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 agree mostly, angofbew, but I don't see any problem with people trying to promote the adoption of the flavour of Kernewek they think is best as SWF.
While I personally will do my best to learn whatever SWF is decided upon, I am also trying to persuade people to support the adoption of KK (or a version of it altered just enough to bring the majority of users of the other systems on board), because I think it is the common-sense choice.
We have to take one of the existing forms as a starting point - if we all follow your example and support none of the existing forms we will still be here in 20 years time debating how to spell things. We need to get the spelling system decision taken ASAP so we can move towards your 30,000 bilingual speakers.
angovbyw
Yes there should be a debate and people should be prepared for compromise. But at no point has anybody actually asked my preferences and what I think is important. This website gives you an opportunity to do that - if you don't agree - then you don't have to put your name down. Please note I used the word IF.
The process is yet young and I look forward to the chance to move the process on on Saturday.
As for Branvras, I am not sure what your 'suspicions' are. My comments on KK largely follow what Dr Williams and the Late camp have said: viz, that though ALL the systems are vulnerable to criticism for being based on hypothetical (re)constructions KK is perhaps more so because its orthographpy seeks to represent in an entirely new ie phonetic way the sound system he has deduced from the various sources. It is obvious, I should have thought, that this means that orthography is thirled to be the resultant sound system and will promote such pronunciations; if the sounds turn out to be wrong that is quite serious fo such a strictly phonetic spelling. On the other hand if the orthography seeks largely (if not exclusively) to be based on attested historical spellings which purport to be much less strictly phonetic it is less damaging to that system as a whole. What I'm saying is a spelling system that doesn't seek to be totally phonetic can live with variations in the sounds of letters and accommodate discoveries of such variations or error better. Moreover if the said orthography has historical precedent, it is less likely to be slammed as not from an 'authentic' Cornish speaker.I think that Richard Gendall's and Dr Williams' concern has been that a perfect phonetic orthography that is based on a faulty phonemic analysis would be more likely to spread faulty pronunciation, even pushing out hitherto correct pronunciatin.
That said, I agree those other systems are far from perfect themselves and may struggle just as much to be endowed with the mystical academic quality of 'authenticity'! And on the ground, at practical level, the differences do seem to be relatively minor. Switching between Kernewek Mar Plek and Tavas A Ragadazow and then comparing with Clappya Kernowek and Skeul shows that ......mes pys da nyns of vy!
And I just hope that Kernewek Mar Plek and Tavas A Ragadazow are preserved in the new orthography as they are both great primers and the pictures in Mar plek in particular are brilliant! Is Rex Vinson a Cornish speaker?
Don't forget that Dr Williams is an academic protecting his position, and a cornered wolf doesn't fight so tenaciously and viciously as an academic whose personal point of view is under threat. There are arguments for and against all of the forms of Cornish, not just against KK.
Having a phonemic spelling system has many advantages, and if it requires the spelling of a few words to be slightly changed from time to time as evidence for difference phonemes comes to light, then that's far, far better than having a random spelling system whose pronounciation also varies. This is why I feel that KK is the best starting point for a SWF, but it need not been the final version, and that the best route to a SWF would be to start with KK and then analyse the differences between the different versions and alter KK to accommodate those differences where the evidence for them is strong. Refusing to change whatever system is used as a basis for the SWF is a basis for disaster as that will only alienate users of the other systems.
I hope that most if not all of the existing beginner's books will be transcribed into the new orthography - Kernewek Mar Plek, Holyewgh an Lergh etc. Once we have a SWF we need to publish as widely as possible using it to show the rest of the world that the Cornish-speaking community is now united and speaks with one voice.
They are that you are going to continue to present a one-sided view of the situation. I am not concerned with promoting Kemmyn but I do get concerned when people misrepresent it based on something they heard someone say, or on reading someone else's views about it. If you are going to tell everyone what Williams' objections to Kemmyn are then balance that by telling everyone what George's objections to UCR are. By all means say which you find more convincing, but presenting just one side of the debate as if it is obviously correct (when it isn't obvious at all) is unhelpful.
Kemmyn is not a phonetic system and has never claimed to be one. Are you sure you did linguistics?
The only reason such a system can accommodate changes in sounds is because it doesn't represent those sounds accurately in the first place. I've already explained to you the problem with 'hw'/'wh'. The vowels are also a problem - Williams, George and others agree that we need to distinguish long vowels from short vowels in speech because traditional speakers did. If you see 'pren' and 'pren' (Unified spelling) you would be forgiven for assuming that they are pronounced the same, even though everyone agrees that they should not be. In fact many Cornish speakers DO pronounce them the same - the very 'faulty pronunciation' that you think Kemmyn is more likely to spread. In Kemmyn they are written differently - 'pren' and 'prenn'. Kemmyn users (especially those that were not brought up with Unified) understand and apply these rules as best they can in order to achieve a pronunciation which, as I said, both Williams and George agree is 'correct'.
