Tongue Tied II - the Cornish Comeback
Saint Piran's Flag, Flag of Cornwall. (Photo credits: via Wikimedia Commons)
Tongue Tied’ is a short tour through Europe via some of its most at-risk languages. In a series of four articles, Columnist Kieran McGreevy will examine four languages from across the corners of Europe, with the aim of showing what has led these languages to the brink of extinction (and sometimes back), by untying the history of the people, the linguistics of the language itself, and the efforts being made to keep these tongues alive. In this second instalment, Kieran explores the history and revival of Cornish.
Fact File
Name:
Cornish
Language family, subfamily:
Indo-European, Celtic (Southwestern Brittonic)
No. of speakers:
500 (with around 3,000 able to have simple conversations and 300,000 knowing a few basic words)
Geographical spread:
Cornwall, other Celtic nations (such as Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany) and the Cornish diaspora (population emigration destinations for Cornish residents)
History
While Occitan (the language discussed in the first instalment of this column) may have been more familiar to readers on a linguistic and historical basis, this week’s focus, Cornish, is perhaps a bit closer to home geographically. Despite this, when hearing the word ‘Cornish’, you’d be excused, and certainly among the majority, in thinking first of the people rather than the language, or if we are entirely honest with ourselves, the pastry (anyone not familiar should get themselves a Cornish pasty ASAP). But why is this?
Well, the fact is, Cornish went extinct in the mid-18th century, or if we make a more conservative estimate, in the 19th century. Before this, like many modern languages, Cornish began its life as a distinct dialect of Common Brittonic in the Middle Ages, being largely confined to roughly the same borders as modern-day Cornwall after the south-westerly advance of the Saxons taking over Devon. The first written evidence we have of the language is in a 9th century gloss (a brief notation, often found in the margins of medieval manuscripts) of a Latin manuscript of a text by Boethius, although at this time, Old Cornish is indistinguishable from Old Welsh and Old Breton both orthographically and phonologically, the latter being until the 11th century and referring to differences in the spoken language. Another significant text from the period is a Latin-Cornish glossary from the turn of the 13th century, which was thought until the 18th century to be Old Welsh, and which offers an insight into the vocabulary of this archaic form of the language.
Despite the steady decline in the number of speakers from its peak of 39,000 in the 13th century, the language continued to flourish into the Middle Cornish period, in which most of its literature, which is regarded fondly today, was written. Among hagiographical works and poetry, perhaps the most famous example of this literature is the three-part cycle of plays named the Ordinalia, dating to the late 14th century, which is a dramatic portrayal of various biblical tales that exhibits both English and Brittonic influences, reaching 8,734 lines all together. At this time there were still monolingual speakers of Cornish, shown by English writer Andrew Boorde who stated in 1542: “In Cornwall is two speches, the one is naughty Englysshe, and the other is Cornysshe speche. And there be many men and women the which cannot speake one worde of Englysshe, but all Cornyshe."
A parliamentary act prohibiting the use of any prayer book other than the English Book of Common Prayer in 1549, however, signalled the decline in such cases, resulting in a rebellion by outraged Cornish citizens that ultimately gave them a reputation for disloyalty that encouraged the gentry to adopt English so as to disassociate themselves. Thus began, in the 17th century, as Cornish entered its Early Modern and Late periods, the end of the transmission to new generations required to keep a language alive, despite the smaller number but increasingly varied pieces of Cornish literature produced.
So why discuss Cornish if it has already perished? Since its death, the language has actually been one of few globally to see a gradual but enthusiastic revival, in Cornish’s case from the early 20th century. After a short linguistic interlude delving into this Modern Cornish, the ways in which it was achieved and brought back from the grave will be discussed at the end of the article.
