Talk:Cornish language/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Number of speakers

Hi, we've had an IP editor continue to say there are 3,500 people fluent in everyday conversation in the language. The source cited in the table gives only 840 at best (as far as I can see - it wasn't easy to open). While I'm not arguing with the potential numbers involved, it would be good to stick to some kind of reliable source and report what that says. Everything else is OR. If we want to big this one up we'd be better off saying that around 800 people are fluent and 3-5,000 people have some knowledge of speech. I've reverted the change again (even though it now says 2,000 - also higher than the citation). Cherz Stevebritgimp (talk) 19:39, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

That's not exactly a reliable reference; it doesn't give any official accounts, only "impressions" of numbers by language groups and activists. --Joowwww (talk) 19:48, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I didn't say it was :) I just think it's a bit mental saying 'x' speakers then citing a source that doesn't say that. We need to find a reliable source. Stevebritgimp (talk) 19:54, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the reality is that about 800 people have some knowledge of Cornish, some thousands have maybe some few words of Cornish, and about 80 are competent speakers. -- Evertype·✆ 08:43, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Evertype's estimate seems correct, if a bit conservative, to me. An estimated number of 100-150 fluent speakers has been mentioned to me by a Kowethas officer, but that really seems to be about the extent of it. My own guess would be ca 80-90 speakers of Revived Middle Cornish and ca. 10-15 speakers of Revived Late Cornish. Pokorny (talk) 17:14, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

My RLC contacts suggest that there are more of them out there. They just don't join groups or participate on the internet. -- Evertype·✆ 22:36, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted the number of speakers to 840, as that is what the reference states (those fluent in everyday conversation). 90.211.80.231 (talk) 12:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

If you actually read the reference fully, they put more credibility on a number closer to 245. 75.164.175.181 (talk) 05:22, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

"Today estimates of numbers of speakers can run into several hundred, but speakers of Kemmyn fairly consensually estimated around two hundred effective speakers. Unified Cornish (Revised) claims about 20. Late/Modern Cornish speakers claimed around 25. Numbers in other areas where the language is known to be studied (including those outside the United Kingdom) can only be conjectural." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.175.181 (talk) 05:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The reference used for the number of speakers in the infobox is hopeless. It doesn't say "the number of Cornish speakers is xxx" or even "a survey showed the number of Cornish to be about xxx". What it says is that it is a survey of what people thought the number of Cornish speakers were, at some unspecified time in the past -the most recent date noted is 1999. They even provide a 'health warning' for their results "It should be very strongly cautioned that in terms of reliability these results are merely the aggregation of personal opinions and impressions. They cannot be taken as representative statistics of the present day language situation." i.e. don't use these figures. This isn't definitive, but at least it is explicit. It says (in the final paragraph) "A survey in 2008 found 2,000 people were fluent in Cornish, compared to just 300 in 2000". Are there any objections to updating the infobox using this reference? Daicaregos (talk) 19:48, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done. Daicaregos (talk) 12:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I object. No one believes that there are two thousand fluent speakers. I'm reverting that. Your source may be explicit but incorrect. 2,000 people know some Cornish, but the fluent speakers are nowhere near so numerous. The CLP has made recordings of some of the good speakers—about a hundred recordings if I recall. -- Evertype·✆ 13:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

It was a bit disappointing that the objection was raised after the change was made, rather than when the request to note any objections was made. Nevertheless, I've now reinstated the number of fluent Cornish speakers as 2000 per WP:RSN#Cornish language. WP:V and WP:RS (& up to date) references will be required to revert. Daicaregos (talk) 10:14, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with this change --Joowwww (talk) 12:14, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Cornish word for pasty / pastie

Could anybody find the Cornish word for (Cornish) pasty please? — Hippietrail (talk) 10:22, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

It is "pasti". --Joowwww (talk) 11:00, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll second that! "pasti" Cor. or "pasty" Eng. are both derived from Romance anyway- "pastum". In Modern Italian the word "pasta" can also refer to pastry, pastry being yet another variant of the original Latin root. Brythonek (talk) 10:00, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed all of "pasta", "paste", "pastie", "pastry", "pasty", "pâté", and "patty" are used in English for various things and all go back to the same one Latin source term.

But what about "tiddy oggie" (and variants)? Is this just modern English slang or does it go back to an old Cornish word for pasty? I have seen both "hogan" and "hoggan" given as the Cornish origin for the modern colloquial term. Does either spelling occur in old Cornish sources or dictionaries? — Hippietrail (talk) 09:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay... "tiddy" and "teddy" are dialect words for potatoes, compare with Welsh "tatties" etc. As for "oggin/oggie" etc, it is still a bit of mystery as the word "oggin" in Cornish dialect usually means "the sea", so there doesn't seem to be a connection there. The Cornish Balmaidens, mine girls, used to bring the pasties to the mines for their husbands and shout "Oggy, oggy, oggy", to which the miners would shout back "oi, oi, oi" hence the origin of this "call". I will have a look and see if I can find and explanation for the "oggie" part. Brythonek (talk) 12:02, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

'Hoggan' comes from 'Hog' the word for pig/pork. Simples ;) --Talskiddy (talk) 13:37, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Brythonek. It was my belief that "Oggie" was used as slang for pasty because its sound carried better and was more easily discernible through the tunnels than "Pasti", you know everything else I know about that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.140.128.33 (talk) 11:47, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I thought of that as a possibility but it doesn't make sense. The Cornish word for pig is indeed hogh, pl. hoghes so we only have a narrow similarity with the word "hoggan", and anyway the dialect word is "oggy" or "oggin". The second point, I may be wrong on this, but I certainly never have heard of or eaten :) a pork pasty. Variants on traditional pasties include lamb/mutton, fish, or no meat and just potato, swede and onion but not pork. I found a recipe for a Pork and Apple pasty at http://www.properpasty.co.uk/products.html but I doubt that this is a traditional recipe. Pasties were the food of poorer people and usually had little meat in them at all, why then the pork connection?

In my Cornish dictionary it simply gives the word "hogen" (dial.hoggan) as meaning a pie. So it seems we have the "true" native Cornish word for a pie/pastry bake here recorded in dialect. Damn it, I have used the word all my life and did not know it's more Cornish than the word pasty! There's one in your eye!!!

Brythonek (talk) 20:58, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much again! I wonder if your dictionary gives the gender form these terms. Also could you let me know the editor/publisher/date/ISBN of your dictionary please? I'm on the lookout for one to add to my dictionary collection. — Hippietrail (talk) 03:23, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Gerlyver Noweth Kernowek gans R.Morton Nance Dyllasnow Truran 1990.

hogen f. pl -gas, dinner cake, baked pastry cake, (Dialect "hoggan" and corruptly "hobbin".). this and fugen are both inter vars. of whyogen.

whyogen is given as a "dinner cake of pastry", with a Welsh cognate (W.) indicated.Brythonek (talk) 12:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Note below- hawthorn hogan masc. pl. hegyn. I don't think the words are related, different meaning, gender and plural form. Looks like one of those dodgy Victorian explanation for things, e.g. Penzance ."Pen Sands", "head of the sands" was also once given as an explantion of the name... Brythonek (talk) 12:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I just found another interesting fact. It says in A guide to the Mount's bay and the Land's end (1828) By John Ayrton Paris (page 143) here that (Hoggan) Hogan in Cornish British signifies a Hawthorn berry also any thing mean or vile; but here it means a Pork pasty; and now indeed a Tinner's Pasty is called a Hoggan. --Talskiddy (talk) 09:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I have a vague recollection many years ago of seeing some huge pastie thing in a shop in Llangollen called and "oggie" or somesuch... Barcud Coch (talk) 10:51, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Jago gives "Pork-Pasty, s. Hogen, w.; hogan, hoggan, fuggan, p. The same is used for a flat cake; called now a hobbin, when of the shape of a pasty; when flat, a dinner-cake." 193.61.64.100 (talk) 10:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Some of this info is already mentioned in the Hoggan article. Talskiddy (talk) 16:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Dead language spoken a little by a few enthusiasts

In June I'm going to visit Cornwall and to speak at least some words and sentences in Cornish. By the way, dear Cornish people, don't worry about the discussion on orthographies; we have the same for Bavarian. So, writing or pronouncing "cheese" (has to do with my profession) in different ways is not the problem. - One enthusiast more! Hellsepp 19:17, 31 December 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hellsepp (talk • contribs)

Trolling
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This article is written by someone who's obviously trying to promote the language and give it more importance than it actually has. The article should be gone through and all the exaggerations and romantic notions cut out. I'm sure far more English people can speak Latin than can speak a few words of Cornish. 89.243.87.3 (talk) 19:50, 22 February 2010 (UTC) Your ignorance is astounding. --Joowwww (talk) 20:00, 22 February 2010 (UTC) No doubt it's true to say "far more English people can speak Latin than can speak a few words of Cornish", but that misses the point of what an encyclopedia aims to do. Every language is notable to us. For those uninterested in any topic, no doubt millions of Wikipedia articles can seem to "give it more importance than it actually has", but such a view is entirely subjective and has no objective value. Moonraker2 (talk) 02:56, 23 February 2010 (UTC) Permission to close this section? --大輔 泉 (talk) 17:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC) There is no evidence that this is trolling, so I have removed that labelling from this section. In my opinion, the OP makes a reasonable point. Parts of the article do seem to have a promotional agenda. 81.129.128.129 (talk) 03:49, 18 March 2010 (UTC).

The status of "KS"

Evertype's misuse of Wikipedia for propaganda purposes with respect to the Cornish language is watched by Cornish speakers everywhere. They're appalled, but none has the inclination to correct his misrepresentations because they know he will wage an edit war, which they fear will bring the language into disrepute. The latest example of his approach is the Comparison Table in this article, which he has edited so that "KS" occurs in the first column. "KS" is an orthography for the Cornish language which has been worked on by a small number of people. Although some books have been published using KS, and more are in the pipeline, it is, nevertheless, an orthography which is currently actively used, to write Cornish, by a single, solitary individual - Nicholas Williams. The prominent position of KS in this table - indeed, its very inclusion in the table - belies its true status. Treylyer (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC).

I would have to agree, KS doesn't exactly represent a sizeable chunk of Cornish speakers. Of course this situation could change in the future, but for the time being it's giving KS undue weight. I still think for the moment it would be best if only the SWF was in the table. --Joowwww (talk) 18:49, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I have said that I would be amenable to re-arranging the table, but in point of fact there are more materials available in KS than there are in the SWF. Cutting out other orthographies in favour of the SWF would give the SWF undue weight—just because it is used officially by the council does not mean that its use is particularly widespread—that too would be wishful thinking. I say this as the editor of the only SWF/M and SWF/T grammar books which exist. In fairness it would be better if the table reflected the pluralistic reality and gave UC/UCR/RLC/KK/SWF/KS. Without KS in the first column.

To respond to something else Treylyer said: KS1 was worked on by a larger group of people (UdnFormScrefys) than were involved in the AHG, in point of fact, and the group which has worked on KS (Spellyans) is rather large as well. I did change the UCR column to KS (it affected about three of the words if I recall), but not for "propaganda", merely because UCR seems a little outdated at this point. And to speak to the "some books" which have been published in KS—the wordcount is about 220,000 from the beginning of 2009 to the present. This is not insignificant.