If you don't believe this, try taking a piece of Unified or UCR Cornish and marking which vowels are long and which are short. I have never known anybody who could do this. But if you can't do it, how can you possibly be pronouncing the words correctly? You've got no chance.
This is important because of the position Cornish finds itself in - we are not surrounded by native speakers who know how to pronounce words, regardless of how they are written. The written word has a far greater influence on Cornish speakers' pronunciation that it does in most other languages.
In terms of "what if the underlying sound system is proven to be wrong", the situation still favours Kemmyn. One of the very few areas of disagreement is whether we should distinguish two different o-type sounds as Kemmyn does ('bos' and 'boes'), or not. If Williams is wrong, and we should distinguish them, Unified and UCR are of no help whatsoever - they are both written 'o', and, in my opinion, you would have a cat's chance in hell of getting people to distinguish the sounds, written the same, in the right places. If George is wrong then there are two possibilities - you either tell everyone that 'o' and 'oe' are pronounced the same (which is against the principles of Kemmyn, but has the slight advantage of distinguishing words like 'bos' and 'boes' in print) or you change the spelling of words with 'oe' to 'o'. All of the spelling systems have undergone changes like this in the light of scholarship - Late Cornish has had more spelling changes than the rest put together.
This is all theory. What does experience tell us? Well, there are tens of teachers of Kemmyn who have also taught Unified. There are hordes of Kemmyn users who have also learned Unified and, in some cases, Late. They will tell you, I would say without exception, that Kemmyn is easier to teach and learn than the others as far as pronunciation is concerned. These are people that have done both. On the other hand, there are no teachers of Unified, UCR or Late that have also taught Kemmyn and very few users of those systems that have also used Kemmyn. So when they suggest that it is not easier to learn good pronunciation through Kemmyn they are just guessing - it's wishful thinking really.
It is simply not the case that Kemmyn is "more likely to spread faulty pronunciation, even pushing out hitherto correct pronunciation". The case is rather the reverse and can be shown to be so.
In regards to the written Language, I think that most UC and UCR objections are based upon the use of 'K' in KK. I agree that it does look strange to the eye of basically People who are used to English spelling and therefore they do not like it. I would hate to see a SWF without the double consenants and without hw however, as i see them as being usefull.
I personally do not agree with the supporters of UC and UCR in their arguments on spelling as is in the sources. Any written form of any Language is just a way to communicate words through some pictorial image, and therefore is pretty irrelevant. What is important to the future of Cornish is that it is written in a way that makes the pronounciation of words as easy as possible. At the same time however trying to keep it in as authentic as we can. I do not see any spelling system as set in stone however.
Flamm, everone is going to be putting their own version forward as the basis of the SWF, we all know this, but we also know that they cannot go into this without being prepared to sacrifice some of their ideas. If any of them are not prepared to make sacrifices then it is just a waste of time. I think that if this does happen then the People of Cornwall might not forgive them, and to be honest, they would not deserve to be forgiven. When the time comes if there is agreement on a SWF and some of the more inward looking ones stay with their own ideas, then i hope that they are ignored as much as possible, because believe me, the anti Cornish brigade will use them to belittle what would have been achieved.
My personal view is basically the same as Conan's. I have read so many of the arguments on both sides, and i do think that the KK view is closer to reality that the others. However if KK is going to be the basis of the SWF they might have to change it in regards to the others points just to get the concensus. For the benifit of the Language I do really hope that this SWF can be achieved.
Oh, so do I, and not just for the benefit of the language: I think that a united, strong, spreading, resurgent Kernewek will be good for the Cornish movement as a whole.
Yes, last time I checked my degree did say I had a degree in linguistics at Hons level!
