V Tree
A large V shaped pine tree on the Antony estate near Torpoint...
Seaton Beach
Located at the bottom of the Seaton River valley this sand and shingle beach is popular with families. At low tide it joins up with Downderry around the headland...
Seaton River
The Seaton River as it flows out of the valley and through the village of the same name...
Portwrinkle
Looking down over the one time fishing village of Portwrinkle. In the background is the start of Whitsand Bay as it stretches 4 miles down the Rame Peninsula...
I can confirm this. Welsh was the first Celtic language I learned, and having reached a fair level of fluency, I could only understand odd words and phrases of Cornish. My brother is fluent in both languages, and he would try carefully selected Cornish on me sometimes (choosing C. words and forms that are closest to Welsh), and I still couldn’t understand most of it, until it was explained to me.
My Scots Gaelic was of even less use in understanding Cornish (which is what one would expect, of course). However, since I started systematically studying Cornish, it has been a different story altogether, and my Welsh and Gaelic are usually a great help, although sometimes a hindrance as well, when the languages diverge in how they behave (I still pronounce C. du /doo/ as if it were W. du /dee/ sometimes!).
For instance, having mastered mutations in the other 2, it was no strain to get my head round them in Cornish. And the impersonal/passive or subjunctive forms in Cornish --something English monoglots apparently find difficult-- are not a problem when you’ve already got the hang of them in, say, Welsh or French or German (or whatever other language you may have learned beforehand).
It’s a similar story with other features lacking in English, like gender, infixed pronouns, a full set of inflected forms of verbs and prepositions, or the use of highly flexible word order to denote shades of emphasis. These were similar to old friends (or foes if you prefer) from Welsh and Gaelic.
But despite the help all this gives, it’s still a major undertaking to learn Cornish. You know you’re learning a new language, not merely adapting to a different dialect of one you already know. At least, that’s my experience; and if it weren’t so, there’d be less point in learning Cornish.
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On a change of topic, I found to my surprise that my years of eavesdropping on friends conversing in Cornish had allowed me to passively absorb much more of the language than I realised. I remember one day early on in my Cornish studies when --right out of the blue-- I said out loud, “banallek --that’s a furze bush, and it has a geminated /-ll/ in the middle, just like dalleth, which means ‘to begin’ ”. A quick check in Nance’s dictionary confirmed these two words (neither of which had been in my course book!). They were something someone had told me about, 20 years earlier perhaps, as examples of gemination; I’d never used the words in my life, but somehow, unbeknownst to me, they’d been tattooed on my memory.
When Cornish starts to be more widely learned in schools and elsewhere, under the impetus of the SWF, I hope that learners may find the same sort of thing happening to them, from having been exposed to Cornish place-names and other bits and pieces of the language over the years.
Thanks for interesting comments. I have heard the statement that impersonal/passive or subjunctive confuse English monoglots before. I can only think that is when they have not had a good grounding in English grammar as we certainly do have the same in English. We called "impersonal" "passive" but they were the same thing. "Active Voice/Passive Voice". We had that in high school. Subjunctive and Conditional also.
Not important. Only commenting because it is not a new topic to me. I've had friends insist they never had this in English.
Now, gender, "infixed" pronouns, inflected forms, yes, all new and most confusing at first. Word order is changing in English. Have you noticed? There is more variety to English word order than there used to be. That is good in my estimation.
Langauges are such an interesting study. Only one have I ever rebelled from - French. I do not like the sound of it. Also do not like to hear English spoken with a French accent. That is strictly personal and cannot be explained.
Now here's an interesting one: Tell me if I am wrong to consider Cornish as the mother language of Breton... even if we are talking very old Cornish... and Cornish and Welsh to be brother/sister languages???
I thought they were all three branches of one language. No?
Hmmm? I just looked at a diagram in "Atlas of the Celtic World" by John Haywood. It shows Gallo-Brithonic dividing into Brithonic and Gallic long, long ago. Then, near the end of the BC years, it shows Brithonic dividing into Welsh and Cornish while Gallic becomes Breton.
No that's quite wrong, the Bretons emigrated from SW Britain to get away from the English barbarians. There's apparently no need to assume any Gaulish elements in Breton, although some factions like to see them and I believe it all gets political.