But a reasonable compromise is to include examples in each of the relevant orthographies. I oppose the deletion of KS (and of KK) in favour of only the SWF in the table. The SWF has not, not yet, supplanted all of the other orthographies. -- Evertype·✆ 22:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Amount of published material doesn't really mean anything, thanks to your publishing know-how and Nicholas Williams' translation skills there are probably more books in KS than there are people who actually use it. And the amount of people who worked on it is also irrelevant, just because people worked on it doesn't necessarily mean they use it. The SWF is the standard form for official contexts and has wide consensus among Cornish speakers as the closest thing to a standard form. As you are one of the principal promoters of KS I think your actions here constitute a conflict of interest. --Joowwww (talk) 23:11, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

UC and UCR and KK have "wide consensus among Cornish speakers" as to what they use, no less than SWF and KS. The table is there to show differences and similarities. The different orthographies of Cornish are still in existence. Your contention that Cornish speakers are all using SWF is not backed up by any evidence or citation. I would object to the removal of either KS (was UCR) or KK from the table. I would favour the addition of unreformed UC and of RLC to the table. You cannot claim that I have a conflict of interest if I am suggesting that this particular table retains KK, because you know perfectly well that I don't consider KK to be suitable. But at this juncture in the Revival, only a comprehensive table would be meaningful. By the way, one may assume that if people buy books, they are using them, since reading constitutes a usage scenario, whether passive or not. By the way, you know who I am in real life, but I do not know who you are, so I might suggest that in the interests of disclosure you identify yourself. Otherwise it is not fair for you to be imputing "interest" on my part, because so far your "neutrality" seems to be "anti-KS, pro-SWF". I am not trying to be adversarial. -- Evertype·✆ 00:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I have made no such contention. The primary point of the table is to show similarities between Cornish and the other Celtic languages. If you think another table comparing orthographies, in addition to the orthographical comparisons already made, would add to the article's educational value then you go ahead and make one. My real life identity is irrelevant. --Joowwww (talk) 01:37, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it is, since you are using my real life identity to impute "conflict of interest". In any case, your assumption that the SWF is in widespread use is unsupported, and I reiterate my position that the table should properly express the pluralism which exists. -- Evertype·✆ 08:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I have made no such assumption, please stop misrepresenting my position. Furthermore, you chose to write your own Wikipedia article and edit Wikipedia under your real name. That's your choice. I am under no obligation to do the same. My concerns about a conflict of interest still stand. --Joowwww (talk) 11:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

You said that "wide consensus among Cornish speakers"—but that statement is unsupported; it is your assumption. I chose to keep a neutral and pluralistic approach in putting the table together. I see that you have attempted to propagandize for the SWF by "splitting" the table whilst claiming that it was "ridiculously large". That is clearly your POV; the table was not all that large, nor was the size "ridiculous". Shall I now accuse you of a conflict of interest? Or of attempting to suppress other orthographies? Please. I think we're better off without accusing each other of anything.

In point of fact, I think that the table was bloated with Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, which are of little relevance to the article; there are other articles about comparative Celtic. As Welsh and Breton are closely related, I think that a single table, omitting the Gaelic languages but including Welsh and Breton, would be better than the two tables as we have them now. -- Evertype·✆ 12:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I said "The SWF [...] has wide consensus among Cornish speakers as the closest thing to a standard form." It's rather different to what you are implying I said. I disagree with your proposal to remove the Goidelic languages, there's quite a useful comparison of the differences and similarities between Brythonic and Goidelic languages there. --Joowwww (talk) 13:08, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that it is misleading to present the SWF in such a table as though it were the only orthography; it is a work in progress, and indeed, the comparison table helps to show some of the options and choices made by Revivalists. From a linguistic point of view, however, the table lacks usefulness because of the nature of the words presented. Some are attested loanwords, some are calques, and it uses some words which have disputed meanings. It's a bit of a mess. Note that a previous version had "amser" 'time, weather' though this term were as common in Cornish as it is in Welsh and Breton, But other words were used in traditional Cornish. I changed this to "silver/money" which is also messy but less contentious. I think either table would be better based on the Swadesh list or something, but for now we might leave well enough alone. -- Evertype·✆ 13:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't see I did, I wrote "Cornish (SWF)" as a header, if I wanted to present the SWF as the only orthography I would have written "Cornish". KS is also a "work in progress". If you are willing to "leave well enough alone" in favour of discussion about how to improve the rest of the article then so am I. --Joowwww (talk) 13:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

You proposed to delete both UCR/KS and KK from the original table, which was "removing value" in my view. I added value, and you called the result "ridiculous". I still think that your new second table is now misleading in that it is missing "chayr" and "ryver"; that was not the case in the unitary table.

However, one section of the article discussing the different orthographies does not distinguish pre-AHG Kernowak Standard with post-SWF Kernowek Standard. The two entities differ in a number of respects. Ought this not be addressed? -- Evertype·✆ 14:11, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

What possible use would that have? Why not have every incarnation of RLC, plus all variants of the SWF, plus KK with dj and tj, too? Is your primary concern educational value or making sure your orthgraphy stays in the article? --Joowwww (talk) 16:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

(Please don't be so hostile. There really isn't any call for it.) Whether you dislike or disapprove of KS or not, it exists, and is quite a different thing than was proposed to the Commission as a direction for compromise prior to the AHG. Indeed, whether you dislike it or disapprove of it or not, it exists as a part of the Revival. It is a response to the SWF—and the CLP has acknowledged its publications (and announced them in Maga) just as it acknowledges publications in other orthographies. The article as it stands mentions the pre-AHG contribution only. Since there are now a variety of materials available in the post-SWF contribution, don't you think that it would be of educational value to have some sort of discussion of this, for people who may wish to understand this aspect of the Revival? -- Evertype·✆ 17:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Split all this stuff out into an article on the competing systems. DuncanHill (talk) 18:03, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

It's up to you if you interpret my legitimate questions as "hostile". I have no opinion regarding KS, and even if I did it would be irrelevant. My primary concern is that the article reflects the reality of the use of orthographies - and the reality is that even though Evertype has published KS material, it has not seen widespread active use by Cornish speakers, and should not be given any prominent position over other orthographies. Only one incarnation of KS should be mentioned, the latest one, but there is not a public specification for it. So how would we go about referencing the latest version of KS? I support DuncanHill's suggestion. --Joowwww (talk) 19:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

[outdent]I have revised the table. If you wish, I could add Lhuyd's spelling and Jenner's. I would suggest to Treylyer to take the chip off his or shoulder: the revision has been made in good faith and is not indicative of "abusing the Wikipedia". -- Evertype·✆ 09:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

And I'd suggest to Evertype that he keep a civil tongue in his head. I don't have a chip on my shoulder, and nor do any of the other Cornish speakers, and people merely associated with the language, that view Evertype's use of Wikipedia (as a soap-box for distorted information about Cornish, fuelled by self-interest, and as a means of promoting his own publications) as outrageous.

Readers of Wikipedia around the world will not know how they have been misled by the way in which he has used articles on "Alice in Wonderland", "Penzance" and "Linguistic issues concerning the Euro" (to name but a few) for his own purposes. He has honed misrepresentation through selectivity to a fine art. People in Cornwall are well aware of what he has done and is doing, however. And they're aghast, but won't do anything about it for fear of prompting him into behaving as he always does when challenged. I shall write no more on the subject for just that reason. Treylyer (talk) 10:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

It did not seem to me. Treylyer, that accusing me of "misuse" was civil, or of writing hearsay about "Cornish speakers everywhere" being "appalled" and "aghast". You attacked me previously, and you have attacked me here just above. All I did here was to improve the article to respond to some of the discussion. -- Evertype·✆ 12:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

• I think I've made this point before, but it's worth saying again. The article as it stands seems to be more concerned with re-hashing the arguments between the various competing orthgraphies than with presenting an encyclopaedic study of the language as a whole. The grammar section, for example, is utterly inadequate. Anyone thinking of learning Cornish and coming to this article as a first point of reference would get the (probably accurate) impression that the revival community is more concerned with scoring points off each other than with regenerating a language as a part of everyday life. DuncanHill (talk) 13:14, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Talk page maintenance

I have archived all threads which had no activity after 2008. Archives are linked at the top of this page. If there are no objections within 3 days, I intend archiving all threads with no activity after the end of 2009. DuncanHill (talk) 13:37, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest with no activity after the end of June 2009 rather than December. -- Evertype·✆ 14:13, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Any particular reason? I was going with a quarter of a year (near as dammit) being quite long enough to decide that a thread had had its day. Many article talk pages archive threads after one month of no activity. DuncanHill (talk) 14:23, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Dunno. I archive my own e-mail semi=annually. I suppose it's the busier pages that archive after a month. -- Evertype·✆ 14:40, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

How about up to the end of September? DuncanHill (talk) 15:02, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

No objection. Does a bot do this or do you do it by hand? -- Evertype·✆ 15:23, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll do it by hand, but I could set up a bot to do it automatically. DuncanHill (talk) 15:39, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Jenner quote

Henry Jenner: ... "There has never been a time when there has been no person in Cornwall without a knowledge of the Cornish language." - Is that the correct quote? It would make a lot more sense if it said "WITH a knowledge". Lfh (talk) 12:05, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

You're right, but that's the correct quote. Maybe it was the way they said it in 1900? I don't know. --Joowwww (talk) 12:58, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

"with a knowledge" would be logical (though "negative mishandling" is a complex subject: see H. W. Fowler A Dictionary of Modern English Usage; 2nd ed., revised by Sir Ernest Gowers. 1965; pp. 384-86). Perhaps he was thinking in another language and translating it into English as he said it.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 04:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

One more for the comparison table: dâ / da

I think dâ ("good") should be in, as it's another typical similarity to Welsh. I don't speak the latter language at all, nor the other lesser known Cornish variants listed (Unified, and whatnot), but when reading this article just out of interest, I missed dâ in the table badly. Everyone who has ever visited Wales knows Bore da as "Good day", doesn't he?? :) So it IS very similar to Welsh. But again, I can't add dâ if I do not know the other translations. -andy 217.50.62.159 (talk) 11:56, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Bodinar's letter

In both Mousehole and Penwith it is claimed that Barrington received Bodinar's letter a year following the death of Dolly Pentreath, that is, in 1778. However, the letter is dated to July 3rd, 1776, as can clearly be seen in the scan of the manuscript. (That means, the letter was by all appearances written, signed, dated, and most probably, dispatched, at a time when Dolly Pentreath was still alive, and so was the Cornish language even to the most conservative view, although the letter does cause serious trouble for that view, namely that she was the last native speaker.) The only way to resolve this apparent contradiction is to assume that the letter took at least one and a half years to reach Barrington. While this isn't impossible, given how snail mail can take a long time to reach its destination occasionally even nowadays, and we're talking about the 18th century here, it is hardly so unremarkable that it doesn't merit comment. So, does the source that appears to be quoted to the effect that Barrington received the letter only in 1778 really say so? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:59, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

No idea. The whole last speaker/date of letter topic is not very clear. Dolly may not even have been the last native speaker. --Joowwww (talk) 12:33, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Alison Treganning

Alison Treganning is thought, by some, to be the last fluent speaker of the Cornish Language. It is said that she died in 1906, forming controversy over the previous assumption that the Cornish language had been dead since the time of Dolly Pentreath (d. 1777). // It was long believed in England that the Cornish language had died in the 18th century with Dolly Pentreath, but by 1906 the language's revival had already been going for a few years. (compiled 2005-2009) // References

• "Grace under Pressure". Retrieved 2009-05-25. (a rhetorical reference to some unreliable information)

