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...
Actually N Williams work is grossly flawed. He has many crticis who are pulling his work apart right now. Apparently his latest work on Bewnans Ke and the new Dictionary are full of errors. I have not seen either yet but look forward to them when they come out.
Anonymous
Posted: 10.06.2006, 00:32
Unregistered User
Let's go with what the majority speak and write - KK, or else this arguement goes on for ever. N Williams offers nothing special to the Cornish Language.
Anonymous
Posted: 10.06.2006, 09:55
Unregistered User
I'm devising a texting version of Cornish lol!!!!
thsv gl vrshn txt n Kwk. Ftla geno n skrf?
1 an / unn
2 dew / diw 2s (dewis) pr2l (pur dewl)
3 tri / tre / tr
4
5
6 hweg 6os (hweg os)
7
8 eth / yth m8 3 (my eth tre) j8 an jeth / an jydh
9
10 deg, m 8 r 10ol (my eth war dhy'goel)
ss mos 3 (esos ow mos tre)
p s ta (piw os ta)
d l (da lowr)
d w (dha weles)
fg (fatla genes?)
ypdmr (yn poynt da meur ras)
nd (nos da)
md (myttin da)
mr (meur ras)
thsv (yth esov)
Once more unto the breach . . . wait for the bullets to fly....
In fact UCR is not full of flaws - who says so? A qualified linguist?
Seriously, if Cornish is to survive and prosper, any standard form must be acceptable for university study. That's where the old Unified fell down, not that you could blame Nance. He did the best with the material he had. Personally, I preferred Jenner.
So Unified had acknowledged faults and all that should have been done was to address those faults. KK didn't do it. It merely introduced a radically new spelling and questionable pronunciation. The original faults are still there plus many of its own making - even the mathematics used in the computer programming is faulty, as shown by OSearcoid, a univeristy mathematician. Ye Gods, if the foundation is faulty, then the whole house can fall down.
If we (all of us) can sort out these faults, both original and modern, then we're getting somewhere. If we end up with a language that is recognisably Cornish, does not blur distinction from other languages like Breton and Welsh, remaisn true to tradition and is academically acceptable, then we're there.
It's all attainable if we can ease up on blind loyalties and start to remember that is not about personalities. Forget Jenner, Nance, Caradar, Gendall, George, Williams etc. Let's start concentrating upon Cornish. Criticism of each other's current systems is valid, if it's constructive. At the moment, there's too much personal sniping and devious tactics. Isn't it better to say: "Look, that is wrong, and this is why", and not be called a prat, sad or petty-minded for doing so. How else are we going to learn and then put that to good use?
That sounds good to me. I want to learn Cornish but at the moment i am just not going to commit myself to a system that might not be picked and later be shown to be full of flaws. I am not sure but i think it possible many others feel the same way, so sort it out!
Sod Cornish for the moment i'm going to learn Breton; sorry but its your fault.
In the absence of a mutually agreed standard form of Kernewek, and, it has to be said, in the number of people who speak the language, it makes more sense for me to press on with Kembrek/Cymraeg (Welsh).
Your Breton learning (and my Welsh learning) should help me and thee understand Kernewek in due course.
Diolch yn fawr/meur ras, nos da,
Patrick
Anonymous
Posted: 10.06.2006, 22:49
Unregistered User
Acceptance at last that Kernewek is nothing more than a bastardisation of Welsh, Breton and the remnants of the old language.
Marhak if you want to know more about the arguments regarding spelling etc try here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cornishorthography/
As for Guest, well what can i say except that once again someone makes a comment that is totally false. It is obvious that you no nothing about the Language, how it was revived and what methods were used. No knowledge at all about where and how many words are from Cornish sources, and what the gaps were that needed filling. So unless you have an in depth knowledge of such, I think you should keep your ignorant (used in it's proper context) comments to yourself and those other people who keep their minds closed, thank you.
Grassa dhys, Angofbew, but I already know this site and have read much of the backbiting comments it contains. Once again, it concentrates upon personalities, with little constructive dialogue.
Not at all, Guest. Kernewek is a language in its own right. I was only saying that by learning Breton or Welsh, that would make learning Kernewek much easier - the Brythonic P-Celtic languages are closely related ("nos da" is identical in Cornish and Welsh). Similarly, if you learn any one of French, Spanish or Italian then understanding and learning the other two is much easier.
As I live in east Devon I'm closer to parts of Wales than some parts of Kernow. That, and weight of numbers, make learning Cymraeg first more practical.
The problem is that there are no (and perhaps there cannot be?) any unbiased Cornish linguists, so any comments from a language expert is (at present) bound to be biased. I don't understand your insistence on universities and qualified linguists (perhaps a cynic would suggest it's because you support UCR and N Williams is the only university fellow studying Cornish? ). There are many Cornish experts with no linguistic qualifications beyond the Kesva exams, who know far more about Cornish than someone would who had done a Bachelor's degree in Cornish, so insisting on a University-led study of the language is clearly unnecessary. When Kemmyn was introduced, people with great expertise in Cornish accepted it as a better system, including Wella Brown, and if people with that much experience of the language could accept it as a suitable successor to Unified, then I think it's passed the test of academic rigour with flying colours. The fact that one academic today in the shape of N Williams disagrees is neither here nor there, academics in every field disagree with each other all the time.
(Yet another University plug. You are ignoring the fact that Ken George has a perfectly competent grasp of mathematics having done university-level research in astronomy.) You imply that Ken ran a program and just blindly accepted the output as Kemmyn. That is blatantly untrue, the results were analysed by hand and are still being updated. (E.g. the new discussions about the spelling of God in Ken's publication of Bywnans Ke.)
The use of computers to produce lists of the words that were rhymed together in the historical texts is surely a positive thing and means we no longer have to trawl through them by hand looking for words?
