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...
Incidentally, I for one would be teribly upset if they 'purged' pellgowser from the language. Unlike some of its rather ugly counterparts in other European tongues who have tried to oust the ubiquitous 'phone' I think it is an almost perfectly natural coinage. It must be save...just as some of the English borrowings that give cornish its own very distinct flavour must not be erased either!
A major problem I have with Nicholas Williams is his 100% opposition to KK and his comments like this:
Which translates something like: We cannot all work together to the benefit of the language until the supporters of KK admit the truth, that is to say that it is not Cornish. (My emphasis.)
His supporters use the fact that he is the only proponent of one of the flavours of Cornish to currently hold an academic position in linguistics as a stick with which to beat supporters of other flavours. The argument is nonsense anyway: speakers of Unified, Kemmyn and UCR can understand each other, and the majority of differences are minor ones in pronounciation, and in new words: Unified is happy to borrow from English, KK prefers to coin Celtic neologisms (and why not?!). I suspect that NW is afraid that the wind may not blow his way when the SWF is decided upon and is fighting tooth and nail against his main rival.
I'm afraid that entrenched, stiff-necked people like NW, whatever his academic qualifications, are a major part of the problems we have coming together behind a single version (whichever one that may be). As I've said before: the original texts do not use one single spelling system and have grammatical variations, so the texts do not collectively represent a single, historically-distinct, academically-correct version of Cornish, This makes the arguments about whether U, UCR or KK are "academically-correct" spelling systems or are more or less "authentic" (whatever that means) a total nonsense.
With you 100% there, pard.
Well, quite! Why should it be purged anyway? "Pellgowser" is as alien to Cornish as "Telephone" is to English, both are invented words! If we're going to use invented neologisms surely it's better to use Cornish ones than English ones? We want Cornish recognised as a distinctive language, why dilute it with imported words?
Pellgowser and pellwolok are pretty horrible words and, in my view, unnecessary. A television is a television in just about every modern language (same with telephone). The word simply has spelling differences to suit. I would far rather we be honest rather than contriving and just use Televysyon (or something similar) and Telefon > telefonya, "to telephone". The words are universal, coined from Classical Greek and Latin. Why invent a Cornish word that never existed when we can simply do what every other language does?
Cards on the table. I have never liked KK and could never see why it was devised in the first place (simply being honest, lads and lasses - please don't bite my head off). Many of the KK champions denigrate Late Cornish spelling as being "corrupt". Now, on the same principle, why isn't what Ken George did to the language, also seen as "corrupt". Late Cornish, at least, had some historical precedent. From 1500 onwards, you can see the changes happening in the texts and over time. KK had no precedent whatsoever. So why isn't it being seen as "corrupt"?
As I understand it there are known deficiencies in the spelling of Unified, which KK and UCR both set out to rectify.
Spelling is only a way of representing sounds on paper, I don't understand why people have such hang-ups about which ones we use! Marhak, there is no standard spelling of Cornish in the texts, so EVERY form of Cornish, Unified included, is "corrupt" (whatever that means) to some degree. Unified was the first way of trying to bring together the spelling of the texts to some sort of "average" - Kemmyn was just another way of producing a more regular, phonemic spelling of Cornish.
I think that having a regular, phonemic spelling system for Kernewek is highly desirable as it makes a language far easier to learn, which is important at a time when Cornish is going into our schools and has currently perhaps that best chance it will ever have of expanding. Maybe Ken moved too far from the orginal spellings for some, but it doesn't stop users from reading the original texts - Bywnans Ke, for example, contains 'gh' - should we discount Unified because it doesn't and is therefore "corrupt" in some way?
"Many", Marhak? Do they?
Just how "many" of these people have you heard say this? Needn't be too accurate - to the nearest five.
Are these the same ones that keep daubing "Kemmyn is a Perfect System" on railway bridges from here to Bristol?
Branvras-you surely can't be serious about the railway graffiti en route to Bristol?! I thought this behaviour was all supposed to be bizarre hogwash! Little wonder Dr Williams is perhaps a little pugnacious for his own system! The Late faction seem quite quiescent on here so I wonder if they are quite so aggressive, or do they take the alternative tack of just quietly plugging away with their own? Do they denigrate KK with the same evangelical zeal as the UCR folks? I suspect KK's main problem is not that it seeks to be phonemic but rather that it gets the underlying phonemic system demonstrably wrong. However surely such errors do not totally invalidate all that it has achieved and minor adjustments can be made from time to time? Scots Gaelic spelling use to have new and old forms running in parallel and it has modernise to keep up with the development of the language without too much contoversy at all. I guess the difference is hat Gaelic has never had to be revived and so the sound systems that exist are incontrovertibly 'authentic'.
Anyway, on the 'pellgowser&'pellwolok' note, can I just say that so far as many of the other European attempts at dodging the phone and tv are concerned I agree they are indeed rather less than euphonious, shall we say?! Fernsehen/fernsprechen just don't convince; whereas I personally think pellgowser absolutley does. And I suspect even if it didn't get accorded official dictionary status it'll still be around and so precsription will have to give way to groundforce reality!! Anyway in a vibrant language there is room for both terms, don't you feel?
Despite all the friction I sense there is a real optimism in the air that with very few exceptions, once a swf has been adopted it could inject real momentum to the advance of Cornish. Current literary output in Cornish seems to be fantastic for such a 'minor' language but on other fronts I reckon there needs to be standardisation for unhampered advance.
I still think my preferance would be towards a sort of Late version: Richard Gendall's life-long service to the tongue has been immense(in any other field I reckon he'd have been awarded an honorary degree for his research)
and when you look a a Late script it does immediately feel 'Cornish' somehow and its vocabulary looks very rich. Others however may feel exactly the same way about Unified/UCR or KK!