This was an article for most of 2009 but is inadequate without better references. This refers to the subject [1] : if this was promoted as an anniversary articles must have been published in newspapers within Cornwall which may reveal the evidence if any. See also Talk:Alison Treganning--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 20:00, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Alison Treganning. I looked hard for evidence of her. As you'll see, I found no reliable sources.Moonraker (talk) 20:16, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I've left a comment at that talk page, arguing that she could very well be a hoax, despite an ostensible piece of evidence to the contrary mentioned there. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, I just saw that the article linked above is dated August 2005 and actually mentions Alison Treganning in passing, together with Dolly Pentreath; but puzzingly, the writer simply seems to assume that the reader be already familiar with the name, since he does not explain her significance explicitly, nor mention her presumed year of death. This is all very strange. If she really lived so recently, and was a speaker of Cornish, how come there are no other mentions of her anywhere else? At least Henry Jenner should have known of her and mentioned her somewhere in his writings, but Google Books doesn't turn up any results. And the Cornish revivalists active on Wikipedia should have heard of her, too. For all we know, the John Doyle who wrote the article in 2005 might be the same person who introduced the mention of Alison Treganning into Wikipedia, so I'm still wondering if the whole story is not entirely bogus. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:46, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

History of the language

There is very little about the history of the language itself such as the actual content of the differences between Old, Middle and Late Cornish. It may be observed that the History of the section is primarily focused on the politics and sociolinguistics rather than the actual features of the language itself. Govynn (talk) 07:18, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Jenner quote

I added "sic" to the Jenner quote (There has never been a time when there has been no person in Cornwall without [sic] a knowledge of the Cornish language) and made some additional changes. See this comment by Geoffrey K. Pullum. Thanks for pointing that out. If anyone can establish whether the error was introduced by Jenner or the cited source, that would be even better.--Boson (talk) 14:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Bodinar's Letter Transcriptions

Looking at the image of the letter, it seems to me that the top two boxes in the table of transcriptions are the wrong way round, the version with random Capitals being Bodinar's original spelling. Does anyone concur? 83.104.239.47 (talk) 13:52, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Structuring and tidying

Hello- I've embarked on a improvement of the structure and tone of the article. There seems to be a fair amount of repetition and overlapping and parts need a few subheadings. In general I'm not really adding or removing content, other than eliminating repetition and adding a few sentences or short paras to make the sections flow better as part of structure improvement. I'll also try to add new citations and references where I've got the materials.Sweorcan (talk) 06:35, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Gorsedd??

I know nothing about this so I don't want to tread on the experts' toes, but I notice that the last sentence of the "Revival" section has "From the earliest days under Grand Bards Henry Jenner and Morton Nance the 'Unified Form' has been used for the Gorsedd ceremony."

"Gorsedd" is the modern Welsh word - shouldn't it be "Gorseth" with a -th? Or is there a good reason for the -dd form in the Cornish context? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.174.179 (talk) 17:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Gorsedd is Welsh. However, as there is no corresponding word in English, the Welsh Gorsedd is often used in English translations. For example, Cornish: Gorsedh (or Gorseth) Kernow English: The Gorsedd of Cornwall. There are currently two Cornish spellings, Gorseth (UC, UCR, KS) or Gorsedh (SWF, KK). Gorsedh Kernow previously used UC but switched to SWF in 2009 and the application of the SWF to the name is reflected in their website, so that's the spelling I've used in my revision to the section. 86.179.232.67 (talk) 07:31, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Restructure

This article is a mess, and I feel it focuses too much on the history of the language and debating its death rather than its modern use. I'm going to be bold and start restructuring this article around the following headings, which are based on featured language articles like Swedish:

• Classification, History, Geographic distribution, Phonology and dialects, Grammar, Writing system, Vocabulary, Samples.

--Kernowek (talk) 14:48, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I've moved the huge amount of info debating the last speaker of Cornish to a new article Last speaker of Cornish, and I've put most of the info about the spelling wars into Cornish revival. It's not 2004 anymore, let's put it in the past where it belongs. Perhaps we can model the revival article on such articles as Hebrew revival. --Kernowek (talk) 16:29, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think Last speaker of Cornish is a very "encyclopaedic" article title, or standalone article for that matter. -- Evertype·✆ 21:03, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Neither do I, but someone spent a lot of time writing that and it had to go somewhere. --Kernowek (talk) 22:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Native speakers

I've tried to add a figure for the number of people brought up as native speakers. The best source I could find is from 2000, the independent academic study of Cornish, which was undertaken by Ken McKinnon on behalf of Government Office for the South West. This found a number of people had been raised as Cornish speakers or were then being raised in in that language. Indeed he found one woman Mrs Phoebe Proctor (c1910-2007) had been raised as a Cornish speaker by her father, Robert Morton Nance, one of the key people in the early 20th Century revival of Cornish. Also noted were an estimated 20 children acquiring the language as native speakers at that time and approximately 12 children raised bilingually with the help of an organisation established for that purpose in 1979. The study can be found here: http://www.magakernow.org.uk/default.aspx?page=797

In addition there is now a full time Cornish language nursery school being set up. Since 2009 approximately fifty children between the ages of 1 and 7 have attended the setting for significant periods of time. http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/cornish-language-nursery/ but I don't know whether that is any good to mention in the article. Bodrugan (talk) 22:55, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Revival is certainly an important topic to discuss. I think the figure is fine to include as long as we note that it's a claim by activists rather than by uninterested parties. However, the extinction is just as important to note. What people are speaking now might be called "Neo-Cornish", but it's not true Cornish in the sense of being the same language that went extinct. Once a language is gone, you can reconstruct it, but you can't actually bring it back. (Modern Hebrew is debated, but even it has been restructured by the native languages of its first generation of speakers, and that's with the advantage of having had a continuous history as a liturgical and literary language, and advantage that Cornish does not have.) — kwami (talk) 00:48, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think your point is valid, Kwami. There is enough documented overlap between native speakers and the revivalist to ensure authenticity of the Cornish of the revivalists.Jembana (talk) 02:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

There were no fluent speakers when it was revived, so it was being revived from extinction. It's not like the last native speakers started a kindergarten and raised a new generation of native Cornish speakers, who then went on to teach new generations. Modern Cornish is a reconstructed language. The claim that the result is original Cornish would be astonishing, and so would require some very good sources. — kwami (talk) 03:57, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Kwami, why did you accuse Bodrugan of edit warring and ask him to take it to talk. It is obvious from the above post that Bodrugan did so before your intervention. He has adequately explained his change when he did it. I feel it is improper of you to accuse an editor when they appear to have done the right thing by Wiki standards.Jembana (talk) 02:15, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

You take it to talk to try to find consensus. You don't take it to talk and continue edit warring. — kwami (talk) 02:23, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

But you have left the page not at is original state but the state that one of the edit warrers has changed it to. This doesn't seem right. The page should be left at the state it was before it was touched by any of the edit warrers. Wouldn't that be fairer ?Jembana (talk) 03:43, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, of course. I thought that's what I was doing. Could you rv. to the appropriate version? — kwami (talk) 03:51, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Wait a minute: What I reverted to is exactly as the article was before the edit war. It should be left as it is until we determine how to address the extinct/revived issue. — kwami (talk) 05:52, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Please be aware that there has been considerable academic debate over the death of Cornish both as a community language and as a native tongue. This is reflected in the article: Last speaker of Cornish (this used to be part of the Cornish language article but was removed a few months ago because of it's length). Indeed the evidence given there shows that there may have been at least one native speaker, John Mann, alive at the time Robert Morton Nance was bringing up his children in the revived language. Also worth pointing out is that the early revivalists did not start learning in 1904, but actually several decades before. Indeed they learnt a lot of words and phrases from old fishermen, and others, during that time, so learning the pronunciation from late Cornish. It was only later in the late 1920s and 1930s that there was a switch made to a Middle Cornish based spelling system in order to allow learners to easily read the middle Cornish texts.

There have been a lot of changes to this article over the past few months and I think that maybe a few key points were removed that ought to have stayed. Bodrugan (talk) 09:13, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I should also add that the UK government recognises Cornish, without differentiating between historical and revived, as a living language (see European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages) and so does UNESCO (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-11935464) which obviously thinks the language being revitalized is the same as the one it had previously said was extinct. I don't really have a problem with stating in the infobox that the speakers are speaking a revitalised/revived form of the language. Bodrugan (talk) 09:40, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Unless John Mann taught Robert Morton Nance's children, the chain of transmission was broken and the language went extinct. Also, UNESCO knows nothing about languages; they presumably have no opinion, and even if they did, it wouldn't be worth anything. (Some of the stuff they publish is absolute garbage.) Decisions by UNESCO and the European Charter are political, not linguistic; they may defer judgement to activists who claim a right over diagnosing the language, so we're back to a biased POV. The linguistic sources I've checked all say that Cornish went extinct. People who have an emotional tie to a language will often deny that it's extinct. You can see this in the Cornish extinction article, but it happens with Coptic and plenty of Native American languages as well. Given that there are linguistic sources that say the language went extinct, we'd need a good linguistic source to contradict them. — kwami (talk) 10:47, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

The issue here is not whether or not Cornish became extinct, but whether this article is suitable for describing the language as currently spoken in Cornwall. Kwami asserts that it is not, as he is of the opinion that traditional Cornish and revived Cornish are too far removed from each other (I would like to know how he came to this conclusion, was it by studying traditional and revived Cornish? Or is it a bias against revived versions of languages?). As far as I can see, this is merely his opinion. Regardless of how close modern Cornish is to its pre-1800 life, the language currently spoken in Cornwall is overwhelmingly called "Cornish", which in my opinion (and following common usage guidelines), would make it suitable for description in this article. --Kernowek (talk) 18:37, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Which Cornish? There have been different attempts to recreate the language which each call themselves Cornish. bobrayner (talk) 20:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

This is a misconception; there have been different orthographies attempting to codify the same language. --Kernowek (talk) 23:03, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the different forms of Cornish come down to the different ways in which they are written rather than any great difference in speech. Bodrugan (talk) 00:17, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Since the edit war started up again, I added several linguistic refs for the status quo, but also accepted the ref'd claim of 20 native speakers from the other version (presumably to be removed if the ref turns out to not be a RS, but I'm not going to try to pass judgement on that). That's an attempt at compromise, but revert to the status quo if you really think it shouldn't be touched. BTW, when digging up sources, I came across several that said Davies was not a native speaker: He had some knowledge that had been passed down to him, such as numbers, but couldn't actually speak the language. I didn't come across a single source that said Cornish had survived; all who addressed the issue said it went extinct, like Manx. Also, the modern language has been called "Revived Cornish" with a capital R. One ref said most linguists were dismissive of the revival, but at least one was supportive, and that in the author's opinion Revived Cornish was of great importance for sociolinguistics. — kwami (talk) 01:02, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't see what point you're trying to make with those sources. You've used them to reference the line "Extinct by 19th century". Let's examine them:

• Ken George, "Cornish", and George & Broderick, "The Revived Languages: Cornish and Manx" - The first chapter discusses Traditional Cornish which it says "was spoken until about 1800, when it ceased to exist as a living community language". In the second chapter, Cornish is described as having "been revived" and is "now spoken" after "being moribund throughout the nineteenth century". "Cornish" (not "Revived Cornish") is later described as "unquestionably a living language". The second chapter does not make any judgement about the authenticity of the revived language.
• Christopher Mosely, ed., 2007, Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages - The UNESCO Atlas (which you previously dismiss as a "political source") does not list "Traditional Cornish" and "Revived Cornish" separately. It lists them under one entry, "Cornish", which it classifies as "revived".
• Hadumod Bussmann, 1996, Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics - The entry for Breton describes it as belonging to the same group as "Welsh, Cornish and the extinct Gaulish". The entry for Celtic describes Cornish as "extinct since the eighteenth century, but currently experiencing a revival". There is no entry for Cornish.
• P.J Payton, "Cornish", in Brown & Ogilvie, eds., 2009, Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World - This source says nothing about an extinction. It treats Cornish as one language in its description, from the Old Cornish period to the present day.
• Bernard Comrie, ed, 2009, The World's Major Languages, 2nd edition - The author briefly mentions Cornish as "extinct".
• James Clackson, 2007, Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction - The author briefly mentions Cornish as "no longer spoken", along with Manx and Gaulish.
• Gareth King, 2003, Modern Welsh: A Comprehensive Grammar, 2nd edition - Cornish is described as "extinct since the late eighteenth century, though recently 'resurrected'".

