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'm not getting involved in an argument on academics, I agree with a lot of what FlammNew has written previously about that it's experience and ability not where you work that's important, and I don't wish to go over old ground.
Unified and Kemmyn and UCR are basically the same spoken language, so other than possibly changing the recommended pronounciation of a handful of sounds (I used vowels as an example, I'm not fanatical about them!) I don't see what major linguistic improvements the current process will achieve. It may stop the infighting but I don't think that the Standard language will be more than marginally different, if at all, from the KK-U-UCR language.
My own opinion is that we should go for a regular, phonemic spelling system because it has many benefits and makes it easier to learn and to teach and to read. Beyond that I have no preference, I don't care if it's a regular spelling system based on KK, UCR or Unified or whatever.
If, as you said, we will never be in a position to know if our current forms of Cornish are authentic, then I don't understand how you feel we can pick an "incorrect" form, as from the point of view of someone in the past who spoke Cornish as a first language, ALL of the current forms are "incorrect" and none will ever be 100% authentic!!!
Anyway, the process is in place, and although no-one here has reported if any actual decisions were taken at the conference, let's hope that a smooth path has been laid towards the SWF. We should probably be passing on our comments to Jenefer Lowe anyway, I don't think she read C24!
I may, or may not look to learn Cornish one day. If I do, I want it to be an 'official' version, that I can be fairly certain is what everyone else is speaking and writing too.
For that it needs to be CREDIBLE with official bodies, and to the Linguistics world.
I think it should "try to be" a bit like it MIGHT have been if it had always been in use, that is more modern, and streamlined perhaps. Certainly, people should be free to learn 'older versions', in the same way that people study medieval English, but I just have the 'feeling' that older versions might not be so 'fit for purpose'.
I'll stop here, as I am almost a complete novice in this area, and I'm bound to be upsetting someone unnecesarily, but those are my thoughts on the issue, as someone with practically no knowlege of the background to the issues.
The analogy is not a good one. If you have an infection there is clearly something WRONG and the doctor will prescribe something to put it RIGHT. You don't go to a doctor to ask which of broken leg, influenza, athletes' foot and hair loss you should put up with and which you should have treated.
Spelling is about representing speech and communicating with each other. All of the systems we have are RIGHT in this respect - they have (some more than others) been allowing us to represent speech and communicate with each other for years.
Asking linguists to decide which one we should use for the SWF is like going to a travel agent and asking whether to go on holiday in Ibiza, Florence, Edinburgh or Looe. It's not a matter of which one is right - it is a matter of choice and preference. Could you imagine locking travel agents in a room until they come up with a single answer - "Macclesfield"?
Our linguists will need to have an answer to the follwing question, which is not really a linguistic one: "Cornishmen, it's your language. Do you want a spelling system that gives a good indication of how to say the words (like Italian) or do you want a spelling system that only uses words found in traditional texts (like Arabic)?" The two approaches are very different, but you could hardly argue that Italian had got it right and Arabic had got it wrong, or vice versa.
There are not deep linguistic issues here. In fact, the educational issues are as important as the linguistic ones since the real imperative for the SWF is its use in education. In my view, this is really just an essential PR exercise - if people believe that experts have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that we all want to take a holiday in Macclesfield, then there is some chance that such a decision will be accepted and will hold. We are in the process, let's just get it over and done with.
Meanwhile, we should be thinking now about how to open and resource all those classes that will be needed to cope with the absolute flood of people that will start learning Cornish when the SWF is announced. I've been told tens of times, "I'm going to start learning Cornish once this spelling debate is sorted out" and I'm sure nobody is using that as an excuse. So we'll probably need to double or treble the number of teachers we have overnight. Could be tricky.
All of what you say is based upon a "I know best" approach, an opinion which you cannot professionally or academically sustain. Well, I am afraid that, in so far as I am concerned, I need to be satisfied in much greater depth than that. I have had the benefit of a scientific education that requires me to analyse ALL the facts. In regard to the Cornish language, the proven facts are very few and far between and much of what has been put on the table has been done so by amateur hobbyists. It is, therefore, not unreasonable for those of my persuasion who need to be thoroughly convinced on the merrits of a particular orthography, to receive the advice from those who are qualified to give it and I am afraid that, at the end of the day, those people out of necessity will be qualified linguists with expertise in all possible sub-fields of this faculty.