Features
While spoken nearer to where many readers will have grown up or are living now, Cornish is certainly not very close to English, at least in an Indo-European context and when one considers that they both come from a common ancestor. With that said, here are some of those unusual features:
Phonetically speaking (with regard to sound), one of the Celtic languages’ most notorious features is initial consonant mutation, and Cornish is rich in these changes even among its sisters – with 4 (or even 5 if one makes an extra distinction) types compared to Welsh’s 3, Irish’s 2, and Scottish Gaelic’s and Manx’s 1). With this phenomenon, consonants at the beginning of words or syllables in compound words change depending on the kind of word that comes before them. This could really make recognising new vocabulary a pain, as it is difficult to tell whether the word is in its ‘first’ or unchanged state.
agan blew, ‘our hair’ e vlew, ‘his hair’
Whether we are aware of it or not, we as English speakers are used to inflection in verbs to match the subject they are referring to – I am, you are, he is, etc. – and this is even more likely to be the case if you are a speaker of any other Indo-European language, i.e., most (but not all) languages in Europe, as well as the likes of Hindi and Farsi/Persian. Cornish however, like all Celtic languages, inflects prepositions to match who they are referring to.
ynnov, ‘in me’; ynnos, ‘in you (singular)’; ynno, ‘in him’; ynni, ‘in her’; ynnon, ‘in us’; ynnowgh, ‘in you (plural)’; ynna, ‘in them’
While in affirmative sentences (these are just those that do not include a negative particle like not) the usual word order in a Cornish sentence is Subject, Verb, Object, which is the same as English – I see the cat – in almost all other sentence types – interrogative, negative, or those including an adverb, which usually goes to the front of the sentence in Cornish – the word order is Verb, Subject, Object.
My a wel an gath, ‘I see the cat’
I sees the cat
An gath my a well, ‘I see the cat’
The cat I sees
Ny welav an gath, ‘I do not see the cat’
Not see the cat
Some other things can be seen in the examples below: if the sentence is affirmative (1 and 2), the verb is conjugated for the third-person singular, while in any other order it is conjugated to match the subject (3). other word orders are possible, as parts can be placed at the front to add emphasis (2); in affirmative sentences, unlike in English, an extra particle (like not) is needed before the verb (1 and 2); and subject pronouns like I are not used when the subject would come after the verb (3).
Something which is not uncommon further afield, but certainly in Europe, is a different way of indicating possession. We, and many speakers of other languages you know, express it by saying we have, but Cornish speakers – in typical Celtic fashion – say something along the lines of ‘it is to us’ (remember with the following example that prepositions, like to, change depending on who they are about.
Hostes, ues boues dewhy?, ‘Hostess, do you have food?’
Hostess, is food to you?
Revival
With the death of the last known speaker of a traditional form of Cornish, John Davey, in 1891, the language went the same way. But – quite strangely for something referred to as a ‘death’ and under the influence of the Celtic revival movement (which saw a renewed interest in Celtic culture) – the language returned shortly after around the turn of the century.
What is often seen as the start of this revival movement is the publication of A Handbook of the Cornish Language, by Henry Jenner, a cultural activist and Celtic language scholar, which based its spelling on that of the 18th century during the end of its decline as a community language. Many orthographical systems have come into place since then, receiving both contention and praise, including the Middle Cornish-based Unified Cornish and Kernewek Kemmyn “Common Cornish”, and the later Modern Cornish. Both of the former two systems came as a result of the pedestal on which Middle Cornish literature has been placed by activists, with Unified Cornish aiming to keep as close to the writing practices of medieval scribes and Kernewek Kemmyn focusing on keeping the spelling as phonemic as possible.
Eventually, as more and more Cornish citizens learned the language, a consensus needed to be reached, and in 2007, representatives of all the aforementioned systems met and, despite disputes, ultimately agreed on a totally new system called Standard Written Form (creative, I know) on 9 May 2008.
From 2002, Cornish has been recognised by the UK government under Part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and acknowledged by UNESCO as “critically endangered”, rather than “extinct”, marking a huge step in the Cornish revival movement. Despite an end to governmental funding in 2016, with the help of Cornwall Council, the language is still well on its way to maintaining and strengthening its position as a community language in its regional home.
If you’d like to know more about Cornish or hear it spoken by its newly native speakers, see below:
Contemporary Cornish speakers:
Cornish music:
Blog post about someone’s experience learning Cornish, which includes many great resources:
https://speakingfluently.com/2021/05/24/learning-cornish-kernewek/