So in fact, only two of those references you've given definitively describe Cornish as currently being extinct. Two others say nothing of the sort. But this is not what is under dispute. Rather, this is about your opinion that traditional Cornish and revived Cornish cannot be treated as the same language, therefore it's impossible for Cornish to have native speakers, and therefore should be made clear in the infobox. This is an opinion, nothing more, and cherrypicking sources in an attempt to reinforce that opinion does not hide the POV.

There are countless sources, including a few given by you, that treat traditional and revived Cornish as one language. There are also countless sources that describe Cornish as currently having native speakers. Your POV does not invalidate those sources. The following is a quote from Nicholas Williams' (Associate Professor in Celtic Languages at University College Dublin) book Desky Kernowek, which while not suitable as a reference for this article, I'd like to throw in for good measure:

"It is important that learners should at every stage understand that what they are being taught is grounded in authentic Cornish, and is not a modern construct devised according to modern preferences and thus only partially related to the traditional language".

Whether or not languages like Hebrew, Cornish and Manx can be said to be truly revived is a lingustic debate that does not belong, and will not be solved, on this page. With that in mind, there would seem to be two solutions to this debate:

1. Recognise that Cornish, including its revived version and regardless of how close it is to traditional Cornish, is overwhelmingly treated as one continuous language from its development from South Western Brittonic to the present day, and treat it as such in this article.
2. Treat revived and traditional Cornish separately, splitting the language into periods of Old, Middle, Late and Modern/Revived. Since the modern language as currently spoken is overwhelmingly described as "Cornish", common usage would require this article to focus on the revived language, and treat the historical language under separate headings. Which is exactly what is done now.

I suggest that for the purposes of this article, Cornish is treated as one language, and that information given in the infobox reflect that. --Kernowek (talk) 11:36, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry kwami, you seem to have got the wrong end of the stick. The 'status quo', as you put it, was the version before Bobrayner's edits on 11 November.Bodrugan (talk) 12:18, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

It's also the version people decided on until this was worked out. — kwami (talk) 12:49, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

That's a straw-man argument, Kernowek. I never said Cornish is extinct. Quite the opposite: I restored the source saying it now has native speakers. My point is that it went extinct, and was then revived. My argument is with those who say it never went extinct; I have not found a single linguistic source which backs that up, while I've found many (and not just those above) that say it is or was extinct. — kwami (talk) 12:49, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

So what are we arguing about then? And what is a "straw-man argument"? --Kernowek (talk) 14:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Maybe nothing? I'm happy with noting the language now has native speakers (assuming of course the ref holds up); I just think it's important to note that at one time it was extinct. As for how authentic the revival is, that's up to our sources, and won't fit in the box anyway. — kwami (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

A straw-man argument is when you misrepresent your opponent's argument so you can more easily refute it. I thought that's what you were doing. (Though I suppose it's a straw-man argument even if you don't know you're doing it.) — kwami (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I am also happy with noting the language has native speakers in the infobox where it says "Native speakers". But I don't think that infobox field is appropriate for mentioning the language died out, because the field's title is "Native speakers" not "Date of Extinction". The language's decline should be mentioned in the intro and the main text, which is already is.--Kernowek (talk) 09:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

You stated above "Modern Hebrew is debated... and that's with the advantage of having had a continuous history as a liturgical and literary language, and advantage that Cornish does not have." I beg to differ. Cornish was used as a liturgical language until at least the first half of the 19th century. (Peter Berresford Ellis, The Cornish Language and its Literature, p125), also it was studied and learnt by antiquarians and academics straight through from the 18th to the revival.Bodrugan (talk) 14:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Maybe. Hebrew's unusual, though, in the degree to which it was learned after it went extinct. — kwami (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The Hebrew info box does not mention that it became extinct - why are you insisting on it for Cornish ?Jembana (talk) 06:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I've just changed the info box slightly to read more like Manx language. Also "Extinct as a community language by about 1800." to correspond with the sources as Kernowek pointed out above: "The Revived Languages: Cornish and Manx" - The first chapter discusses Traditional Cornish which it says "was spoken until about 1800, when it ceased to exist as a living community language".Bodrugan (talk) 16:34, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

See above, I don't think the "Native speakers" infobox field is appropriate for mentioning a past extinction. --Kernowek (talk) 09:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

That's been how we treat other languages. Also, what does "extinct as a community language" mean? Language extinction is clearly defined, and Cornish was simply extinct. — kwami (talk) 21:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

It's a fable that Cornish died. This is outlined in detail in 'The Story of the Cornish Language' by Peter Beresford Ellis (1998, reprinted in 2005). The book is was readily available. Let's got through the history documented in this book as per WP:VERIFY so we can have sure that the word extinction can be left out as it has been in the article for a long time until the current edit war (as it is on the Hebrew language page to be consistent). Regarding use by a community of people we have only to look at the fishing village of Mousehole in particular it's fishermen. Historian Daines Barrington (brother of Admiral the Hon. Samuel Barrington) in 1773 reported his interview of Dolly Pentreath and her two neighbours opposite to the Society of Antiquaries who published it in their journal in 1776. Dolly Pentreath died a year later. Daines Barrington contributed a second paper to Archaeologia in 1776, containing a letter received in 1776 from a fisherman of Mousehole together with and English translation. The fisherman, William Bodener who died in 1794, says that he knew five people in Mousehole alone who spoke Cornish, and this disproves the now popular but entirely erroneous fable/belief that Dolly Pentreath was the last speaker of Cornish. Indeed, Barrington himself said that John Nancarrow of Marazion (born 1709), who was still living in the 1790s, was also a native speaker. Bodener claimed that he and Dolly Pentreath used to have long talks in Cornish, though a man named Thompson of Truro, who was the author of Dolly Pentreath's epitaph, claimed he knew more Cornish than she did. In 1790 one of the the most interesting and exacting text books to be written on Cornish was published. This was Archaeologia Cornu-Brittania by Dr William Pryce. The book contains Lluyd's grammar, under his own name, and the copious vocabulary collected by Gwavas and Tonkin plus several Cornish texts. Pryce's books enabled the nineteenth centrury scholar, Dr Edwin Norris, to gain sufficient knowledge to bring out a translation of the Middle Cornish dramas.Jembana (talk) 22:10, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Assuming all that is true, it still leaves a gap of a century. Given that we have multiple RS's that the language went extinct, what you would need are RS's that the first generation of bilingual children in the revival were taught by native Cornish speakers. — kwami (talk) 00:40, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I'll go on to address the first point first, others have already addressed the second point and their comments on those RS's have not been refuted and as to the third point all discussing here should read WP:OWNERSHIP and decide whether it applies in this instance to your further restriction of the criteria to disprove extinction. The detailed RS 'The Story of the Cornish Language' by Peter Beresford Ellis (1998, reprinted in 2005) goes on to address your first concern in the following section on page 20 titled "Did Cornish Die?". It poses the question 'Did the Cornish language die at the end of the eighteenth century?" It goes on to say that: 'By death it is meant that native knowledge of the language ceased.' so we have the criteria to use now. It goes on to say that "We have ample evidence that there were a number of native speakers still alive in the early 1800s." and then poses the question "But did they pass on this knowledge to their children?". It then lists these:

• John Tremethack died in 1852 aged 87. He taught Cornish to his daughter Mrs Kelynack of Newlyn who was still alive in 1875.
• Mrs W J Rawlings of Hayle learned to say the Lord's Prayer and Creed in Cornish at her school in Penzance. She was the mother-in-law of the Cornish scholar, Henry Jenner [one of the principal but not the first as noted above of the revivalists], and died in 1879 aged 57.
• Bernard Victor of Mousehole learnt a great deal of Cornish from his father. Victor met Jenner in 1875 and passed on to him his knowledge of the language.
• Jago, in his English-Cornish Dictionary of 1887 remarks: 'Even now there are men living (Mr Bernard Victor of Mousehole and Mr W F Pentreath of Newquay, to wit) who know many Cornish words apart from books; words which have been handed down and are not yet dead. Furthermore, the Cornish dialect is to this day full of Celtic Cornish words.'.
• Victor and Pentreath listed some of their Cornish vocabulary in the Penzance newspaper The Cornishman in 1879.
• Dr Stevens of St Ives, talking to the historian John Hobson Matthews in 1892, recalled he was taught to count in Cornish, He remembered that his grandfather frequently used to exclaim Scatel angow! which has been interpreted as 'a pack of lies!'.
• John Davey of Zennor died in 1891. It was claimed that he was the last surviving native speaker of Cornish. His stone memorial reads 'John Davey 1812-1891 of Boswednack in this parish... who was the last to possess any traditional considerable knowledge of the Cornish language.'. Davey, it was reported, could hold conversations on many topics in Cornish. He also sang various traditional Cornish songs.
• But I see much of this has already been documented in Last speaker of the Cornish language. Please can every contributor please read this page.
• To quote from this RS: 'It would seem, then, that there were at least a small number of Cornish who had learned the language, or phrases of it, from their parents. From this evidence it can safely be said that the last native speakers of Cornish did not die out until the end of the nineteenth century.'.Jembana (talk) 05:27, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

And assuming all that is true, there was still a break, and still extinction. But "speaking" is being used loosely here. Many of these people are what are sometimes called "rememberers". They're not native speakers, but they remember some words or phrases that were used by their parents or grandparents, who were native speakers. Then there are "passive speakers", who understand the language through exposure to it, but don't speak it. Generally some knowledge of a language survives for a few generations in a family after the last native speaker has died. (That's the case in my family.) That can be valuable for documentation, but it's not the same as a native speaker. John Davey, for example, is thought to have not been able to hold an actual conversation in Cornish, according to the linguistic refs I've seen. Other people knew songs that had been passed down, or specific vocabulary, but didn't actually speak the language. You'll find the same thing in other extinct languages, sometimes ones that have been extinct for a century. — kwami (talk) 09:02, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

There was no break as the RS concludes, Henry Jenner (1848–1934, a brilliant scholar and incidentally the first Grand Bard and founder of the Cornish Gorsedd) carried on as a new native speaker deriving his knowledge of the language from his own family (mother-in-law) plus Victor from the Mousehole community, John Davey and other native speakers at his time even the Bishop of Truro or some of his parishoners (see below). He started the revival and passed on the language to Nance and others in the revival movement. In the section in the RS titled 'The Revivalists' on page 23 it states "Jenner spent much time touring Cornwall interviewing people who still remembered the language and collecting vocabulary, songs and phrases....In December 1877, Jenner organised a memorial ceremony for Dolly Pentreath in order to draw attention to the language. The Bishop of Truro surprised everyone by sending a message of congratulations in Cornish....Jenner had become proficient in Breton as well as Cornish....In 1901 Jenner instigated the formation of Cowerthas Kelto-Kernuak - the Celtic Cornish Society - the first Cornish language movement.'. So from the RS native knowledge of the language did not cease so no mention of extinction is warranted in the info-box. The hypothesis us Cornish are defending is that "native knowledge of the Cornish language continued to the present day". The null hypothesis of this is "at some time in the modern era there was no native knowledge of the Cornish". This null hypothesis is disproved by the evidence us Cornish have presented and in scientific terms it only requires one instance of disproof of the null hypothesis to uphold the hypothesis "native knowledge of the Cornish language continued to the present day" so your other sources are irrelevant. Appreciate your own family history regarding language extinction - you cannot know how close it is for some older Cornish descendants.Jembana (talk) 00:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