Ah yes, constructive. "Kenn's Kreation". "Kagla didn't exist until 1986" etc etc.
You spotted that?
Look mate, Kemmyn has passed the test of academic rigour with many if not most Cornish language experts, and one academic disagreeing doesn't detract from that. Kemmyn is easier to teach and learn thanks to its regular spelling. Kemmyn has most users and is most active in publications. Why therefore are you against its uptake as a SWF? It's obviously not set in stone and I personally think that once (if ever ) we pick a SWF, that every five or ten years there should be a language conference to look at the SWF and update it in small ways only in the light of new evidence, discoveries and analysis, but we really do need to make the decision ASAP, and I can't see any reason why not to choose Kemmyn.
Gets off soapbox, brushes self down and goes to the pub. Anyone coming?
When confronted by a tickly problem, try to reduce it back to basics. Consider this analogy.
A researcher is holding a glass of liquid in each hand and stops 100 people at random in a Cornish town. He says to each one of them " My left hand glass has an element of Ascorbic acid in it and my right hand glass contains some Acetic acid, which one can you safely drink ? You may phone a friend, your mother, or a chemist. "
Even though the person being asked knows how to drink, and sees the liquid looks like water, who would he/she phone ?
Oh dear, Flamm - you seem to want the debate to get all personal again.
I, too, know my astronomy - have been involved in it since I was a kid. I can name any star in the sky that has a name and, with most of them being Arabic, I can translate them too (even into Cornish). But what does that prove about any ability I may have regarding the language. Non sequitur.
Ken has said many times over the years that his Kemmyn system was perfect. But now, someone called Bailey (who he?) has "discovered" a "new" phoneme - this brings in the latest spelling of God in the KK system. "New" phoneme? What happened to the "perfect" system.
In fact, it's not a new phoneme at all. Way before this was ever brought up, Williams discussed it in Cornish Today (1996).
And what am I, or any other interested party, to make of a guy who stands up at the Tremough conference (last Sept.) and makes the astonishing announcement that the publication of his "Pronunciation and Spelling in Revibed Cornish" was as significant a work as Darwin's Origin of Species?
I was there. That announcement was at first greeted with a stunned silence and then I heard a voice say: "Oh, my God, the ego has landed!"
I can only leave it to others to consider what was truly behind such an incredible statement. It was the subject of several discussions afterwards but, for my part, I merely felt sad and thought: "Is this what the language of my forefathers has come to?" While such attitudes persist, Cornish can have no future as a community tongue. Others seem to have claimed it as their own personal property: Don't mess with MY system!
I can only hope that such people can be sidelined from the forthcoming debate - the language is not their personal property but the property of us all, and the majority want a say in its future. What can you say when Cornish is actually being taught in a school and some wiseacre persistently rings that school to insist that they are teaching the "wrong sort of Cornish". (Yes, that really happened). Is this the sort of person we need? What is that person's intent towards the future of the language? Such an attitude will only succeed in finally killing it stone dead - or was that the intent all the time? I'm far from alone in asking that question over the years.
As for taking the majority view, well, have you taken a look at this site's poll lately?
Oh dear, Flamm - you seem to want the debate to get all personal again.
I, too, know my astronomy - have been involved in it since I was a kid. I can name any star in the sky that has a name and, with most of them being Arabic, I can translate them too (even into Cornish). But what does that prove about any ability I may have regarding the language. Non sequitur.
Ken has said many times over the years that his Kemmyn system was perfect. But now, someone called Bailey (who he?) has "discovered" a "new" phoneme - this brings in the latest spelling of God in the KK system. "New" phoneme? What happened to the "perfect" system.
In fact, it's not a new phoneme at all. Way before this was ever brought up, Williams discussed it in Cornish Today (1996).
And what am I, or any other interested party, to make of a guy who stands up at the Tremough conference (last Sept.) and makes the astonishing announcement that the publication of his "Pronunciation and Spelling in Revibed Cornish" was as significant a work as Darwin's Origin of Species?
I was there. That announcement was at first greeted with a stunned silence and then I heard a voice say: "Oh, my God, the ego has landed!"
I can only leave it to others to consider what was truly behind such an incredible statement. It was the subject of several discussions afterwards but, for my part, I merely felt sad and thought: "Is this what the language of my forefathers has come to?" While such attitudes persist, Cornish can have no future as a community tongue. Others seem to have claimed it as their own personal property: Don't mess with MY system!
I can only hope that such people can be sidelined from the forthcoming debate - the language is not their personal property but the property of us all, and the majority want a say in its future. What can you say when Cornish is actually being taught in a school and some wiseacre persistently rings that school to insist that they are teaching the "wrong sort of Cornish". (Yes, that really happened). Is this the sort of person we need? What is that person's intent towards the future of the language? Such an attitude will only succeed in finally killing it stone dead - or was that the intent all the time? I'm far from alone in asking that question over the years.
As for taking the majority view, well, have you taken a look at this site's poll lately?
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). There are many Cornish experts with no linguistic qualifications beyond the Kesva exams, who know far more about Cornish than someone would who had done a Bachelor's degree in Cornish, so insisting on a University-led study of the language is clearly unnecessary. When Kemmyn was introduced, people with great expertise in Cornish accepted it as a better system, including Wella Brown, and if people with that much experience of the language could accept it as a suitable successor to Unified, then I think it's passed the test of academic rigour with flying colours. The fact that one academic today in the shape of N Williams disagrees is neither here nor there, academics in every field disagree with each other all the time.
) we pick a SWF, that every five or ten years there should be a language conference to look at the SWF and update it in small ways only in the light of new evidence, discoveries and analysis, but we really do need to make the decision ASAP, and I can't see any reason why not to choose Kemmyn.