Incidentally a thread far back was very derogatory of Unified and Agan Tavas people and their fluency, yet one of my favourite litle books is by Clive Baker,lyvr Lavarow Dhe Les and apart from being highly entertaining and instructive, strikes me as the work of someone who has to be fluent in it! Tell me I am not mistaken please!
Finally, some years ago I visited a Cornish woolen mills , he exact location of which I cannot now recall but our party was greeted by a lady who rhymed it off in what sounded to us all like fluent Welsh but which she subsequently explained was the ancient Cornish tongue! Anyone know who she was and the eaxct Woolen Mill ? It had a fantastic display of Cornish Language material and photos. She must be one of the more fluent speakers at any rate.
My own preference for a SWF would be a phonemic one for reasons explained above, perhaps KK with enough changes to bring most users of the other systems on board. I think we should remember that the majority of users of all systems want to work together and do not have the zealous axe to grind with the other systems that some of the more vocal die-hards do. It would be a shame if the vocal minority who want to quibble over a short or semi-long vowel here and there manage to kill off the agreement on a SWF which most people want, even if it isn't for their first-choice system.
And I think Branvras was being sarcastic, Rosen-de.
Yikes!! Lest I cause unnecessay offence when I wrote that KK's main problem would be that it gets its system wrong, I meant of corse, it MAY get bits of its system wrong! One can't be too exact with the old English!
All the spelling errors in the previous posting show I must away.Res yu dhym dhe gemeres cowas ha cusca.
Rosen-de, last time I replied to one of your posts I asked whether you could support the assertions you were making ("which bits are speculative?", "could you provide references to wherever it is that Williams is criticised over 'c' and 'k'?") and, with all due respect, you didn't. Or couldn't.
So this time, could you back up your assertion about Kemmyn:
Given that you've told everyone that it's DEMONSTRABLY wrong, could you DEMONSTRATE this in your next post, please? Show us where the errors are.
You see, this is how hogwash rumours start. Having got excited by your confidence, someone will write to the Helston Packet and say that a highly regarded Celtic Scholar with donkeys' years experience in the field of Celtic Studies, has finally proven beyond a shadow of doubt that Kemmyn's phonemic system is wrong. The kind of spin they're likely to put on this is that you're trying to oust Williams from his position as main critic of Kemmyn.
I'm sure you're not dropping these unsupported musings and opinions into your posts on purpose, but if you could just provide specific details when asked it would go a long way to making sure that this thread itself doesn't get a reputation for bizarre hogwash.
So...some details, please, and for the evidence to be demonstrable we need something more than an opinion.
I think my post prior to this somewhat answers your point. I should of course written that its probelm was POTENTIAL faults to its underlying system and as soon as I realised th English was open to misinterpretation I did hasten to correct it. I'm not stating there ARE faults but that it is a fact that IF faults did come to light it undermines confidence . I believe this is Nicholas Williams major gripe with KK, that it is too dependent on the hypothesised syetem that underlies it. Of course it does NOT in my own mind follow that error in one part necessarily implies error in all parts! As you yourself have so rightly said ALL the current systems have speculations underlying them. Without any native speakers left for two centuries it could not be otherwise.
And to clarify: I am by no stretch of the imagination a professional Celtic scholar. I am a honours graduate in Celtic and linguistics with a reasonable facility for picking up languages but I am NOT an expert! I'm still ploughing my way through Peter Pool's book and Kernewek Mar Plek.
Well this is true for ALL the versions: Williams must therefore be unhappy about the fact that all of the systems INCLUDING HIS OWN are based on hypotheses, and only the invention of a time machine will oversome that! Maybe he would be happier if we just abandoned Cornish altogether because it's based on such shaky ground?
I'm not at all offended by what you didn't mean to say. I was just puzzled by it - and I'm almost more puzzled by what you did mean to say.
I'm sure you're not. That's why the article in the Helston Packet would be another hogwash rumour.
However, forgive me for getting suspicious, but you felt it necessary to point out that the problem with KK was POTENTIAL faults with "it's underlying system". Why is this observation specific to KK? As Flammnew points out, it's true of all the systems...or are you suggesting that the others are by their nature faultless?
And then:
Well, clearly that's true, but what does it have to do with KK in particular? Is confidence not undermined when faults come to light in the other systems? This train of thought really doesn't stack up.
And then:
Well we do need to maintain a balance here (don't forget those hogwash rumours!), so could you tell us in your next post what you believe Ken George's major gripe with UCR is?
Conan, although I am KK supporter myself, I will not join your move for Kk to be put forward as the SWF. Nor will I support any of the others. The word we must be pushing here is comprimise, not entrench ourselves ever further, as this is self defeating. Without doubt each of the Systems are mostly the same, so we must look at what the differences are and work on them. This is where comprimise comes in, because without it the SWF is doomed before it even starts, and without the SWF the Language we all say we love will not move forward.
Lets look at it this way, Historically it is estimated that the most speakers of Cornish stood at around 30,000. Now lets see a SWF in action in our Schools, sometime in the future, 10-20 years or so, there are 30,000 Bilingual Cornish/English Speakers. Are the supporters of Cornish going to jeopardize this possible outcome because they want to quibble over a few points, which are from every camp just their opinions?
I have to say that it all makes me angry, I love Cornwall and her Language, and I hate the way that those who say that they do too are putting all of this in question. United we stand, divided we fall.
A point on Pellgowser, it has been in use for well over twenty Years, and I believe it is used by KK, UC and UCR, point it out if I am wrong, therefore I think it cannot be removed or should be.
If this move to have a SWF fails, the Language fails, period. So let us all get together and get our heads out of our a**es and do what is best for the Language. I think i speak for most of the People when i say that the differences to most are unimportant. One Language, one People.
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