So, you have one promotional source against all the linguistic sources I was able to find. That's not convincing. According to the sources I could find, Davies was probably not a native speaker: His primary language was English, and he had some knowledge of Cornish that had been handed down. That's how it's always worded: "traditional knowledge" and "enthusiast", not "native speaker". Most linguists at the time dismissed the revival from extinction as folly, or as a hobby. Looks like they were proven wrong, but still, the linguistic POV at the time and until today is that the language went extinct. Now, if you wish to present the survival hypothesis, that's fine, but RS's depend on the field. For linguistic claims, linguistic sources. — kwami (talk) 00:34, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Recognised Celtic scholar and historian Peter Berresford Ellis publications can hardly be called a "promotional" source. It is a serious and detailed historical account on the Cornish language indeed it is called "The Story of the Cornish Language" as I pointed out before so it is a linguistic reference. Not only that but the shallow depth of the research you have done for your claim of extinction for Cornish is revealed by your continuing use of "Davies" for John Davey and your recent unsourced changes on the Last speaker of the Cornish language page to support your case (thankfully now reverted). I'll repeat the finding of Peter Beresford-Ellis that the language did not go extinct because the initiator of the revival movement, First Grand Bard Henry Jenner, was in fact a native speaker having learned the language from many people in Cornwall including John Davey as outlined. Indeed his version of Cornish was based upon the form of the language used in West Cornwall in the 18th century. Peter Beresford-Ellis makes the point on page 18 that the account by historian Daines Barrington of an interview he had with Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole in 1768 gave the foundations to the now popular - but entirely erroneous belief that Dolley was the last speaker of Cornish.. This popular misconception explains why you can find so many sources that state this. Their depth of research is clearly inadequate.Jembana (talk) 06:01, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

There may of course, have been other speakers who left with Nancarrow. He certainly seems one of the last ‘recorded’ speakers to carry with him knowledge of Cornish. As both Weatherhill and Lyon have noted, Cornish continued to be spoken in west Cornwall for much of the nineteenth century; Lyon’s research in particular demonstrating a small yet notable continuity from Dolly Pentreath and William Bodinar through to people with knowledge of traditional Cornish, such as Ann Wallis, John Tremethick, Mrs. Berryman/Quick, Jane Barnicoate, Bernard Victor, John Davey Senior, Jacob Care, Elizabeth Vingoe and Mr. Mann, in the same period as the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century revival. Presumably many unrecorded miners, fishermen and farmers took knowledge with them as well, that was above and beyond the stage of Cornish words preserved within Cornu-English. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1927/pdf/193_216.pdf Bodrugan (talk) 03:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Infobox description

I'm forking this discussion because it keeps veering towards debating whether or not Cornish became extinct, which for all intents and purposes it clearly did. What I want to discuss is the description under the infobox field "Native speakers", which previously said "557 main language (2011), 3,500 total speakers (2008)", to which Kwami added "Extinct as a first language by 19th century" with the reasoning that "The extinction belongs in the box. Native speakers today don't actually speak Cornish, but a reconstruction of Cornish." The infobox is for current information about Cornish as it is today. Cornish did become extinct, but it was revived, so it is no longer extinct. Therefore mentioning the extinction in the infobox is unnecessary. The sole purpose of the "Native speakers" field is to mention the amount of speakers that Cornish currently has. Kwami's opinion that "native speakers today don't actually speak Cornish, but a reconstruction of Cornish", is what I have an issue with. --Kernowek (talk) 17:40, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

When did the "Cornish" ethnic group appear? Was that before or after the cornish language was reinvented? Since there were different reinventions of the language, does that mean there are different "Cornish" ethnic groups determined by an individual's choice of orthography and syntax? bobrayner (talk) 20:42, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Although the nation is British, there are those amongst the speakers of Cornish and amongst those from Cornwall who speak English who identify as Cornish at the same level as those calling themselves English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish. To deny this when it is sourced is plain unjust and ignorant, and implicit that they are "something else" (ie. English). A person chooses his ethnicity, it is not affected by his parents or what people see him as. --ТНОМАЅ МАСКЕТ (talk) 21:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC) Striking out sockpuppet. bobrayner (talk) 13:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

When did self-applied labels become the basis of ethnicity? Of course, a few thousand people said they were ethnically Cornish (as a subset of British) on a census form; rather less than a fifth the number claiming to be Jedi. bobrayner (talk) 21:21, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Since forever. Self-applied labels are all that form the basis for ethnicity. Read the article and read the sources. If one could not identify differently from his parents, the whole world would be one and the same. ТНОМАЅ МАСКЕТ (talk) 21:27, 5 December 2013 (UTC) Striking out sockpuppet. bobrayner (talk) 13:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Also Jedi. Yes, some people identify by that but that tends to be their religion. End of the day, when census results are released and they say 2 million Turkish live in Germany or half a million Silesians in Poland, it is down to what people chose and for me to tell them differently based on what the wider community says is ignorant. ТНОМАЅ МАСКЕТ (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2013 (UTC) Striking out sockpuppet. bobrayner (talk) 13:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I just searched the archives of Ethnology, the International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology. Zero results for Cornish. Of course, all ethnicities are ultimately human creations (and most nationalities were built relatively recently), but that doesn't mean that any word somebody uses to describe themselves is automatically an ethnicity. That is nonsensical and it is unfortunate that you keep this nonsense in the article with repeated reverts. Sooner or later, this article will reflect what reliable sources say. bobrayner (talk) 21:38, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, any word that any people use to describe themselves means that is their ethnicity, and automatically. Sorry it comes as such a shock. If it weren't so, the whole world would be one and the same. How do you define a Kurd in Iran when they are both Aryan nations, their languages forming a dialect continuum and people on the fringes mixed on whether to call themselves Persian or Kurdish. ТНОМАЅ МАСКЕТ (talk) 21:54, 5 December 2013 (UTC) Striking out sockpuppet. bobrayner (talk) 13:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

[2] from the Cornwall Council. Scroll down to the bit that says "In Cornwall, a Cornish ethnicity is recognised." It isn't just a self-recognition, it is wider than that, and there are other reliable sources. Referring to it as "nonsense" is nothing more than insulting. Bretonbanquet (talk) 21:56, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. So Cornish people go beyond the minimum criteria for being a nation in their own right. Also there is this 2001 census information[3]. ТНОМАЅ МАСКЕТ (talk) 22:01, 5 December 2013 (UTC) Striking out sockpuppet. bobrayner (talk) 13:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

"Distribution of the Cornish language in Europe"?

The infobox tells us very clearly the language is spoken in Cornwall. No other regions are listed. In view of this, how useful is the map showing "distribution of the Cornish language in Europe"? In essence it simply shows us where Cornwall is. No similar map is used for Welsh language, nor would I expect one. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:42, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I really dont see the big deal having it. If anything its a reference for a large amount of people who dont know where Cornwall is in England. Do you think having the map is somehow disruptive in the space of the article? Shabidoo | Talk 22:11, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

It's not "disruptive" in my view, just a waste of space. As useless as a European map would be at Manx language, for example. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:14, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

A misuse of prime space having it so prominent. The historic distributions are more important. Leave it in commons where it would still be accessible. SovalValtos (talk) 22:47, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

The wikilink Cornwall in the lead is sufficient to inform those who do not know where Cornwall is.SovalValtos (talk) 22:55, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with SovalValtos and Martinevans123, a map of Europe to show where Cornish is spoken is hardly necessary. On a related topic, is there any locality even in Cornwall where 5% or more are fluent in Cornish?Jeppiz (talk) 23:13, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

The map is also wrong. It shows Cornish being spoken in Devon, but not in Penwith! --Kerneweger (talk) 16:02, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting papers

there's an interesting paper about the history of the language and its revival here with plenty of things that could be added to this article or potentially other ones specifically on the revival, history, media, education etc. Bodrugan (talk) 16:01, 17 January 2015 (UTC) this paper would be useful too.Bodrugan (talk) 16:22, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Great Bodrugan. Why not be bold and add some of the material to the article? Shabidoo | Talk 02:38, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Infobox problems

The infobox currently states:

Extinct 	by 19th century, perhaps with the death of Dolly Pentreath in December 1777[1]
Revival 	20 native speakers of revived Cornish (2000)[2]
557 people claim Cornish as their main language (2011)[3]

The opening paragraph of the Extinct language page states that: "An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers,[1] or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication. However, language extinction and language death are often equated."

So surely Cornish fits the description of Language death better. Cornish was known academically by antiquarians and as a liturgical language (the Lord's prayer, creed and ten commandments were all known and taught in Cornish through the 18th, 19th and still known by some elderly people into the 20th century) right through the 19th century to the present day.

Another point is that the "20 native speakers of revived Cornish" is not supported by the reference given. The reference only tells us that there were 20 children in the year 2000 who were then being brought up as native speakers. The figure doesn't seem to take into account those raised in the 100 years before as it states that probably the first child in the 20th century to be brought up with Cornish was Morton Nance's daughter Phoebe Proctor (she died in 2007 at the age of 97) and there were approximately 12 children raised as native speakers through the work of Dalleth, which was established in 1979. Bodrugan (talk) 23:24, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Would you give the sources, please?Jeppiz (talk) 23:37, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

the reference is the same: Ken McKinnon, Cornish Language Study 2000 - http://www.magakernow.org.uk/default.aspx?page=797 pages 20 and 65 (on Phoebe Nance), page 50 (on Dalleth), page 34 (on number of children being raised as 'native speakers' in 2000) and 14-17 gives much information on the continued use of the Lord's prayer, Creed, numerals etc. into the 20th century and also on academic/antiquarian knowledge in the 19th century. Bodrugan (talk) 17:47, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

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Neutrality of Text

The style of this page suggests that it was largely written by enthusiasts and/or promoters of the revival of Cornish. The introduction, for example, says that Cornish is "widely" considered to be "an important part of Cornish identity, culture and heritage". Further into the page we read that Cornish is a "vital" aspect of "Cornish culture and identity". Given that less than 1% of people living in Cornwall claim that Cornish is their first language, and, at most, only a couple of thousand people claim to have any conversational ability in Cornish, the claim that Cornish is "vital" is hardly born out by the facts. I have no interest in Cornish specifically and only a passing amateur interest in language generally, so this impression is coming from someone who has no skin in the game, pro or anti! My criticism is of the un-encyclopedic language. Some of this reads more like a promotional pamphlet than an encyclopedic article. --621PWC (talk) 21:40, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I would tend to agree that those two external sources in the lede do not support the use of the word "widely", so it should be removed. Similarly the senetence "Cornish was the predominant language of the Cornish people for most of their history, and is still seen today as a vital aspect of Cornish culture and identity" has no source(s), so I have added a tag. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:44, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Erm - what?

"Edward Lhuyd theorises[citation needed] that the language of this time was heavily inflected, possessing not just the genitive, ablative and locative cases so common in Early Modern Cornish, but also dative and accusative cases, and even a vocative case, although historical references to this are rare."

