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've seen a few comments along these lines now, and I have a question about this. For years, based on the written descriptions that KK <o> represents "open o" and <oe> represents "closed o", I pronounced <o> and <oe> as /O/ and /o/ respectively, that is as cardinal vowels 6 and 7 in IPA, which are the open and closed "o" sounds in Gaelic, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, etc. These have the same tongue height as [E] and [e], respectively.
Then, a couple of years ago, I was taught that in Cornish, this was in fact not correct, that <o> is actually (in "proper" KK pronunciation) closer to /o/ than /O/ (in other words, the tongue height is higher than for /E/ & /O/), and that <oe> is closer to /u/ than /o/ -- the tongue height for <oe> being parallel to that of /I/ rather than that of /e/.
So given that the proper sound of <oe> strikes the anglophone ear as more like /u/ than /o/, and given that it became /u/ in LC, surely a spelling which might lead people to pronounce /u/ is better than one which leads people to pronounce /o/ (or a diphthong /ow/, /@w/, whatever). For example, pronouncing <boes>/<boos> like English "booze" is surely preferable -- and closer to the "right" sound -- to pronouncing it like English "bows".
As an aside, since LC has /u/ in these words, usually spelt <oo> (e.g. <booz>, <trooz>, <gool>), I wonder if perhaps <oo> in the SWF might have been a concession to LC users?
Getting back to the original question, I personally am for the SWF. I find nothing objectionable in it, and I don't see anything in it so far which renders it inferior to any of the other varieties of Revived Cornish. I'll use it gladly.
If Thomas is in a position to support the SWF, he must have broken through the information blackout that MN have imposed. MN have told us very clearly that the spelling of Cornish is no business of ours, that there will be no SWF until they appprove it, and that we shall only find out what it is when they deem it proper to do so.
What information blackout? I base my opinion on that preliminary SWF document that everyone else has seen (and which, in case it wasn't clear, is all I have seen as well) which outlines what the AHG agreen upon. And I see nothing amongst the "unresolved issues" which have been mentioned (use of <z> or not, <kelli> vs <kelly>, <bys>/<bes>/<beis>, etc.) that would make the SWF unacceptable to me. But then, I'm personally not very fussy about orthographic matters. I've learnt primarily KK, with a bit of UC and UCR, and I have to say that, honestly, I don't find any of them a great standout or vast improvement over the others.
KK is not, in my opinion, the superior beast that some folks make it out to be. It's easier to go from spelling to pronunciation in KK, since vowel length is clearly indicated, but going the other way, from pronunciation to spelling, is every bit as difficult as UC/R. This is an extreme example, but if a polysyllabic word ends in an unstressed /In/, then there are no fewer than 6 possible spellings: <-yn>, <-ynn>, <-in>, <-inn>, <-un>, <-unn>. Even if you have a textbook KK pronunciation, geminate consonants are still pronounced short in unstressed syllables, so it's a matter of rote memorisation as to when to write single consonants and when to write double consonants; if, as is the case with the majority of Cornish speakers I've met, one does not actually pronounce geminate consonants in stressed syllables either, then the problem is compounded. In addition to this, there are issues such as the fact that <oe> has different sounds when long and short, and <i> and <u> have different sounds when stressed and unstressed (this is a problem for me -- I still tend to pronounce e.g. <seythun> as /sEjTyn/ rather than the proper /sEjTIn/). And *no* existing orthography for Cornish, including the SWF, indicates in any way the irregular stress in words like <myghtern> and <amari>, which is a problem for students like myself who live outside of Cornwall and have to learn primarily from books rather than from direct contact with other Cornish speakers. Bottom line: KK is *not* phonetic, as is often claimed. It's simply one of several variants, which for me, at least, are really more or less equal in terms of difficulty.
