Fulub, as the Cornish Democrat, shouldn't you support the wish of the majority of Cornish speakers as to how they wish to spell the language?
Also should you not question the validity of the conduct of the Partnership which breaches Nolan on several fundamental points as well as coming squarely within the parameters of Wednesbury unreasonableness?
The problem with mudhook's comment is that, just as the rights and wrongs of an argument in a language one doesn't understand is unascertainable, so is an argument about a language one doesn't understand.
Without a thorough understanding of the subject, making a judgement at all is foolish.
Judging all parties to a dispute to be equally at fault is the sort of behaviour that little old women who 'can't bear argument' indulge in, with self-righteous clucks.
I'm not saying either side is worse than the other, but taking moral high ground would suggest you do sit and smile.
The continuous to and fro on these forums is clear to even the most impartial observer to be a waste of time and energy, and all those involved are being idiotic.
Think of it outside the kernewegoryon box for a moment.
These people are arguing about the spelling system of a language that has been dormant for 200 odd years spoken by a few and fluently so by even less like it was the brink of nuclear war! The main sticking point is they have 3 perfectly good spelling systems - 2 additional compromises and a state backed compromise being developed with the differences incredible small, whimsically so. The spoken form remains intelligible between all factions as does the written forms.
It reminds me of the episode of Red dwarf "waiting for god" when they decipher the cat bible and find the cat people had holy wars over the colour of their hats!
The Kernewek language is the only real thing that sets Cornwall apart from other parts of the UK and so is pretty fundamental to any Cornish cause. I would find it incredibly easy to argue that other topics are not too dissimilar in Cornwall, especially many that you discuss Fulub.
As a consequence the language is very important and the experts should be allowed to discuss it freely. That everyone can defend their point is democracy. Otherwise we will end up with a meaningless hybrid and be subject to ridicule. The form of language chosen should be self-consistent and not a mixture. If this is achieved, it does not matter what 'mudhook' and the like think as the expertise is above them.
He's saying that the point Mudhook has put forward is that we are not strengthening the prestige of the language by attempting to say one form or other is better, whether it's been created by one man, whether its a mixture of periods, or whether its a reconstructed late 19th century version.
The point is, damage continues to be dealt to the repuation and authenticity of the language worldwide whilst it is fractured.
Hence the importance of all speakers pledging alliance to the SWF.
Myself, like many, are not ready to learn the language properly until the complete SWF is agreed upon.
Double the interest will arise once that difference has been concreted.
I would suggest that Mudhook is a miserable Plymouthian, with a little to much time on his hands.
There is a lot of anti cornish feeling in Plymouth.
We should have cornish classes there when the SWF is ready, there are many cornish men and women about who would learn.
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.
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