Stream, St. Breward
Stream near St. Breward on Bodmin Moor...
St Germoe's Church
Germoe church was built in the 12th century on the site of an earlier Celtic church.
On each side of the porch are carved what appear to be long tailed monkeys - it is thought they are intended to wa...
St Germoe's Well
The rather unremarkable St Germoe's Holy Well opposite the church in the village of the same name.
The inscription reads:
St Germoe's Holy Well
A reconstruction of a well which existed here circ...
Bardh, can you please enlighten me, an outsider who watches all this far away from Cornwall, ’cause I do not understand.
As far as I know, all currently used varieties of Cornish, whether spoken or spelt, are reconstructions. (The language actually died; no one taped Pentreath’s last words!)
But now you claim that KS, an orthography created by a group of linguists and/or language users, is a ”reconstruction of how Cornish might have been, hundreds of years ago in a parallel space-time continuum”. Can you please tell me just WHY KK, another orthography, created by a one-man linguist group, is not also a ”reconstruction of how Cornish might have been, hundreds of years ago in a parallel space-time continuum”??
Briefly as it's bed-time, KS tries to merge features from earlier and later times into one system. KK aims to represents the language as it was spoken at a point in time. KS tries to please everyone by including early *and* late, and it is that artificial mixing which I think Bardh objects to (I know I do). Yes, ALL forms of 21st Century Cornish are reconstructions, they have to be because the few texts which remain are spread over several hundred years, but KK tries to reconstruct the language as it would have been at a single timeframe (and so aims to represent the historical Cornish of that time) whereas KS uses features spread over several hundred years and so doesn't represent how Cornish would have been used at any date in history. (FlammNew battens down the hatches and waits for the flaming to begin.)
There is a tenuous argument to claim Cornish did not actually die out. This is that the last people with traditional knowledge (John Davey 1891) died after the first revivalists came onto the scene. Also at that time the 'Cornish Dialect' would have been much heavier laden with phrases, grammar, and words from the language. I'm not arguing that it didn't 'die out'... but I am arguing that it possibly was not as clear cut as 'I've found the last Cornish speaker' historians of the time would have you believe. Just one theory for our Scando friend.
There must have been a few able to speak a few handed down sentences in the early 20th century - I know that fisherman counted still in Cornish, perhaps there was a few swear words dotted arouund (we all know they last longest!) Did anyone make sound recordings of them in the early part of the century or am i just wishful thinking?
his is a bit of a misrepresentation of what KS attempts. KS is based on its foundation text "Creation of the World" - that means 1611 (although the text is older). KS doesn't merge early and late forms, it recomends different registers. These differing registers occur in pretty much all living languages, compare literary vs. colloquial Welsh. In the later Middle Cornish texts such as BM, TH and SA we have forms that are found in Late Cornish as well as those found in earlier writing. So these forms existed side by side. As with all living languages there was no clear break between Middle Cornish and Late Cornish. So what KS does is that it is based on a text that could be interpreted as being either late Middle Cornish or early Late Cornish, i.e. 1600.
That is quite a specific point in time, if you ask me. All it is, is 100 years after the bull's eye proposed for KK.
What is the evidence for Registers in Cornish? I've been speaking Cornish for nearly a decade and the first I heard of it was when KS came out, seemingly as a mechanism to allow both MC and LC forms in one system. I was surprised I hadn't heard of it before if it is a genuine feature of Cornish.
Hallo again!
While I can see a certain amount in what FlammNew says, that for me is not the central issue.
Recent Modern Cornish has taken shape over the past century or more. Its constituent elements include the fruit of scholarship and invertigation, features of the colloquial English of Cornwall, ideas about Cornish identity, and influence from related tongues. By now it is a fully-functioning state of Cornish in its own right, just as Early Modern Cornish, Middle Cornish, and Old Cornish, were before it. This is the living Cornish language that we hope to develop, cultivate, and strengthen.
Although no systematic research has been done, anecdotally a number of changes can be detected over the past thirty years or so - especially since the reforms of the Eighties. Vocabulary is richer, people are at ease speaking the language in a way they never were under the old order, syntax and idiom are surer, and features of pronunciation such as undiphtongized vowels and guttural fricatives are much more common. There is a great deal of variation, of course, and many of the features prescribed in textbooks seem to function in normal quotidian usage as features of a de facto formal register.
The de facto Standard Written Form of Cornish is the one known as Kemmyn or KK. Of the viable options on offer, it is the most efficient at conveying written messages. It is the written medium of nearly everything published. If it were abolished, Cornish as a written language would, in effect, have to close down for months - indeed, for years.
This is what the ICS Faction want to do. In the name of some ideologically-driven perfectionism or other (they seem as unable to agree about their philosophical justification as they are about its graphic realization) they want to abolish actually-existing Modern Cornish. For it they propose to substitute some *starred *form or other (when they finally agree on it) of Cornish as they think it OUGHT to have been. Some of them give the appearance of genuinely believing that the Cornish-speaking community is going to abandon its language at their behest, and adopt their latest Frankenstein creation overnight.
Just like that, as dear old Tommy Cooper used to say.
But does that mean there is NO room for any alterations in KK? perhaps some minor changes to align KK more with the other forms?
No one said changing it would be easy, but would it be viable?
I realise that some people will say if they're only small changes why bother, and others will say small changes are not enough! But lets talk about it!
I think Bardh is right. The amount of published material in KK far out numbers that in any of the out forms of Revived Cornish. To change to some other orthography would take an great deal of time and resources. Even if a 'compromise' form were adopted there is no assurance that it would heal the divisions. The best choice at this time is just to adopt KK as the standard spelling and leave it as is except for minor fixes. There will always be those who will not accept whatever orthography is chosen, so it might as well be the orthography which has the most resources and is most used.
Nosdan, would you reject the SWF if KK was chosen in its current form? If so, what changes would you want to see in it to make it acceptable to you personally? What changes would you propose to KK anyway (ignoring the SWF question)?
However, you did not answer my main question, Bardh:
Why is KS a ”reconstruction of how Cornish might have been, hundreds of years ago in a parallel space-time continuum”, while KK is not?
You go on to call KS a ”Frankenstein creation”.
Why, in your view, is KK not also a ”Frankenstein creation”?
You give a lot of practical arguments for making KK the ”SWF”. That’s fair.
But I am puzzled by your ”monsterization” of KS, and would like to see some rational argumentation here.
By the way, when KK was adopted in 1987, did Cornish as a written language have to close down for months, as you put it?
An interesting reply for "an outsider who watches all this far away from Cornwall". Your grasp of the English vernacular is remarkable for someone who has it as a second language, and your anti-Kemmyn rhetoric sounds familiar. I am going to be really nosey and ask your connection to the language movement? You seem to know far more about it than one would expect for an "outsider". Scandinavians have little connection with Celtic culture generally, I'm curious as to why you are so interested in Cornwall. Sorry if this sounds intrusive but you'd be amazed at how often people with an axe to grind on this forum have pretended to be something and someone they are not.
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