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CORNISH,
as a living, mother tongue, died out in the late eighteenth century.
Since
the Cornish Revival Movement began in the early twentieth century,
attempts have been made to draw on the remaining sources of written
Cornish and other evidence to develop a modern Cornish language
that can live again.
Learned
people have devised varying systems, some derived from the 'purest',
earliest sources of Cornish available and others based on more modern
(and therefore up-to-date), but arguably more corrupt, examples
of the language.
The Current Cornish Menu
In
1929 Robert Morton Nance (‘Mordon’) put forward his proposals
for Unified Cornish. Up to that time
written Cornish was based on the spellings of the old texts which
had no fixed system but spelled the same word in all sorts of different
ways, so some form of ‘unification’ was essential if the
language revival was to move forward and for Revived Cornish to be
a viable modern language.
His system was generally accepted and used by those for whom the revival
was more important than a detailed study of the old texts, but academics
whose interest lay more in this study than in the revival looked at
it askance. The situation was unsatisfactory as it meant Revived Cornish
lacked academic respectability and the very people who knew most about
it were unwilling to support the Revival.
Unified Cornish
Unified Cornish was based mainly on ‘Middle Cornish’,
that is a small amount of religious literature written in the late
Middle Ages. When Unified Cornish was formulated this was the main
bulk of extant Cornish Literature. There were a few short texts
from later centuries but Nance felt these were ‘too little’
and ‘too late’ in the sense that they were even more heavily
contaminated with English than the earlier texts. In spite of this
some people felt that it was not right to base a modern language
on a medieval one and that every effort should be made to use these
later texts. In fact they were not as scanty as appeared at first
sight as a series of sermons, the Tregear Homilies came to light
in 1949. These were probably translated from English about 1555,
and there was a full length play, ‘The Creation of the World’
written, or at least copied out, in 1611. So a system based on these
writings was formulated. It has been variously called ‘Late
Cornish’, ‘Traditional Cornish’, ‘Carnoack’
and currently ‘Modern Cornish’. Although this name is
justifiable historically, as it was applied in the eighteenth century
to Cornish that was modern at that time as compared with the older
texts, it has the unfortunate implication, at the present time,
that other forms of revived Cornish are not modern!
Carnoack
Carnoack came to the fore in the early 1980's and caused
some concern as it threatened the unity of the Revival Movement.
The phonology (study of sounds) of Cornish had never been investigated
in depth as scholars were satisfied with the written word as they
had it and only when a serious attempt is made to revive a language
as a spoken, living tongue does it become important.
Dr Ken George undertook such a study and he was in fact spending a
year in Brittany for this purpose when Ray Edwards first got involved
with Cornish in 1981. His hope was to bridge the gap between Unified
and Carnoack but in doing so he produced
a third system which he called at first ‘phonemic Cornish’
because it was based on phonemes or significant units of sound within
a word (what most people would call letters or letter groups), It
was later, and is currently, called ‘Kernewek Kemmyn’ or
‘Common Cornish’.
Kernewek Kemmyn
After
a year's discussion and a public meeting this was adopted by the Cornish
Language Board in 1987. Just how many people fully understood the
phonological argument put forward in his book The
Pronunciation and Spelling of Revived Cornish is a moot point
but people liked and trusted Ken and appreciated the enormous amount
of work he had put into trying to sort the matter out. Substantial
lobbies remained however committed to the continuance of Unified Cornish
and ‘Modern Cornish’. Unified supporters seem to have objected
mainly to innovative spelling changes such as k
in place of the hard c and kw
instead of qu. The initial attraction
of Kemmyn was a closer relationship between
spelling and sound making it easier for teachers to teach and learners
to learn, though the relationship is far from complete.
A Fourth Way?
There
was really no serious challenge to Kemmyn
on scientific phonological grounds (the only ones which are really
valid) until the publication of Cornish Today
by Dr Nicholas Williams in 1995. Dr Williams sent KDL
a prepublication copy of his book which criticised all three forms
of Cornish now on offer and at first sight his criticisms appeared
to be very convincing. He proposed a fourth form which he called ‘Unified
Cornish Revised’. It was obvious from the start however, after
the experience of launching Kemmyn, that
no matter how valid this form was, any attempt to replace these three
forms with a fourth form could do no more that create just one more
kind of Cornish causing even more confusion for the would-be beginner.
The one valuable thing which Cornish Today
did was to remind us that Revived Cornish is derived ultimately
from the old texts and the closer we can keep to the Cornish used
in them, the more genuine our Cornish will be. It was for this reason
that KDL agreed to publish the
book. It says much for the sincerity of Ken George and other members
of the Language Board that no one has hinted that we should not
have published it in spite of the fact that the book criticised
Kernewek Kemmyn severely and the decision
of the Board to adopt it. Also it has caused Ken a lot of work which
he did not particularly want as he makes clear in his book mentioned
below.
Cornish for the Twenty-first Century
Ken
George, in collaboration with Paul Dunbar published another book
in March, 1997, Kernewek Kemmyn: Cornish for
the Twenty-first century. This book counters point by point
the criticisms which Dr Williams makes. The book is cleverly written
in the form of a dialogue between Paul and Ken in which Paul asks
for explanations and even acts sometimes as ‘Devil's Advocate’.
No
doubt those who want to believe Dr Williams will do so, and likewise
those who want to believe Dr George will do so. As the Latin tag
used by John Richards in his story ‘An Arloedhes Dhison’
says, Fere libenter homines quod volunt credunt
or ‘Men usually believe freely what they want to believe’.
Meanwhile the position remains as mentioned above. There is no way
that a fourth system, no matter how good it may be can be countenanced
and KDL will continue to teach
Kernewek Kemmyn including whatever amendments may be agreed in the
future (A few spelling amendments put forward in Cornish Today have
been accepted and these will be incorporated in the KDL
courses. Ken is also envisaging the possibility of introducing z
where there is a tendency to voice the s sound.)
Postal courses in Unified Cornish are still available. KDL
started with this before the launch of Kemmyn
and the Language Board still holds examinations in it. Contact KDL
for more information.
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