Beach Ices at Praa Sands
Ice meeting the sand at the base of the low cliff behind Praa Sands Beach, West Cornwall. 6th January 2009....
Icicles at Trewellard Bottoms
Water seeping through a wall is turned to icicles, ate Trewellard Bottoms, where Geevor Mine meets the sea....
Winter Sunset at Levant
A late afternoon scene, at Levant Mine, West Cornwall. 7th January 2009....
Winter at Levant
The old electricity generator building, at Levant Mine, West Cornwall, during the recent cold snap. 7th Jnauary 2009....
Your bias is showing, Flammnew! Are you suggesting all books from a Christian perspective be blocked or conted irrelevant in Cornish? Considering the massive influence of Christianity on our culture such a view is short sighted. If all Cornish literature can manage is popular pulp/culture it will be a pretty impoverished field. Welsh has huge support amongst christians who regard themselves as guardians of the tongue; Scottish Gaelic which has a tiny speaker base still produces a fantastic range of publications from high brow poetry to popular novels and magazines. The highland churches were almost the only institutions that helped preserve it through very lean times. Nothing should be excluded!
I think the main concentration should be on childrens books, although i think that if a SWF is decided upon, the main thrust will be on preparing books to meet the needs of Schools. This does not however mean that books for Adults should not be considered. The problem as I see it is, who is going to translate these books? How many people are capable to translate in the first place, i mean look how long these Bibles took.
Who says it should be blocked? I'm after people's views on which popular books should be translated as a priority to attract people to learn Cornish. We already have the Bible, which will only be read by a few people - only a tiny proportion of the population ever read it in English*, so why should the same not be true of Cornish? Considering how few people go to church these days, to attract people to Cornish we are going to need a lot more non-Christian than Christian books. (* - and I'm one of the few who has read most of it, before you make any assumptions.)
Yes, Cornish needs more than just popular pulp, but we can't afford to line the Cornish language shelves with esoterica if we want to attract people to the language. I'd love to see something like A Brief History of Time in Cornish (yes, I've read it cover to cover in English and understood most of it), but I recognise that translating it'd be a waste of time because you could count the number of people who would read it on the fingers of one head (sic).
Christians may regard themselves as guardians of Welsh, but Christians were also the architects of Cornish's demise.
It may be the bestselling book but I reiterate: very very few people in the UK will read it in English and I am sure less than 100 will ever read it in Cornish. If we are going to flood the Cornish-language shelves with religous texts then we must also translate the Koran, Talmud, Baghavad Gita, Diamond Sutra and Dhammapada. Plus Wiccan, humanist, atheist texts etc etc etc. It's going to really attract people to learn Cornish if they go to Ottakars to see what books are available and see nothing but comparative theology.
As this figure excludes the number who watched football on tv (obviously many times the number who watch Songs of Praise), how can you say that football has less appeal than Church?
Can we move this to another thread if we're to have a detailed religious discussion, I'd like to keep this one more targetted on which books to translate!
Its all very good doing these complicated books that only pretty accomplished cornish readers will understand... but how about children, i dont see a mass of literiture out there for budding cornish scholars...
How bout these for the really young:
The Mr Men books (lyfrow an mester tus)
Spot the Dog (nam yw ky)
The Hungary Caterpillar (An pryf del nownek)
Perhaps for a bit older:
Transformers (Transformyoryon) if anyone has a better word???
The BFG (An jyant bras ha whek)
The moomins
Cant think of nemore at the mo, but im sure theres lots...
To be honest, I don't really have the time to go into the religious thing in depth. Just to say that...
1) the idea of "flooding the shelves" with comparative religion texts is patently facetious... you can't be serious about "proportions of the population" reading something as an indicator - very, very, very few books are read by anything else. At least those that do read the Bible read it often and rely upon it. It's not just the most popular book, but also by far, far, far and away the most read (i.e. overall quantity of reading, as opposed to just number of readers).
2) the last I heard Songs of Praise still had more viewers than Match of the Day, so it's not "obviously" the other way round at all.
3) picking on the bits of the Church that are most traditional and doing least well proves nothing. Most *Christians* I know aren't even in favour of the continued establishment of the C of E. The faith community is (still?) an important and vibrant one, and the Christian Church is (still?) overwhelmingly the biggest part of that community in the UK.
...anyway, back on to the topic...
The first Harry Potter book is relatively short, simple but not babyish, and broad in its appeal.
1) We already have the Bible in Kernewek, and far fewer people read the Bible than those who do not, so let's have something for the rest of us now please!
2) BBC figures: Songs of Praise in 2005 fell from to 3.3M viewers. In 2006: "West Ham's win at Manchester City on BBC One on Monday drew a peak of 6.4m, while Chelsea's game against Newcastle on Wednesday drew 6.7m. The draw between Charlton and Middlesbrough on Thursday on BBC Two was watched by a peak audience of 4.7m" So, I'm afraid you're wrong.
3) Far fewer people engage in any sort of Christian faith activity than those who do not.
But anyway, enough of that, yes, Harry Potter could be a good choice, after all, it got lots of kids reading in English. And Nosdan, the Moomins were excellent, used to read them as a kid.
He sells over a £billion pounds worth of merchandise a year, worldwide (i saw that on a tv show a couple of nights ago.)
With a translation of that its bound to hit the media???
other thoughts:
Puff the magic dragon.
Horrible History (Ystoryow Uthek).. maybe could write one with a Cornish eyes view.
Maybe a Theasurus (avoid the spelling arguments plz.)
Matilda
An atlas??? (that would be interesting?)
Tintin
Anything that can interest children, but also be read by learning adults would be great.