Your opinion seems to be based on an assumption made by amateur practitioners that one particular form is easier to teach/learn than the others. That may be the case but, at this point in time, we do not know whether this version is linguistically sound. You are not a linguist, and neither is the designer of this orthography and you are, therefore in no position to make a professional judgement on its, or any of the other's suitability for public use. To use another analogy because Branvras appears not to think my last one was suitable, you would not put the day to day management of the railway network into the hands of train-spotters or make stamp-collectors responsible for the Post Office. Yet this is precisely what some people seem hell-bent on doing to OUR language with no professional input whatsoever. It's just plain crazy.
I will remind you both that governments do not implement policy (in this case policy is the Council of Europe's Charter for Regional or Minority Languages) without professional input and solely on the basis of amateur "I know what's best for you" approach. Experts are always consulted in the first instance. Thankfully, measures are now under way for its undertaking.
Branvras, are you a qualified linguist?? If you are not, you are not in a position to give quasi-professional advice, however passionate you might be in regard to your particular orthographic preference. The questions you pose are ones which neither you nor I nor anyone else of a hobbyist background can answer. Professional linguists, applied or otherwise, lexicographers and language planners etc will be able to assist those involved in the process to make the correct decision. I'm afraid that this is the way it will run, so be prepared to put your money where your mouth is and stick your othography on the table along with everyone else's.
No, I'm not a qualified linguist. Nor am I a Professor of Geography, but I'm quite capable of having an informed opinion about whether Ibiza would be a more appropriate holiday location for the family than Florence.
Nor is it necessary to be a qualified linguist to spot specious arguments and fallacious analogies.
I feel obliged to point out that I did not give any advice, quasi-professional or otherwise; that I have never expressed any passion for any orthographic preference; that I posed no questions whatsoever; and that I don't have an orthography to stick on the table along with everyone else's.
Are you sure you have the benefit of a scientific education?
But that has got nothing to do with the implementation of government policy. Like myself you are capable of reaching an informed opinion. However, if the Cornish language factionalists who believe that they know what's best for the future of the Cornish language, have their way, you won't be privy to unbiased information and you will very likely draw a wrong conclusion based largely upon the academically unsupported opinions of those who shout the loudest.
I, too, have spotted various "specious arguments" in regard to some of the orthographies. However, unlike you, I prefer not to pontificate to the experts and would rather that those who really are in a position to know the best, provide some input into this process. The fact that certain posters here, despite recent developments towards the establishment of an expert panel, avoid this issue as if it were contaminated with a deadly contagion and still insist that they know better than professional, academic linguists, makes me more determined than ever to see that those experts commence their task at the earliest opportunity.
In so far as my supposed "fallacious analogies" are concerned, I maintain that the responsibility of implementation of government policy by untrained, unqualified, amateur language hobbyists is strikingly similar to the hypothetical situation which i described in which the daily running of the railway system was in the hands of train-spotters. You have said nothing to change my mind.
You did, as the following extract proves:
"There are not deep linguistic issues here. In fact, the educational issues are as important as the linguistic ones since the real imperative for the SWF is its use in education. In my view, this is really just an essential PR exercise - if people believe that experts have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that we all want to take a holiday in Macclesfield, then there is some chance that such a decision will be accepted and will hold. We are in the process, let's just get it over and done with.
Meanwhile, we should be thinking now about how to open and resource all those classes that will be needed to cope with the absolute flood of people that will start learning Cornish when the SWF is announced. I've been told tens of times, "I'm going to start learning Cornish once this spelling debate is sorted out" and I'm sure nobody is using that as an excuse. So we'll probably need to double or treble the number of teachers we have overnight. Could be tricky."
In my book, this sounds very much like advice to me! "There are no deep linguistic issues here"!!!! How are you to know whether this is so, or not??