This is nonsense. Cornish has not marked for case since loss of final syllables in the 6th-7th centuries, like Welsh and Breton. Can this reference just be deleted

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.176.105.138 (talk) 12:07, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Extinct - infobox

"probably with the death of Dolly Pentreath on 26 December 1777" is clearly incorrect. No need to cite this old myth.--Batmacumba (talk) 17:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Those seven separate sources are all wrong, then?Martinevans123 (talk) 18:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, if that is what they claim. Check out the article Extinct language for the meaning of extinct in this context. There was still at least one fluent speaker of Cornish alive after Dolly Pentreath's death. Even the man who discovered her mentions several other speakers younger than her who survived her. She was probably the last Cornish speaker to reach adulthood without learning English, but we don't know that she was alone in that respect.Bodrugan (talk) 22:21, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

You mean Barrington? Maybe you could provide an exact source for his claim. But yes, even the article for Dolly Pentreath says "Although it is sometimes claimed she was the last monolingual speaker of the language – the last person who spoke only Cornish, and not English – her own account as recorded by Daines Barrington contradicts this." Perhaps we need to examine exactly what each of those seven sources say. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:45, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

"Probably" isn't very encyclopedic. Furthermore, dinosaurs are extinct because they all died. They can't be brought back. Pictish is extinct because nobody knows enough about it. Languages like Cornish, Manx and Hebrew fell out of use, but they never became extinct. --Kerneweger (talk) 04:38, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

You're saying languages are essentially like dinosaurs or, at least, like animal species? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:05, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

No, Kernoweger is saying that languages don't go extinct like animal species. Bodrugan (talk) 22:49, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

So can "extinct" even be used in the infobox? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:53, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, similarly to use in the infobox of Hebrew language. Jeppiz (talk) 23:29, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Dains Barrington's original account published in 1775 states that two women, neighbours of Dolly Pentreath, were able to not only understand her, but told him that they could speak Cornish as well, although not as readily as Pentreath. Pentreath stated herself that she did not start speaking English until she was twenty years old, so she was a monolingual Cornish speaker throughout her childhood. William Bodinar (died 1789) wrote a letter in Cornish in 1775 in which he states that he learned Cornish as a child and that there were four or five others able to speak Cornish in Mousehole at that time, a year before Dolly Pentreath's death. Later, in 1779, Barrington was informed that a 40 year old man named John Nancarrow of Market-Jew could speak Cornish. This can all be found in, amongst other sources, Barrington's own published accounts, Berresford Ellis's The Cornish Language and it's Literature, and Rod lyon's Cornish: the Struggle for Survival. Bodrugan (talk) 00:02, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at ANI

There is a discussion about recent edits to this page at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User_deliberately_disrupting_WP_as_a_school_assignment. DuncanHill (talk) 17:52, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Plase add the protection template

Please add the protection template to the page, so that editors can more readily make edit requests instead of having to google what to do. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 17:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

•  Done BethNaught (talk) 17:54, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Cornish films

It is good to see that the article mentions that there have been films in Cornish. However, rather than simply saying that this has been a "recent development", couldn't it state that when the first Cornish language films were made? I think that Cornish films were made as long ago as 2002, which is nine years ago now, so arguably no longer recent. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:46, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

There was a television series broadcast on ITV in the 1980s in Cornish with English subtitles. Bodrugan (talk) 20:42, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Currently (June 2016) a British Channel 4 Television advertisement for the Cornwall-based Kelly's ice-cream uses a combination of spoken Cornish and English. If this can be supported by RS then it may be added to the article. Barney Bruchstein (talk) 18:10, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

An elusive Cornish sound

The sound represented by the IPA symbol "ɹ" is linked to an article on 'alveolar and postalveolar approximants'. The same symbol appears there as the correct IPA symbol for such sounds - but Cornish isn't mentioned as one of the languages that contains it, even though the lists include a number of very out-of-the-way languages such as Dahalo, Igbo and Zapotec. This means that one of the articles is incorrect or at least incomplete - or perhaps both are.213.127.210.95 (talk) 16:59, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

No, it does not mean that. No phoneme has an article in which every language containing it is listed, so one cannot draw the conclusion that Cornish not being mentioned there means either Cornish does not have it or that one of the articles must be wrong. Jeppiz (talk) 19:38, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Number of speakers today

How many people speak Cornish today? The number isn't in the lead section or the infobox. Did I miss this in the article? Foreignshore (talk) 19:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

L1 0-300 (estimated), source - http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-11935464

L2 users: 325-625 (estimated), source -

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/language/articles/languageinenglandandwales/2013-03-04

Cdjp1 (talk) 13:11, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Questionable Authenticity of "Revived" Cornish

The whole article from revival onwards strikes me as suspect and reading more as a propaganda piece by and for Cornish revivalists. As I understand matters only 2000 words of genuine Cornish survive, which is an inadequate basis from which to reconstruct a language and that the many gaps have been filled by borrowing from Welsh and Breton dialects. This is certainly recognised in textbooks of Indo-European languages, ie in my copy of Fortson's "Indo-European language and culture" it states "A dedicated effort has been made recently to revive the language; the result cannot be called authentic, since the paucity of our documentation and the inconsistencies in spelling leave many facts about the pronunciations, grammar and vocabulary unknown."

I think the entire article from section 4 onwards needs to be rewritten in NPOV with regards to scholarly linguistic opinion. What do other people think?Cthulhu Rising (talk) 21:02, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I think you're getting hung up about linguistic purity. If the community is happy calling whatever they salvaged and extended Revived Cornish, then that's what it is. That aside, I see sufficient conunuity between what is known of native Cornish and the revived forms. You might as well argue that modern Hebrew isn't Hebrew because it pilfered Yiddish for words. Akerbeltz (talk) 21:40, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Well as this is supposed to be an encyclopaedia entry, linguistic purity and scholarly dispassion are important. The speakers of "Revived" Cornish may think that it is a continuation of Cornish, but that doesn't make it so if the facts are otherwise. Which they are in both morphology and vocabulary. At the moment this isn't mentioned in the article and I feel it needs to be. But at the moment I'm just trying to gather opinions before I consider a rewrite, but it frustrates me that in so many areas of linguistics political dogma takes precedence over linguistic fact ("Croatian language" vs "Serbian language" anyone?). Language articles should be above such matters.Cthulhu Rising (talk) 19:36, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Now that I think of it, wouldn't it be better to have two pages - one for Cornish and one for Revived Cornish (linked to each other obviously)?Cthulhu Rising (talk) 19:40, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Cornish isn't "my patch" so any accusations of being partisan will hardly stick. I've looked at the whole page again and I fail to see where it substantially differs from Hebrew language. Or indeed any other language that has suffered significant change such as Rapa Nui.

I doubt there's a place for it in the article, but I still find it amusing that there is a regional option for Cornish in iOS which displays days of the week and month names in Cornish. 85.210.73.85 (talk) 10:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

By all means, expanding a section on gaps that were creatively or otherwise filled would add to the article, no questions, but to split the article on the basis that some (mainly you just now) think it's not authentic enough flies in the face of reality. Akerbeltz (talk) 20:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I've no idea where you got the idea that only 2,000 words of traditional Cornish are attested - that's utterly wrong. You say the article should be made more NPOV, but you do so from a position of POV - that revived Cornish is inauthentic. I would like to know what sources you have read that brought you to this conclusion. --Moon (talk) 21:30, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Fred W. P. Jago in his 1887 English-Cornish Dictionary says that "Excluding the names of persons and places, and numbering from all other remaining sources, it may be stated that about fifteen thousand words of the Celtic language of Cornwall have been saved to us." This was of course before various works of Cornish literature had been discovered, such as Beunans Ke, discovered in 2000, or John Tregear's Homilies in 1949, both contributing significantly to the traditional corpus. Bodrugan (talk) 20:32, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh DEAR ... Sillymidon (talk) 14:47, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

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First two links fail. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:52, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Dead Language?

The Wikipedia article on Celtic languages says that Cornish "died out in modern times", citing the specific date of 1777.

Either that article or this one must be incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 00:20, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

It is a waste of time, trying to say when exactly a language became extinct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.118.150 (talk) 13:06, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

See this book for more details: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lw-CAgAAQBAJ&q=Cornish+1777#v=snippet&q=Cornish%201777&f=false but there is much more recorded elsewhere than is mentioned though Bodrugan (talk) 15:36, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

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Infobox statistics

Claiming that there are 300-400 L1 speakers is not supported. The two references given are being misused. The BBC ref merely reports the opinion of a person from CLP, an organisation whose job it is to promote the Cornish language, so the opinion is tainted. The other reference reports the estimate of the council without any further elaboration. Both references are therefore OR (see PSTS). As well as that, neither reference claims any L1 speakers, just 'fluent' speakers. A fluent speaker is not necessarily the same as an L1 speaker. Finally, if there is any area of ambiguity it should be dealt with in the article itself, not in the infobox which is meant to be a brief summary of what follows. The references, if they are used, are better placed further down. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:50, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

1870

The Cornish was largely extinct before punishment for speaking any language except English came in, in State schools. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.103.250 (talk) 13:42, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

'The Cornish was largely extinct...' - seems English is too. You win the internets... Unsigned comment by SBGimp — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.68.254.210 (talk) 06:11, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Official status

Raised before, including on the UK article page, Cornish is not officially recognised by any state. There is no direct unbroken link between a language being named on the charter (a piece of bureaucratic paperwork subject to alteration at any time) and UK (or any other state's) membership of the EU, that incidentally will soon end. This is a reasoning exercise that 1+2=4 Roger 8 Roger (talk) 18:54, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Cornish "Extinct".

Roger8Roger, when you removed the endangered celtic language tag from the cornish article you declared modern cornish must be considered a separate and different language to the Cornish spoken by the last native speakers in the 18th century. For this you cite the UN coming to the conclusion that Cornish was an extinct language in 2009, when a couple of years later after reconsideration they said that the previous conclusion did not reflect the accurate state of the language. {https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8190467/Endangered-languages-the-return-of-Cornish.html}

In your comment you mention how the last "speaker of cornish died by the end of the 18th century", when this is not true, if you look at the relevant article and it's citations (Last_speaker_of_the_Cornish_language), there were speakers of Cornish through the 19th century, these speakers were not native speakers though, and use of cornish as a second language was miniscule, but the point is there were speakers of the language to the beginning of the revival movement. Now, as to the affect the revival movement had on changing the phonology, orthography, and vocabulary of the language from that of the last native speakers is a different matter, but is that much different from the changes seen in say English over the past few centuries? --Cdjp1 (talk) 11:54, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I was aware of the chronological problems you mention at the start and agree that my edit would need to be altered somewhat, which I am happy for someone else to do. The matter of the early revival versions being 'true' Cornish or not, is in my view a separate topic. IMO modern Cornish to too far distant from the native language of pre-1800 to be described as the same language, but I am happy to be proven wrong. I notice this topic was raised a while ago [4] in talk by kwami. Those now five year old comments in talk might still be relevant today. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 18:32, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

"Extinction" is normally dated from the death of the last native speaker. Latin is considered extinct, despite its long history of L2 usage. Sanskrit and Coptic are extinct likewise. It is arguably impossible to revive an extinct language. What you end up with is essentially a conlang modeled after it. Paul Wexler, for example, argues that Modern Hebrew isn't even a Semitic language, but relexified Yiddish, which in turn is relexified Sorbian -- so if you go by the actual line of decent, Modern Hebrew is Slavic. That's a minority POV, but it's quite common to hear that if the first generation of revived Hebrew speakers had been Mizrahi rather than Ashkenazi, Hebrew would be "more Semitic" than it is. I was always a bit puzzled at to what "more Semitic" could mean. Is English "less Germanic" than Dutch, because of the Norman French loans?

I know some people are coming to avoid the word "extinct", because they feel it's insensitive to those whose ethnic identities are based on the extinct language. But the converse is that people may think we don't need to worry about language extinction because we can always bring them back. Sure, we can bring something back, like Palawa kani, but it's a bit like reverse engineering a mastodon from an elephant. What you get isn't really what went extinct, and the difference isn't what we've seen in English over the past few centuries.

