Cornish language

“ Language is less than ever a final test of race. Most Cornishmen habitually speak English, and few, very few, could hold five minutes’ conversation in the old Celtic speech. Yet the memory of it lingers on, and no one can talk about the country itself, and mention the places in it, without using a wealth of true Cornish words. ”

“ The old Cornish language of the Celtic stock became extinct only in the 18th century, and the Cornish character remains as a heritage of the time when the land had leisure to mould the life and the habits of the man. ”

“ Although Cornish must now be classed with the extinct languages, it has certainly shown a marvelous vitality. More than four hundred years of Roman occupation, more than six hundred years of Saxon and Danish sway, a Norman conquest, a Saxon Reformation, and civil wars, have all passed over the land; but, like a tree that may bend before a storm but is not to be rooted up, the language of the Celts of Cornwall has lived on in an unbroken continuity for at least two thousand years. ”

“ She does indeed talk Cornish as readily as others do English, being bred up from a child to know no other language, nor could she talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age, as, her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language, which the inhabitants in general, even the gentry, did then well understand. ”

“ A language does not die all at once, nor is it always possible to fix the exact date when it breathed its last. Thus, in the case of Cornish, it is by no means easy to reconcile the conflicting statements of various writers as to the exact time when it ceased to be the language of the people, unless we bear in mind that what was true with regard to the higher classes was not so with regard to the lower, and likewise that in some parts of Cornwall the vitality of the language might continue, while in others its heart had ceased to beat. ”

“ Carew's Survey was soon followed by that of Norden, by whom we are informed that the Cornish language was chiefly confined to the western hundreds of the county, particularly to Penwith and Kirrier, and yet (which is to be marveyled) though the husband and wife, parents and children, masters and servants, etc., naturally communicate in their native language, yet there is none of them in a manner but is able to converse with a stranger in the English tongue, unless it be some obscure people who seldom confer with the better sort. ”

“ One should come into the duchy to hear how the English language may acquire a languorous ease, which makes one want to sit still at the first milestone, and never to go any further. At first, Guy wanted everything "sharp"—boots "sharp," breakfast "sharp," everything to the minute, and every one on the alert. The Cornish constitution wasn't made to work that way in Cornish air. A woman was selling fruit at a street corner, and Guy bought some. A small boy was sent to change a coin, and Guy grew tired and impatient of waiting. ”

“ As, in speaking English, a Frenchman or a German uses more or less of the accent peculiar to each, so it is very probable that the accent with which the Cornish speak is one transferred from their ancient Cornish language. ”

“ In 1630 Sir John Dodridge in his History of the Ancient and Modern estate of the Principality of Wales, Duchy of Cornwall, and Earldom of Chester, says: “The people inhabiting the same [i.e. Cornwall] are call’d Cornishmen, and are also reputed a remanent of the Britaines . . . they have a particular language called Cornish (although now much worn out of use) , differing but little from the Welsh and the language of the Britaines of France.” ”

“ Why should Cornishmen learn Cornish? There is no money in it, it serves no practical purpose, and the literature is scanty and of no great originality or value. The question is a fair one, the answer is simple. Because they are Cornishmen. ”

“ We had seen already several ancient dames carrying fish quite as capable of taking care of themselves, which indicated that if the language is lost, the race survives. It's a nice walk along the shore to Mousehole. We might have lingered at Newlyn, only the Bookworm wanted to get upon classic ground, where old Dolly used to smoke her pipe, and drink her flagon of beer with the best, and talk Cornish—the real old lingo, hot, sweet, and strong, so that those who heard her once never forgot it. ”

“ It is well not to attempt to force a Celtic language into a Teutonic mould. Some of the most beautiful metres that the world has ever known are to be found among the works of English poets, but they are no more suitable to Cornish than hexameters, sapphics, and alcaics on strict quantity lines would be to English. It is possible, however, to write ten-syllabled blank verse in Cornish, provided a fair amount of alliteration is used. ”

“ We wish to correct an error that many persons, not Cornish, entertain with regard to the language of Cornish working people. Their mistake originates, in many instances, from seeing in stories—misnamed Cornish, and for the most part written by strangers to the country—such an uncouth jargon, put into the mouths of West Country folks, which is no more the common dialect of Cornwall than it is of Jericho. ”

“ Thus it is that inflections which in the late Cornish often seem to have been almost, if not quite, inaudible, have been written in full, for that is the author’s notion, founded on what Middle Cornishmen actually did write, of what Modern Cornishmen were trying to express. For most things he has precedents, though he has allowed himself a certain amount of conjecture at times, and in most cases of difficulty he has trusted, as he would advise his readers to do, to Breton rather than to Welsh, for the living Breton of to-day is the nearest thing to Cornish that exists. ”

“ The writer has arrived at his conclusions by a comparison of the various existing spellings with one another, with the traditional fragments collected and recorded by himself in 1875, with the modern pronunciation of Cornish names, with the changes which English has undergone in the mouths of the less educated of Cornishmen, and to some extent with Breton. The author suggests that this form of spelling should be generally adopted by Cornish students of their old speech. The system cannot in the nature of things be strictly accurate, but it is near enough for practical purposes. ”

“ Secondly, we have the Play of the Life of St. Meriasek, of Breton parentage; and lastly, a work based on the Ordinalia, containing many more English words, written by William Jordan, of Helston, in 1611; the work deals with the Creation of the World and the Deluge. The Cornish language was spoken in the West of Cornwall until the beginning of the eighteenth century [41] ; by the close of that century it had entirely disappeared. In Carew's time the Cornish Miracle Plays were performed in the open fields, and were resorted to by the country people with great delight ”