Perhaps you have not expressed it but you certainly have implied it.
In that case, I cannot understand why you are so keen to avoid the input of professional, academic linguistic experts in the process to identify the correct form of Cornish for public use.
Absolutely. I am a science graduate with professional standing and, unlike you, I would not dream of pontificating about matters in which I am not qualified.
I find myself in the odd position of thinking there are valid points in both Hunlef and Branvras' arguments. Hunlef makes the perfectly reasonable point that I myself have sought to put that for the sake of the language's advance it needs to have at least a decent amount of academic backing at university level in order to attract government cash to train teachers who will be in the front line of helping to reestablish it. ( I am not however derogating from the undoubtedly superb contributions that 'amateur' enthusiasts have made over the years when government was not only indifferent but possibly downright hostile!)
However for a 'Big Push' forward we need it to get a foothold in the school system....though having said that I do wonder if this will be the revitalisation we hope for:the Irish experience with Erse makes one less than sanguine. Children learn their ancient tongue then neglect it out in the 'real world'. Still, at least it is there, a factor to be neglected or cultivated as desired.
For this reason I think Hunlef is right_ to have the linguistic input of university linguists would do its standing enormous good. However the problem is trying to get those with the requisite skills and availability for the job. Twenty years of resistence to this has obviously held up the language's fortunes. I'm an enthusiast and even I hesitate to devote hours a week at the acquisition of an intricate spelling and grammatical that could possibly be ditched very soon. Still, I am doing it mad bod that I am...and because I think Cornish is such a lovely language in whatever cast it's found. Indeed in some ways it is even more expressive and supple than Welsh.
I think Dr George's remarks that authenticity is elusive for all the versions is particularly shrewd though that does not allow us to give up on that front. I agree that a phonemic system has much to recommend it though in that case it has to be more accurate than the others in its underlying phonemic analysis on which it rests. The others may be less accurate in this regard but that surely allows them to coexist with on going arguments over precise pronunciation which at ground level probably won't be that much of an issue. When I have looked at the different versions I agree with Branvras that at a practical level the differences are minimal, linguistically.
Anyway it is surely a step forward that all the versions seem to have gone from this summit prepared to submit their versions to some sort of independent linguistic 'ombudsman'.
I do have a reasonable knowledge of linguistics and Celtic Studies at University level (MA Hons1) and I can tell you that Cornish has always been treated as a 'dead' medieval tongue only, with Unified quite dismissed so we do need to be very careful to convince those at this level that what we are doing has some validity in order to gain their support. Mind you, if I were currently lecturing in Celtic I think Cornish as she stands at present would deserve attention, not because she adherers to any 'prescribed' standards but because she IS and is manifestly a Celtic phenomenon!
Has there any time table been fixed for this SWF to be finalised or even to get going, by the way?!
Ah yes, amateur hobbyists. Like the amateur hobbyists who build astronomical telescopes and discover supernovae and comets. Like the amateur hobbyists who restore and run full-sized steam locomotives. Like the amateur hobbyists who undertake detailed entemological research across the world. You wouldn't listen to a word they said because they are somehow totally unqualified to express an opinion about the things they do because they don't have a job at a university. Well, I think that their opinions are worth listening to, because they have experience, detailed knowledge, and a love of their particular subject and it matters not one jot that they don't have "Bachelor of X" after their name.
We know that none of the existing forms are 100% provably sound, because, as you wrote above,
so how can anyone, academic linguist or not, possibly come up with a 100% authentic Cornish? The brutal truth is that they can't. However, we have a selection of usable and acceptable and mutually-intelligible systems in use today, so unless you think that NONE of the current systems are acceptable, there is no need to generate a new one to be the SWF.
Yawn. You can carry this one on with Branvras if he wants to, this tedious argument about qualified linguists is pointless - the process for coming to a SWF is under way, it WILL involve the input of qualified and cunning linguists regardless of anything I say, so chill out and go with the flow.
Rosen-de, it's planned to be sorted out by May. I'm not holding my breath.