Also, the claim in this article, that "modern-day Cornish language is a successfully revived language", is AFICT false. A successfully revived language would have native speakers. Are there any L1 speakers that grow up with other L1 speakers? According tho Ethn (admittedly not an expert on the issue), there are no known L1 speakers t all, let alone a native-speaking community. Teaching it to children doesn't count unless they adopt it as their own and use it as their language outside the school setting. There are two refs in the lead that there is a natively bilingual population, but one (ethn.) seems to contradict that claim, and the other is inaccessible. AFAIK, Hebrew is the only successfully revived language.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but it is a rather extraordinary claim, so we should have good, unambiguous and reliable sources to demonstrate it. Coptic and Sanskrit too are repeatedly claimed to have been revived, with for example entire Sanskrit-speaking villages being reported in the news, but they have never held up to investigation. — kwami (talk) 19:08, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Map of Cornish speakers

The caption under the map of first language Cornish speakers reads: "In view of the small populations of many rural parishes, many of the variations shown in this map will not be statistically significant." True that. One single speaker in a parish with population 500 means 0,2% first language Cornish speakers. It would make some sense if the map showed all people that are conversant in Cornish, but apparently the 2011 census didn't register that. So how about we remove the map altogether? Steinbach (talk) 11:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

The stats are well below any realistic margin of error so they should not be considered at all. There are no L1 speakers anywhere anyway so the census question was poorly constructed. I agree that a better question would have been to use 'conversant' or similar: that would have captured the small but growing L2 community. As it did not do that the census stats have captured L2 speakers with no other option but to tick the L1 box, the Cornish language advocates that want to push an agenda, plus the inevitable group of people who will tick any box just to be different. I too say scrap the map. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 12:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I also agree. Data as this level of significance is quite simply irrelevant. Jeppiz (talk) 19:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I briefly wondered if we could generate something even remotely helpful. The only data that might come close is the census results by constituency, and that's still problematic. The range there is 0.14% for Camborne and Redruth to 0.04% to South East Cornwall (and 0.01% for Tottenham?). IMO waste of time.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:33, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I miss the map. It did seem to still show an East-West gradient. I thought some data illustration was better than none. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:40, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

For what its worth the top three constituencies were Camborne & Redruth, St Ives and North Cornwall. If that's a real trend (and not a reflection of the poor question), then the weak area is not the east but the centre and southeast. I can produce a map if there is consensus for it. It might be more helpful to display the map of Cornish national identity - its reasonable to assume a correlation.--Nilfanion (talk) 19:50, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I think that might be regarded as tangential/ WP:OR. But what was the question that produced that one? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:59, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

That's the results of write-in responses of "Cornish" under "What is your national identity?". I agree its off-topic here. More on topic: I'd be interested where Cornish speakers outside Cornwall are, rather than barely detectable trends within it. I wouldn't trust the census data on that either.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Here are some links to Identity maps of Cornwall:*[5]*[6]*[7]*[8]. And @UKLANGMAPPING on Twitter has quite a few language maps for Cornwall.--Cdjp1 (talk) 11:21, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

In reply to Roger 8 Roger. An L1 speaker is a person who was raised from birth or early childhood to speak the language. An L2 speaker is someone who learned the language outside the home and after the critical period of early childhood. There are several families that have brought their children up as L1 Cornish speakers, sometimes over several generations. The 2011 UK census didn't have an 'L1 box' it only asked what people's 'main language' was at home. Bodrugan (talk) 00:27, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

My apologies for the very late reply but I have only just seen Bodrugan's comment. Yes, I agree that is what an L1 speaker is, but I think that description is potentially ambiguous without further clarity. The child must be raised to speak the language conversationally fluently in the critical years, not just to have been exposed to Cornish words that the child naturally inserts into its use of English. (Such as, for example, a child brought up in a Bengali speaking immigrant family in england, with a competent knowledge of English. That child would likely be L1 English and at best a competent L2 Bengali speaker (because its exposure to language outside its immediate family is likely to be to almost exclusively in English). To give the child the necessary extra exposure to Cornish more needs to be done, such as immersion schools or Cornish TV. None of this is in place with Cornish. IMO another problem is that any parents are at best only L2 speakers themselves. The likely first L1 speakers will be the next generation. This is just my opinion but I have seen nothing to prove it wrong. An interesting comparison is to look at the revivals of Manx and Hebrew, and possibly too the work done to regenerate Irish and Welsh. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:09, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Roger here. There are plenty of immigrant families where children grow up natively bilingual, but also many where a child will grow up without native competence in the ancestral language despite it being spoken at home. I've known lots of people like that, where they understand most of what's said at home and can respond in kind, but not much better than someone who's spent a year or two abroad would be able to do. If you ask them about the language, they'll refer you to their parents or grandparents, because they do not feel they're competent about things a native speaker wouldn't think twice about. If we had, say, a bunch of children who used Cornish among themselves on the playground and when they get together at the park, and either English or their parents' L2 Cornish at home, then I'd agree that sounds like they're native speakers or natively bilingual. Also, we need to be careful of self-reporting on multiple-choice forms, because people will report the language they have pride in even if they're not fully competent. You see this a lot in Australia, where census results are sometimes grossly inflated because people will report their ancestral language as being "their" language, as a claim of ethnic identity, regardless of whether they can actually speak it or speak it well. — kwami (talk) 00:20, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

ONC census data used as a reliable source

The infobox claims 577 speakers of Cornish, a claim backed by national census data. The ONC states here [9] that all its data is subject to a margin of error. These margins would totally negate the 557 claims to be speakers of Cornish and should therefore not be used. I am not saying there are no people who are speakers of modern Cornish, even at a high level of fluency, just that the census data cannot be used as a reliable source. That means the claim of 557 is not supported. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 00:38, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

With all due respect, that is nonsense. Of course there's a margin of error, so by that logic we could not report any data in any Wikipedia article. The UK census is as reliable a source as possible for population data in the UK. Jeppiz (talk) 00:56, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree, nonsense has been written above. Please check wp:RS and wp:OR that will take you to various guidelines and discussions on what constitutes a reliable secondary source, and what is original research. Bare census data used as it is here is merely OR being passed over by a govt body, that itself states that the data it is passing over is merely the best guess available. If that data were used in a specific way by a publisher it might then be deemed to be RS2, but it is not. The quality of the reporting entity is not relevant here, it is the way it is reported. There is an awful lot of misinformation in WP that is there due to careless referencing, (that is usually inserted in good faith). Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:46, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Britonian

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The same user has copy-pasted the same text across several articles. Relevant in some cases, but not here. Britonian and Cornish split around 1500 years ago. We don't use the article English language for a lengthy discussion of Dutch language, nor do we use French language to discuss Italian language. Apart from being pasted across loads of talk pages, the request to have an article about the unattested Britonian language in modern Spain is irrelevant to this article. (non-admin closure) Jeppiz (talk) 19:36, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

More about Brythonic-Celtic.

Britonia, a region in northwesternmost Spain, is so called because it was settled by Brythonic-speakers. See the article Brittonic languages for a map to show that it happened. The form of Brythonic spoken by these settlers (essentially a Breton- or Cornish-like language / dialect) died out, tho. However, said extinct form of Brythonic (Britonian, is the name suggested by the article Southwestern Brittonic languages) should be discussed in relevant articles. When did it die out? Did it survive long enuf to justify calling it a separate language, rather than a dialect of Breton / Cornish? Is Britonian attested in any written records? See also:

• Celtic nations: mentions that northwesternmost Spain (Galicia et al.; Britonia is part of this area) is sometimes considered Celtic nation(s).
• Galicians: these people and their area ar sometimes considered Celtic.
• Cumbric: another Brythonic language that died out.
• Western Brittonic languages: Welsh and Cumbric; contrasts with Southwestern Brittonic languages (Cornish, Breton, and Britonian).
• Celtic Britons: main inhabitants of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) before the Anglo-Saxons came. They spoke Common Brittonic (or Proto-Brythonic).

Again, Britonian should be covered in more detail on Wikipedia (perhaps on a dedicated article).--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 17:21, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The Phonology Section is a Joke

The IPA tables are complete speculation, have no sources given (apart from Lhuyd, whose description is not the basis for the tables), and do not resemble the analysis of any recent expert in the field who has studied Cornish historical phonology (Jackson, Schrijver, McCone, Chaudhri, George). Also it is unclear which phonology is referred to - what is "modern Cornish" in this context? Does this mean the revived language? Or the Cornish of Lhuyd's time? Or something else?

In fact, the only phonology that this table seems to match is Kernowek Standard, a proposed orthography and recommended phonology for revived Cornish. If the tables are in fact the KS recommendations, this needs to be stated, because it looks as though whoever created the tables is trying to pass off the KS recommended phonology as the actual phonology of so-called "modern Cornish", whatever that turns out to mean.

Now, I think that the (speculative) phonologies of old, middle, and late Cornish should be given their own tables (with suitable footnotes where consensus is lacking), along with the various revivalist phonologies (Unified, Kernewek Kemmyn, UCR, SWF, KS, etc), if it is really necessary to have these on this page as well.

I might put something together, but I would like to hear other peoples opinions first... Tewdar (talk) 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like you might need to create a new article for Cornish phonology, similar to the one we have for English phonology? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:26, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Martinevans123 - That may well be the best solution, considering the number of tables that would be needed for three periods of Cornish and the revived language. Tewdar (talk) 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Tewdar it was actually a way worse before. I tried to correct the tables and make it based more off the dialects of Modern Cornish and KS. The references I used were based off of Everson, Michael (2007) A Proposed Standard Written Form of Cornish and Bruch, Benjamin; Bock, Albert (2008) An Outline of the Standard Written Form of Cornish. Cornish Language Partnership Fdom5997 (talk) 18:30, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

You might want to add those sources? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:32, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 - I think it needs to be clearly stated what is actually being described. The tables in this article do not resemble the phonology of Cornish at any point in its history as described by any of the experts in the field (Jackson, Schrijver, McCone, Chaudhri, George). It just describes (a selection of) the (quite diverse) range of phonologies encountered in the revived language. I do not consider the KS or SWF specs to be suitable references for the historical phonology of Cornish. Like I said, I think the best thing would be to start a new page, with sections for old, middle and late Cornish, with solid references to the work by these experts, with additional sections for the various revivalist phonologies. Tewdar (talk) 19:40, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Tewdar so, why don't you do it then? Fdom5997 (talk) 02:40, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 - I am doing it. I have already completed the phonological tables for old, middle and late Cornish (in draft form), and I am currently adding some additional information before I create a new page as Martinevans123 suggested. I am however unfamiliar with Wikipedia, and I suspect that certain users here might take issue with the reconstructed phonologies. That is why I thought it best to start here on the talk page. If you have any useful input I would be interested to hear it. For example, what do you think the phonology section should consist of? Tewdar (talk) 05:46, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

@Tewdar so I just purchased one of the sources that you mentioned. It is Ken George's publication entitled "Cornish" in "The Celtic Languages" by Martin J. Ball and James Fife. Within that section, he lists the phonology for Primitive Cornish, Old Cornish, Middle Cornish, and parts of Late Cornish. I personally think that the Wikipedia Cornish phonology section should possibly use the phonology for both Old and Middle Cornish, or whatever could be considered as the *historical* phonology of the language. Do you happen to have the source for "The Celtic Languages" as well? Fdom5997 (talk) 07:27, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 - Yes, I have it. The main aspects of that article that are disputed by others are:

Old Cornish -

the date of fronting of OC /ɔ/ to /œ/

when or whether OC /o/ > /ɔ/

whether OC /a/ was actually realised as [æ]

whether OC /ɛ/ was actually realised as [e]

the phonemic status of /ʍ/ (rather than /hw/ realised as [ʍ])

Middle Cornish

the fate of OC /d/ (i.e. whether and under what circumstances /d/ > /z/ or > /ʤ/ or > /ʒ/)

the existence of George's non-resonant geminate phonemes (/θθ/ etc.) is disputed by almost everyone else

the separate existence of the phonemes /o/ (< OC /ui/) and /ɔ/, and of /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ in Middle Cornish are disputed by Williams (according to him, /ɔ/ and /o/ merge somewhere in between the two sounds, and /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ merge as /e/)

the continued existence of the 'New Quantity System' in Middle Cornish is disputed by Williams

Late Cornish

the change /o/ (< OC /ui/) > LC /u/ is disputed for a number of words (even by George)

George's /ɔ/ phoneme is given as /o/ by Williams in almost all environments apart from a few words.