In terms of branches Breton is closer to Cornish, but Breton has come under so much French influence since then that this similarity doesn't really count for much by now. Cornish and Welsh have sort of run along parallel lines while Breton has veered off on a different track.
Trees can be misleading. In terms of branches Friesian is much closer to English than it is to Dutch, but that hardly counts for anything now.
I know. That thought also crossed my mind. I often wonder about things I read in books. That said (and I am vague on this) wasn't there an earlier settlement in the area of Britain that did speak a form of Gallic? These the later emigrants would have joined and merged their two languages?
I'm sure I read somewhere that Brittany was colonised not just from present-day Cornwall, but also from parts further east through Devon and beyond.
Did they all speak exactly the same Brythonic language or not? I'd imagine there being a range of dialects through that territory, but I've no idea what evidence there is one way or another.
The way I've always understood it is that British (Brythonic) Celtic would always have had regional dialects that further developed when Saxon domination from the east and south-east drove physical (i.e.geographical) wedges between them. One dialect became Cumbrian; another Welsh (although they were always hard to tell apart). A south-western dialect eventually evolved into Cornish and, in the later medieval period, this included features like assibilation not found in the others (including Breton). Colonisation of Brittany from the mid 5th century certainly took SW British there but I'd imagine that this also came under Gaulish influence, just as modern day Breton has noticeable French influences (particularly upon aspects of its spelling)and, as some of our colleagues like to say, Cornish orthography was partly influenced by that of the majority language next door. I dare say that Norman-French also had some influence upon Cornish, too (before three misguided Cornishmen went and revived an English language on the verge of extinction!). Such influences are only natural and, while some might despise them, they happened and that is that.
There is, by the way, a current theory that the original language of Britain, after the Ice Age and before Celtic developed along the Atlantic coasts of Europe in the Late Mesolithic or Neolithic eras, might have been an early form of Basque. Intriguing, but hard to prove or disprove.
I'd have to dig out history books to refresh my memory. There are probably those among you all who can recall. I think there were Gauls who escaped into what became Brittany in their efforts to avoid the Romans. There would be your Gallic. Then, several centuries later, there came the Celts from Britain to join them.
Many think that Basque is one of the original languages of Europe, also that Atlantic Celtic may have Phonecian (Semitic) influence, ie the word order and the use of the possesive and the forms of the prepositions.
Doubtless as a remote region Brittany would have been one of the last outposts of Gaulish, but there is no reason to suppose that Gaulish was still the dominant language there by the time the Brythonic speakers settled there from SW Britain. There are no features of Breton which have been shown to be better explained as Gaulish survivals than as Brythonic imports. So, like the rest of France, Brittany was indeed chock-full of Gauls, but by the end of the Roman period they mainly spoke Latin. Because of the close similarities between Latin and Gaulish, it was particularly easy for Gaulish speakers to learn Latin. And difficult, it is reported, for the Romans to keep written documents from being understood by the Gauls, even when their Latin was rudimentary.
Nevertheless, Gregory of Tours reported that there were still Gaulish speakers in the fifth century, which means that quite possibly the dying embers of Gaulish did co-exist with early Breton, which leads to the intriguing possibility that some Gaulish words and features did find their way into Breton. However, no-one's been able to definitely identify them.
Police name death crash cyclist
Police in Cornwall name a cyclist who died after being badly injured in a collision on Sunday.
Training to distribute aid boxes
Cornish-based charity Shelterbox trains Burmese workers to distribute its boxes of aid for cyclone victims.
Pony pair graze conservation area
Two Exmoor ponies are installed at a Cornish conservation area to help manage the site by grazing.
Gyrocopter pilot had heart attack
A gyrocopter pilot whose machine crashed on the way to Bodmin Airfield died from natural causes.
Sanctuary man jailed over abuse
The former owner of a donkey sanctuary is jailed for five years for sexually abusing young girls.
Lorry stuck between buildings
A wrong turn ends in embarrassment for a lorry driver as his vehicle gets stuck in a Cornish village.
Police save harbour jump suspect
A man attempting to run from police is rescued by them after jumping into a harbour in Cornwall.
Why sweet turns sour for kirsty, 12
A young girl has banned a make of confectionery from her house after reading claims that one of the world's largest producers tests its products on animals.