Hunlev, I think you're becoming ridiculous in your passionate defence of whatever it is you feel the need to defend:
When did I pontificate to the experts, or express a desire to do so?
I have no intention of changing your mind. Nevertheless, I hold that the 'train-spotters running the rail network' analogy is fallacious bordering on the just plain daft. I leave others to judge it themselves.
Then you should require proof before you accept currently unsupported psuedo-intellectual, linguistic theories, let alone spout on about them! The "next" issue follows:
Irrelevant. Such amateurs are required to obtain creditation by experts before their discoveries are accepted. Your theories have yet to obtain any academic accreditation. Cornish deserves so much better than this "back of a fag packet approach" to sustain its future development.
I never said that the opinions of amateurs aren't worth listening to. Their knowledge and enthusiasm are important factors which should be taken into account and they will be. However, in such circumstances, they should never be in a position to make administrative decisions on such a specialist topic that has great implications for future generatyions because firstly, they are not qualified to do so and secondly, amateurs never have responsibility for the implementation of government policy.
That's not the point of the exercise. The point is that a standard form of Cornish should be identified for public use which is linguistically sound. The only version so far IMO as an amateur myself, is that proposed by Professor Williams who is, as you know, a professional, academic linguist in Dublin. I am told that he would be delighted to submitt his orthography for independent analysis, so why do you seem less than delighted in submitting your own preference?
All of which, with the exception of UCR, have been drafted and composed by amateur hobbyists with no relevant academic qualifications at all. However, the red mist now descending over your eyes seems to have caused you to have misunderstood my point. I have never suggested that the independent panel invent a new orthography for Cornish - only that they be charged with analysing the current propositions now on the table and indentify the one which is most academically sound that will be suitable for public use from now on.
At last! Clearly, this debate is now unecessary as, thankfully, the process is underway and, like rosen-de, I await with interest to learn about the composition of the panel that will be charged with such a vitally important task.
Finally, the situation is that the panel of "cunning" linguists (you mean, "professional", I am sure) will not be constituted to make this very important investigation and then be ignored by members of the Partnership. This body of well-meaning, but incompetent, amateurs will, at its peril, ignore any recommendation of the specialist panel, as this is an issue of government policy.
In so far as holding breath is concerned, well, I too, am not doing that either. The reason is simple. And that is because there seems to be a hardcore body of amateur enthusiasts whose attitudes in this matter are so entrenched and embittered that they will stop at nothing to ensure that their particular orthographies win the day. So, I am heartened by your statement that you accept the intervention of suitable qualified linguists on this issue.
Hunlef, you are Nicholas Williams and I claim my £5.
Considering how close U, KK and UCR are in grammar and pronounciation I find it hard to understand your vehement opposition to the other forms, KK in particular. If the chosen SWF is to be UCR as it stands, well fine, I'll use it; if the chosen SWF is to be UCR with a phonemic spelling, that would be brilliant; if it's KK, that'd be brilliant too.
I don't frankly care WHICH form is chosen so long as one IS chosen, and I think that phonemic spelling has too many advantages for it not to be utilised in the SWF - having a dictionary with diacritical marks which aren't used in writing would make reading Kernewek like trying to read old Hebrew written without vowels!
You are pontificating - look it up in the dictionary if you don't understand. Your statements concerning certain issues relating to Cornish standardisation can ONLY be answered by those who are suitably qualified to do so. Your opinions (which you are perfectly entitled to hold) are therefore, opinions that carry no weight.
But that is what is happening here in Cornwall at the moment. It's as simple as that. The Post Office is administered by professional administrators, the rail network is run by professional engineers, medical services are provided by suitably qualified professionals, the construction of roads and bridges is supervised by qualified professional engineers - all of whom are charged with responsibility for the implementation of government policy in this country - the list goes on and on! So why is it, in the matter of the implementation of government policy relating to the Cornish language, there is such great resistance to the involvement of suitably and similarly qualified linguistic professionals? Your position is bizarre!
Coady - I could not agree more with your suggestion, although, by all accounts now, it seems as those who have been hostile to the involvement of professionals are slowly changing their minds.
