Bewnans Meriasek (The Life of Meriasek) 1504

Bewnans Ke (The Life of St Kea) c 1500 

Pregothow Tregear (The Tregear Homilies) 1555-57, series of 66 sermons translated by John Tregear 

Gwryans an Bys (The Creation of the World) William Jordan 1611

 

However by around 1700 the language was dying fast and a group of enthusiasts in West Penwith, including Wella Rowe, Gwavas and Keigwin, wrote numerous manuscripts in Cornish helping to preserve the state of the language at that time. These have proved invaluable in the revival. Of course the famous Dolly Pentreath was not the last Cornish speaker but just one of several. The last traditional speaker died in 1893 after the revival had begun.

 

 

 

Cornish Today - Revival & Rivalry

 

In 1904 the revival began with the publication of Henry Jenner’s Handbook of the Cornish Language. This book featured the Cornish spelling as it was last used as a community language back in the eighteenth century. However this spelling was never fixed and so had many variants. A Unified system of spelling was needed so in 1929 Robert Morton Nance created a Unified Cornish based upon the earlier Middle Cornish from the middle ages. However Morton Nance tended to prefer older ‘quaint’ forms rather than more modern English influenced forms. This system became the standard form for Cornish and remained so until the 1980’s when people started to challenge Unified feeling it was too flawed.

 

Ken George undertook a study into the sounds of Cornish and hoped to create a bridge between Unified and Late Cornish (as used by Jenner) but instead devised a new system (after realising the extent of the fundamental flaws in Unified) which had the advantage of the written word accurately representing the spoken word based upon George’s own theories (e.g. c was replaced by K when hard and s when soft). This phonemic system later became known as Kernewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish) and after a year’s discussion the Cornish language Board adopted it in 1987.

 

This was a huge mistake as it split the language community and after a generation the gap is still as wide as ever, only be the creation of a new compromise form can the rift be healed. Unfortunately Kemmyn was not a perfect system that it was claimed to be and has been revised several times since.

 

Kemmyn was challenged in 1995 by Nicholas Williams in his book Cornish Today in which he lists 26 major flaws in Kernewek Kemmyn and devised a new form of Unified called Unified Cornish revised. A dictionary of UCR appeared later, selling well enough to go into a second edition. This is the most comprehensive dictionary of Cornish to date.

 

The reply to Cornish Today appeared soon after in the book ‘Kernewek Kemmyn – Cornish for the twenty First Century’ written by Ken George and Paul Dunbar.

 

In 2007 a reply to the reply appeared.

 

By which time most people have tired of the old argument.

 

Let us all hope that a further reply never appears in print.

 

To revive a dead language you should ideally stick as closely as possible to the spelling traditionally used rather than create a phonetic version which can never be 100% accurate because all the traditional speakers died out long before sound recording equipment was invented. Any revived form based on the written word is de facto more accurate than any that based upon a purely theoretical reconstruction of the sound of the language 500 years ago.

 

As part of the ongoing discussion for an official standard spelling system for Cornish, a group has devised an orthography taking into account all periods of the language. Called Kernowak, this proposal can be viewed in depth at www.kernowak.com. Please register on the forum there and help to create a form that we can all be happy with. This is a great opportunity for the Cornish language community to work together.

 

 

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