Even if it is a linguistically unsound, unworkable mess, with serious and unnecessary inbuilt problems which would make teaching and learning it difficult, including an inability of the ad-hoc group to agree on basic pronunciation?
We need the best available spelling to go into schools if we want kids to learn it.
The Partnership will have to have a serious rethink.
The reputation of the language does not depend on whether the movement is fractured or not. It depends on how academically defensible the revived language is. That is why so much effort has been put into getting Kernewek Kemmyn as accurate as possible. I for one cannot pledge allegiance (and certainly not "alliance" ) to an inferior product.
If you can't pledge allegiance to an inferior product, why support Kemmyn? Its flaws, based upon a mistaken phonology and faulty database, are well known but have never been addressed (at least since the initial tj/dj disaster.
Do you know what KG has said now? That final -y should not be accepted into the SWF because Welsh and Breton both have final -i. No matter that final -y is attested roughly 100 times more than -i in Cornish texts.
I have news for him. Cornish is not Welsh. Cornish is not Breton. It is Cornish. And Cornish has -y. Nor should Cornish be made to become like Breton or Welsh. It is distinct from both and should remain distinct. Cornish developed assibilation. Welsh and Breton did not. Are we then, by the same argument, to say that "wood" should now be spelt "coet"? And kick 800 years of history and NATURAL (not one man's late 20th century theoretical) development into touch?
No, we should not. But if we are to accept final -i because Welsh and Breton are to provde the model (according to KG), then assibilation will have to go too. Totally unacceptable.
Sorry Marghek, "i" and "y" represent two quite different sounds in KK. The weren't distinguished very well in the texts because they hardly ever wrote "i" and when they did it was interchangable with "y". The "y" sound is only found at the end of a handful of words, like "my" and "ty", everywhere else (always when unstressed) final "y" changed to "e" and then to "a", so almost all the "y"'s at the end of words in the old texts represent the "i"-sound. So we spell them with "i". There's a reason for everything.
You I think, see yourself as a Cornish patriot, yet you want to spell the language with a ill-fitting bodged second-hand English system. We can do a bit better. The Bretons for example no longer write Breton in French spelling, "quet" for "ket" and "eux" for "eus" etc. Yet that's how Breton was spelled at the time our texts were written. Why is it OK for them to have a first-class system that fits their language, but we're supposed to use a second-class system that doesn't?
Again, the problem is caused because the language went out of use, so people can't distinguish between Cornish words and names that have passed into English (including Cornish dialect English) and been transformed in the process, and the Cornish language itself.
The whole point of Cornish, it's central significance to Cornish separateness, it that it is a whole separate language in it's own right. It's not a "dialect", not funny "naughty English". It's a different language. The place names sound different in Cornish. Just as Welsh or Gaelic names have different versions from those used in English. Same with Breton and French, or Basque and French/Spanish, or anywhere else in the world that's bilingual.
Cornish is a different language from English. Dressing it up as "funny English" does no-one a service.
marhak, why do you do this? Why do you pronounce on matters when you clearly haven't taken any time to understand them?
Like you, I'm not a linguist. But it turns out that linguistics is really not that difficult to understand, so you could at least make an effort.
If you did, you would be able to make a fairly sensible judgement about '-i' and '-y' and understand why Kemmyn is the way it is, even if you didn't like it - and you surely wouldn't.
It would also allow you to see that there is absolutely no parallel whatsoever between the '-i' / '-y' choice and assibilation, and that there is not a universal rule in Kemmyn that says 'do it the way it's done in Welsh and Breton'.
It is very difficult not to believe that you are being fed these peculiar notions by someone that does understand the issues and who is egging you on to wind everybody up so that they assume entrenched positions. Whether that's true, or you are single-handedly coming up with this tosh, it is, to quote your very self, "totally unacceptable".
But we'll no doubt have to put up with more of it as this nightmare rolls on.
Marhak has been misled here by propaganda.
Kernewek Kemmyn is not based upon a database, faulty or otherwise.
He may not appreciate that every criticism of KK is taken seriously, and examined carefully.
It is important to the developers (plural) of KK that it be the best orthography available.
So if any criticisms are found to be substantiated, then steps are taken to correct errors.
These usually concern the misspelling of a few individual words.
Occasionally structural faults come to light and these are also corrected.
As a (now rather old) example, Marhak mentioned the matter of tj/dj.
More recently, Keith Bailey drew attention to the existence of the /yw/ phoneme.
I understand that the Language Board recently agreed that words containing it be spelled with <uw>.
Williams has identified what he claims are other structural faults.
These claims of alleged flaws have similarly been scrutinised. None has been found to be valid. The phonology is not mistaken.
Yes the 'experts' should be allowed to discuss it freely but what they should refrain from doing is having childish slanging matches on a public internet forum which just make everyone look silly.
As for Pawls remarks about my views on democracy and majority rule. Pawl surely a democracy must listen to and protect its minorities as well?
You know with the Celtic Devonshire / Devonwall movement being so quiet at the momment I wonder if they haven't actually invested the Cornish language scene in order to cause disent and disagreement.
When you come up with a good answer, they never admit defeat. The just go quiet for a while, then start up again as if nothing had happened. The temptation is to begin explaining whatever it was all over again. But it's pointless really, as much use as talking to a brick wall.
The other day I found a list of their claims from a couple of years ago. Most of them have been refuted several times over but they're still coming out with them. You know, "rigged meeting", "faulty secret database", "magic algorithym", "one man & a computer", "not qualified", "Kesva strong-arm tactics", "all just theory", "sustained criticism", "no academic support", "we're all arrogant", "nobody uses it anyway (unless they've been forced to)", "copied from Breton (or Welsh)", "trad. texts not written like English", on and on, and the same for a whole list of technical linguistic points which I won't bore you with here.
All bullshite, but they won't be told. I'm fed up of refuting all this over and over, I need to spend more time with my language
Don't believe a word of it -- "Empty vessels make most sound".
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