And I do know know the difference between phonetics(the study of all the sounds capable of being produced by the human voice and a distinct orthographical representation of each sound known as the International Phonetic Alphabet-for anyone's who's interested even this gets tinkered with from time to time!) and phonemics which is the system of sounds in a language where the substition of one sound for another will not just alter its pronunciation but also its meaning. Eg Pit v Bit=P/B are two phonemes in English and Cornish. Kk as I understand it seeks to capture these significant sounds, plus give an accurate guide to their actual pronunciation...it reminds me of the old 'phonics' method of teaching English in a way. I agree it has many virtues to recommend it but I still feel we have to listen to those with reservations about it or at least aspects of it. From what I have read of Nicholas Williams I agree he can be a rather combative, particularly in relation to KK but that does not invalidate all the research he has done into Cornish. Some of his comments in Clappya Kernowek are fascinating and I think the main achievement he and Richard Gendall have done is in indicating just how rich a vocabulary there is in the old language, including its blithe borrowing and moulding of many English words to make them distinctly its own! I do hope this rich lexical base won't be sacrificed in the interests of 'purity' in the SWF that emerges. Not sure what others feel about this?
Unlike Scots Gaelic, Welsh has two standards- a literary form and a colloquial one that live reasonably happily side by side though I hear younger speakers are increasingly impatient of the old literary form. A SINGLE written form is surely not beyond the grasp of all who live the language, is all I would say. Pity it all seems to have to done in such a last minute rush!
Well, it's only taken 20+ years so far (or 80+ depending on where you start counting!) - hardly a last minute rush, is it? Personally I think it's taking too long, we should have decided on one a year ago at Tremough, then we could have already been promoting Standard Cornish in schools and officially.
While I support KK, I would also want the standardisation process to look at the work done by all sides, and bring into KK things like Williams' neologisms to work alongside established Kemmyn words (or where none exist in KK). I prefer, for example, KK's dewweder over UC's spectaclys (sp?) because it sounds more Cornish and ties in nicely with the use of dual nouns, but why not include both in a Standard Cornish dictionary if both are widely used by speakers of the different forms?
You've done it again! You make this sound as if it is a peculiar feature of just KK. In fact ALL of the spelling systems try to capture these significant sounds and give an accurate guide to their actual pronunciation. Just look at the beginning of all the Cornish dictionaries. They ALL tell you how to say each letter or combination of letters. Look at the UCR dictionary - it says there is a 'u' phoneme (like English 'full' it says), there is a 'u-with-a-line-over-it' phoneme (like English 'food' it says) and both long and short 'u-with-two-dots-over-it' phonemes (like French 'lune' it says). Four 'u' phonemes in all, and it's seeking to give an accurate guide to their actual pronunciation.
So when you write "KK, as I understand it...." I have to say that you don't understand it because UCR, UC, Late and KK all do exactly the same in this respect - determine the phonemes and tell you how to say them.
You've done it again! Don't we have to listen to those with reservations about the other systems? Is it only people that have reservations about KK that should be listened to?
And just who is it that is not listening? Do you have any evidence that people are not listening? Some of us are fed up to the back teeth with listening...but we carry on listening.
You've done it again! Nor does the 'debate' invalidate all the research Ken George, or Wella Brown, or Julyan Holmes, or Pol Hodge have done into Cornish. Or Richard Gendall, or Bernard Deacon.
You seem to think Williams is dismissed because he is 'combative'. What is your evidence for this?
The SWF is about spelling. Once it is agreed it will be fairly easy to 'legislate' such that the SWF is the only form used in schools, for example. It will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to force people to use certain words. The lexical base will be as rich as the speakers of the language want it to be - if enough of them choose to use anglicisms like 'telephona' - 'my a delephonas orthis de' - then such words will catch on. It's the way language works.
rosen-de, as a personal point, I do not support English loan words being used if there is a Cornish word already. Also a personal point, if we do not have a word then i believe we should look to Breton and Welsh for an answer. If that word appears in both then obviously it would of been in Cornish too. If both have different words then i think we should lean towards Breton as long as the word does not have French influence. If it does then the Welsh should be used. If neither has the word we are looking for, then if it can be 'invented' using Cornish, then so be it. Yet again if not, then we look Internationally to get our answer.
Branvras, I agree with most of you arguments. Especially ' it's the way language works' . What amuses me a lot is that all Languages invent new words, all pronounciation changes over time. Many of the arguments in Cornish do not allow for this, which is ridiculous. Do these so called Scholars actually think that any Cornish spoken now or in the near future will be exactly as spoken in say 1600. If they think so they are deluding themselves. What will happen is that we will over a period of time get a 'New' Cornish. As you said, thats the way language works.
It means that deciding to learn Cornish is more important than deciding which version you learn. Get down to your local class (John Parker's in Penzance are excellent) and get learning! Whatever flavour you learn you'll be able to speak to other people...and when the SWF is decided upon in May (or am I being over-optimistic?), use it. The differences are overplayed: Unified, UCR and Kemmyn are essentially the same language so just get learning!
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