The SWF as outlined in that initial document is not a great improvement over KK and UC/R either; it seems to me about equal to KK (and certainly not worse -- definitely *not* "broken KK", or a "dog's breakfast", or any of the other things that some other members with an obvious strong preference for KK have said elsewhere in this forum). I personally really *like* the choice in graphs, for example that one can use either <k>, <kw>, <hw> or <c>/<k>, <qu>, <wh>. I've always rather preferred (simply on aesthetic grounds, my personal taste) the look of UC/R over that of KK, though I focused on learning KK as it seemed to be the most widely used variant of Revived Cornish, so I'm delighted to have the option to use the latter graphs while other people who prefer the former can use those, and *everyone* is still writing "proper Cornish". There are some neat syntactic constructions in UCR and RLC, such as the use of <dos> as an auxilliary in forming the conditional and introducing relative clauses with <dell> or <fatell>, which I really like, and would like to be able to use without being told "oh that's late Cornish, you can't use that in KK". In the SWF it would be fine to use either the older MC syntax preferred in UC and KK, or the later syntax used in UCR and RLC. Again, I like the flexibility, and the fact that it's *all* "proper Cornish" in the SWF.
I fear I've gone off on a bit of a tangent here, what were we talking about again?
According to what MN have been telling us over on the other thread, any earlier statements over on the other thread are no longer operative. To cut it all short, apparently it's all still up in the air, but that's all we need to know for the time being. Watch this space (or, rather, don't.)
Thomas, many thanks for your words of sense, moderation and open-mindedness, which I hope readers of this forum will take far more notice of than Tim's tactic of twisting other people's words which, it is clear, is designed to retain the current, destructive division. If you remember from Tremough, the Commission warned all present to beware the "false friends" of Cornish - Tim is a prime example of what they meant.
Further to that, there is a current attempt by some to alienate Agan Tavas from the process and to goad us into walking away from it. However, we were not born yesterday and we are not rising to the bait. We're sticking with the SWF, and I hope that message is very clear to all concerned.
Thanks, Marhak. I should perhaps reiterate that I'm only speaking from my personal experiences learning Cornish. I find KK about equal to UC/R -- as I mentioned before, it improves over UC/R in that it allows for pronunciation to be extracted from the written word more precisely, although IMO it does so at the expense of a certain aesthetic elegance, and so I think it balances out. I honestly have a hard time imagining anyone trying to learn Cornish via UC for years and failing, and then suddenly being able to learn it much more easily when KK came along. But what do I know, maybe there are some people for whom this was indeed the case, as improbable as it might seem to me.
What bothers me most is that the whole thing has become so politicised that I fear I can't say such things without being branded "anti-Kemmyn", even though I have been a KK user up to this point. I fear I'm probably blacklisted in certain circles simply because I liked KS, for example, or because I don't find KK so superior to anything else and didn't sign the pro-KK petition, or because I spent a delightful afternoon with Nicholas Williams when I was in Dublin last November. Tarnished by association, and all that. (While I don't share all of Nicholas' opinions, and have on occasion found his tone in his writings inappropriately brusque, in person I have to say that Nicholas is a scholar and a gentleman, and a fine host. Most definitely not the Palpatine he is made out to be by some!)
It also upsets me to read some of the things I've seen said about Ben Bruch and Albert Bock -- I've known Ben for 10+ years now, he's one of my dearest friends, and he is scrupulously honest both personally and academically. So it pains me greatly to read accusations that he & Albert had some sort of secret agenda for the SWF, or that they overstepped their mandate, or what have you. They faced a most difficult assignment, and stepped up to it very admirably, at the risk of sacrificing friendships and risking their academic reputations. So if I'm in anyone's corner in all this, it's theirs.
Man, there I go again. Getting back to my original question regarding <oe>/<oo> above, I hope Morvran (or someone) will answer me later when they log in. I'm still curious about that.
I'm afraid that's the price for being honest, Thomas. It's not the way it should be, but that's how those people have chosen to be. If people would debate the pros and cons of KK as you do, the rift would have been healed long ago.
And then there's all the phony, unattested, un-Cornish graphs in both the Main and Side Forms of the SWF. They're included --despite the fact that KK's spurious phonology has been (rightly) discarded-- just to keep the KK faction happy.
They "stick out like a sore thumb", and are the real 'unfortunate choice' which [if anything needs it!] need to 'be revoked'. At the very least, these sorry examples of spurious scholarship should be confined to just one of the 2 Forms of the SWF, and IMO not to the Main one.
Police name death crash cyclist
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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.
Why sweet turns sour for kirsty, 12
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Fair aids animals
A fair at Perranaworthal village hall raised important funds for two animal charities on Saturday, May 3.
Charity walk: Dogs and their owners join forces in trek for worthy cause
Rosemullion Veterinary Practice held their second annual charity dog walk on Sunday with great success.