“ The Bretons follow the ordinary French rules as to the strict number of syllables, the cæsura, and the rhyming, taking very little account of the stress accent either of words or sentences.
p. 179The prosody of the older Cornish literature has little in common with the strict system of Welsh. Though one does find alliterations and “internal” rhyming and correspondence of consonants, they do not seem to be at all systematic, but are only either introduced as casual ornaments or purely accidentally. ”

“ No doubt it is well known that the original inhabitants of Cornwall were Celts, and that Cornish is a Celtic language; and that, if we divide the Celtic languages into two classes, Welsh with Cornish and Breton forms one class, the Cymric; while the Irish with its varieties, as developed in Scotland and the Isle of Man, forms another class, which is called the Gaelic or Gadhelic. ”

“ These, written by men who spoke Cornish fluently and had no theories and often no knowledge of philology, probably represent what people really spoke in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. That faintness and even silence of final letters, which seems to have been a characteristic of Cornish as it is of French, was the cause that, in writing as phonetically as they knew how, these practical speakers of Cornish often omitted the ends of words, and made it seem as though their verbs had largely lost their inflections. ”

“ Carew, who published his Survey of Cornwall in 1602, notices the almost total extirpation of the language in his days. He says, 'The principal love and knowledge of this language liveth in Dr. Kennall the civilian, and with him lyeth buried; for the English speech doth still encroach upon it and hath driven the same into the uttermost skirts of the shire. Most of the inhabitants can speak no word of [Pg 244] Cornish; but few are ignorant of the English; and yet some so affect their airs, as to a stranger they will not speak it ”

“ The Preface to the Cornish Grammar in Lhuyd’s Archæologia Britannica. This consists of two and a quarter folio pages of close print, and is written in the Cornish of his own day. It is the work of a foreigner, but is nevertheless very well done. A not very good translation, probably the work of Tonkin and Gwavas, is given by Pryce, and reprinted by Polwhele in the fifth volume of his History. ”

“ Dr. Whitley Stokes points out in his edition of Jordan’s Creation certain changes, and though the language of that play is substantially Middle Cornish, the spelling is largely of the pre-Lhuydian popular Modern Cornish sort. Among these changes are the following:—
1. The final e becomes a. [This is perhaps only a question of spelling, and need not imply a difference of sound. Probably a sound as of the German final e is intended. [50] ]
2. th and gh have become mute, and are often interchanged. [In Modern Cornish th is often omitted, or represented by h.] ”

“ Should any one wish to attempt verse-writing in Cornish, it would be best either to use one of the seven p. 190or four syllabled (or mixed) metres of the Dramas, using their purely syllabic methods, which undoubtedly work all right in modern Breton, or to extend the same principles, as the Bretons do, to lines of other lengths. The triplets of old Welsh and perhaps of very old Cornish are effective metres, but are not so easy as they look, for it is not enough merely to write rhyming triplets. ”

“ The particle a is often omitted colloquially, but its effect is perceptible in the change of the initial of the verb. If the verb begins with a vowel, a is always omitted.
With interrogative sentences should come the answers to them. It must be understood that by nature no Celt can ever say a plain “yes” or “no.” There are “dictionary words” for “yes” and “no” in Welsh and Cornish, and they are used a very little in translations from other languages; but they do not “belong” to be used in speaking or writing Welsh or Cornish. In Gaelic there are not even “dictionary words” for them. ”

“ For the South Wales man understandeth not perfectly the North Wales man, and the North Wales man little of the Cornish, but the South Wales man much. The pronunciation of the tongue differs in all, but the Cornish is far the easier to be pronounced.” Here he goes on to compare the sound of it with the Welsh, to the disadvantage of the latter. . . . “But of late the Cornishmen have much conformed themselves to the use of the English tongue, and their English is equal to the best, especially in the Eastern partes; even from Truro eastward is in a manner wholly Englishe. ”

“ The pronunciation of Cornish place-names forms something of a guide to the old sounds, only one must be careful not to be misled by the modern tendency to pronounce words as they are spelt according to the English values of letters, and one must also remember that there is no settled system of place-name orthography. ”

“ It is probable that those who wrote verse would continue to use archaic forms long after they had been dropped in prose and in conversation. But the difference p. 50between Middle and Modern Cornish is not really very great, and comes to very little more than a difference of spelling, an uncertainty about the final letters of certain words, and a tendency to contractions, elisions, and apocopations in words, which, though recognised in their fuller form in the spelling of Middle Cornish verse, may have been nearly as much contracted, elided, and apocopated in Middle Cornish conversation. ”

“ In Cornish (as in Breton) the general principle is that (1) the tenuis changes under some circumstances into the media, and under others into a form of the aspirate; and that (2) the media changes to a form of the aspirate under some circumstances, and into the tenuis under others; but that (3) the conditions which change the tenuis into the media change the media into the aspirate: while those which change (4) the tenuis into the aspirate leave the media unchanged; and those which change (5) the media to the tenuis leave the tenuis unchanged. ”

“ Francis Robinson, used to preach in Cornish down to the year 1678, that being the only tongue well understood by his parishioners. Scawen mentions the MSS. of the aforesaid “Anguin,” as he spells him, and laments their destruction. He also speaks of a “Matins” (possibly a Primer, or Hours of our Lady) in Cornish, which had belonged to “Mr. Maynard.” [17]
In Bishop Gibson’s edition of Camden’s Britannia, published in 1695, there is a short account of the Cornish Language, and the Lord’s Prayer and Creed, the same versions as those given by Scawen, are given as specimens. ”

“ She is somewhat deaf, but her intellect seemingly not impaired; has a memory so good, that she remembers perfectly well, that about four or five years ago at Mousehole, where she lives, she was sent for by a gentleman, who, being a stranger, had a curiosity to hear the Cornish language, which she was famed for retaining and speaking fluently, and that the innkeeper where the gentleman came from attended him. ”