There's plenty more of this, but I don't think the disputes would prevent a broad outline of old, middle and late, with appropriate footnotes where there are, *cough*, "disagreements" Tewdar (talk) 08:40, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Having followed the discussion, I think many good points have been made. My two cents:

• It would be great having sections on the phonology of Old, Middle, Late and Revived Cornish.
• As you point out, for Old, Middle and Late, we cannot know and different academics do not agree on all aspects.
• Do correct me if I'm wrong, but while Williams has a PhD in Celtic linguistics, people like George or Gendall do not.
• The fact that Ball and Fife called upon George gives some support as their book satisfies RS. Even so, where George and Williams disagree, WP:RS would indicate building more on William's - apart from cases where George's view is accepted by other academics.
• Please ignore anything above that might be irrelevant. Jeppiz (talk) 22:27, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

@Jeppiz - Williams has a PhD in Celtic. George also has a doctorate which he was awarded for his thesis 'A Phonological History of Cornish' (1985). The idea that George is some rank amateur is propaganda - where did you get this idea? Gendall was never mentioned by me, and does not have a doctorate as far as I am aware, though he does give a useful analysis of Lhuyd. George's thesis is often cited and used in academic works (such as those by {Professor) Schrijver and (Doctor) Chaudhri, who broadly support his views). If anything, George's view is the most accepted view amongst academics, despite the very noisy voices from some people. However there is some room for debate, and I hope it is possible to give due weight to a wide range of opposing views in the article. For which there is a draft somewhere on here. I just sort of sketched it out while I learn how to make the tables and add references. Tewdar (talk) 07:08, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

@Tewdar not to pester you, but when do you think the page section will be done by? Fdom5997 (talk) 04:20, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 - probably when I work out how to make the tables look nice and do proper references. There's a draft lurking somewhere. I'll probably do some more on it today - so maybe...tomorrow? Tewdar (talk) 07:08, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

@Jeppiz do you have William's source for the Cornish phonology(ies)? If so, can you help contribute to the new page in the process? Or maybe send us copies of the sources? Fdom5997 (talk) 04:27, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 - Williams' analysis is scattered over several books and has changed over the years (as has George's to some extent). The main ones are Cornish Today, Writings on Revived Cornish (in which is contained “A problem in Cornish phonology" where he argues against George's <dj> and <tj> graphs, subsequently withdrawn by George), and The Cornish Consonantal System. Tewdar (talk) 07:08, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I submitted a draft page 'Cornish phonology' (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Cornish_phonology) for review. I'm not one to complain [ 8-) ] but I found the wikitables a bit of a pain, and the reference search was also a bit monotonous. Maybe it works a bit better with less obscure subjects. Anyway, the page probably doesn't conform to all of wikipedia's standards or whatever, but I think the article is not bad for a first try. Take a look! (if you can?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tewdar (talk • contribs) 12:38, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

@Tewdar So is this page technically unfinished? I think for a first try, it looks pretty decent. At least it has all the references. If you'd like, I can help organize the phonological tables. Fdom5997 (talk) 16:31, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 - Thanks! Copying pre-made ipa tables from elsewhere nearly drove me bonkers, so I started from scratch. I am working my way down putting in the proper IPA links and sound class page links. Take a look in a few hours maybe... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tewdar (talk • contribs) 16:47, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 - okay, that's the IPA links and stuff put in. Feel free to fix any mistakes or add / modify stuff if you'd like.Tewdar (talk) 18:01, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

@Tewdar one question, does Late Cornish not have a close front rounded [y] vowel? Fdom5997 (talk) 18:53, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

No, it does not (is that Fdom5997 I'm talking to?) - by 1600 middle Cornish /y/ has unrounded, most probably to [i] as shown by Lhuyd and Late Cornish writers. Lhuyd also sometimes transcribes the reflex as y-circumflex, possibly indicating [ɪ:].Tewdar (talk) 13:21, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

and before you ask, /œ/ is also unrounded by the time of late Cornish (probably to [e:]) :-) Tewdar (talk) 16:00, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

So I've reviewed the phonology draft that Tewdar has done, and I think it's really good. Well referenced, relevant and solid. It's definitely a significant improvement. Is the idea to keep the existing section on the phonology of revived Cornish that is already in the article? Jeppiz (talk) 19:52, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

@Jeppiz - Perhaps the new article could have a Revived Cornish section, then we could just paste the existing section straight in under the heading 'Kernowek Standard'. We could add other Revived phonologies too like UC(R), KK...? What do you think? I don't think the existing phonology should stay on the page, because it makes it look as though KS is the only phonology in existence for historical or revived Cornish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tewdar (talk • contribs) 20:05, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Kernowek or Kernewek? (Or indeed, Kernuack or Kernuak or Kornooack or Kernooak or Carnoack or Curnooack or Curnoack or...)

The official dictionary at https://www.cornishdictionary.org.uk has both Kernowek and Kernewek. 'Kernowek' is closer to attested forms, as the name of the language may have been a late back formation from the toponym 'Kernow'. 'Kernewek' is closer to the expected reconstructed form but not so close to the attestations. The SWF permits both.Tewdar (talk) 00:00, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Also, I am at a loss to explain why the previous IP edits (which were not mine, BTW) were reverted, and the editor told to go 'to talk PLEASE' coupled with accusations of sock-puppetry. A simple check of the 'official' (well, as close as it gets) dictionary would have revealed that the IP editor was correct. Tewdar (talk) 00:17, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Also, there is a problem with pronunciation given in the article: [kəɾˈnuːək] is only really correct for Late Cornish. However, I think I will wait and see how certain edit-warrin' revert-o-holics react to the changes already made first. Tewdar (talk) 00:41, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

'Revert first, ask questions later'. I knew there'd be trouble! Tewdar (talk) 01:16, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

So, on one side, we have the official dictionary. Which gives two spellings for the Cornish Language, <Kernowek> and <Kernewek>. And on the other side, we have reverted to dreaded Original Research. And I am told that it is me who must await consensus! Great stuff, guys! Tewdar (talk) 01:28, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

A request to take to talk had been made earlier to IP 83, which it was ignoring, as it did on the Welsh article. IP 97 comes along and reverts and I suggested socking. Why? This had quickly followed IP 83's second revert (note 3RR), it was (strangely convenient) its only ever WP edit, no explanation was given, such patterns are common with socking. Is that a good enough reason for suggesting this brand new ip might be a sock? I do not really have an opinion on what is or is not the correct pronunciation to use. What I thought was a little unnecessary was the use of two versions, neither with references, for this revived language that has been subject to factional infighting. The ip 83 did not help matters with its style of edit tag comments, here and on the Welsh article. All this could have been avoided by taking to talk, which is the correct way to handle this. Incidentally, being an 'official' version does not in itself qualify a particular spelling to be used. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:35, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

What, in your opinion, would be a suitable source for the spelling of the Cornish word for 'Cornish Language'? Tewdar (talk) 01:40, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

@Roger 8 Roger - Did you run out of coffee or something? Tewdar (talk) 02:02, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

While I realise that cats need feeding, dogs need to be let out, etc., I find it a little strange that Roger invites me to talk and then doesn't really have much to say. Apart from his in-depth report of his sock puppet detection (for which he should be applauded). But not much to say about the spelling. For someone with no opinion (and, forgive me if I am incorrect, no knowledge of this subject) he is very quick to revert pages. Tewdar (talk) 02:22, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

While we wait for a response from Roger 8 Roger...here are some ideas:-

We could use actual textual attestations written in primary sources (which Wikipedia is not too fond of)

Or, we could use the various 'unofficial' revivalist orthographies spellings ('Kernowek or Kernewek or Curnooack or...')

Or, we could have left the article as it was and used the (totally unsourced, who knows where it came from) 'Kernowek' only

Or, we could have a discussion right here on the talk page where various people, who probably do not know one single word of Cornish, could make up their own spellings and we have a vote on the best one

Or we could use the closest thing the Cornish Language has to an official dictionary, which lists TWO spellings (did you look yet?) and use both of those.

Guess which one I think is best.

Tewdar (talk) 01:44, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Kernewek should be fine as an alternative spelling (it was the official spelling back in the day when I learned the language) but you just need to cite the source when you put it in. As long as there is a citation to the sources you mention, there should be no reason to revert the change. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirfurboy (talk • contribs) 07:20, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

And I see that there is a citation on it now, which should be fine.Sirfurboy (talk) 07:22, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikibook

I created a WikiBooks article on Cornish (b:Cornish). Please expand it.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 06:55, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

History Section and Word Order

This sentence has had a "citation needed" for 12 years:

Such differences included the wide use of certain modal affixes that, although out of use by Lhuyd's time, had a considerable effect on the word-order of medieval Cornish

Finding a citation is complicated by the fact it is not clear what the writer of this is saying. I propose to rewrite with a citation, but first I would welcome some thoughts on this if possible.

Cornish and Welsh word order is VSO, and there are papers on the emergence of VSO that look at affixed or suffixed pronouns in Welsh and posit their influence on word order. Is this what is being talked about? Is there something unusual about Late Cornish word order that differs considerably from Welsh and Middle Cornish this sentence is trying to highlight? The sentence seems to imply that these affixes had dropped out of the late language, having given the language its word order, so am I right to assume this is talking about VSO and pronoun affixes? Is the whole sentence too opaque? and can it just be deleted? Thanks. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 12:21, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Describing (Middle) Cornish as a VSO order language is not exactly correct. The sentence order is highly variable, depending on whether the statement is affirmative or negative, what is being emphasised, etc. While in Welsh VSO is normal, the so-called 'abnormal' Welsh word order is, erm, normal in Middle and Late Cornish, and VSO is comparatively rare, at least in affirmative sentences. Ken George writes an interesting article on which word orders are the most used in the play Bewnans Meriasek which could probably come in useful here. Tewdar (talk) 16:58, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I read more into this and decided that no, the request was not about VSO at all. I modified the line to read: "Early Modern Cornish was the subject of a study published by Lhuyd in 1707, and differs from the medieval language in having a considerably simpler structure and grammar. Such differences included sound changes and more frequent use of auxiliary verbs."

That is in line with the source I cited, but it may be that you could say a lot more about the differences here then I put in. Please feel free to improve it. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 17:23, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Lead contradicts article

The lead states "Cornish continued to function as a common community language in parts of Cornwall until the late 18th century and continued to be spoken in the home by some families into the 19th and possibly 20th centuries, overlapping the beginning of revival efforts".

The table Decline of Cornish speakers between 1050 and 1800 states there were zero speakers in 1800.

Both of these are referenced, but this makes the article confusing. If the sources are contradictory on whether it was "spoken into the 19th and possibly 20th centuries" then the article needs to reflect this. The lead should summarise the article, not contain one side of an argument.----Pontificalibus 08:16, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Well spotted, thanks. Yes, the lead must summarise the article. The main article is where there should be discussion of what is meant by zero speakers. Dolly Pentraeth died in 1777 and was the last native speaker. The evidence is then that this did not mean there were no more people left who could speak Cornish - just that there were no native speakers. I think part of the problem is that editors often pay more attention to updating the lead than the main. I can take a look at this shortly, or else you are welcome to do so. I think we should fix the main first, making it fuller and broader and then consider how to change the summary in the lead. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 09:34, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

That makes sense. I'm not familiar with the topic, having come here to learn about the language while working on many Cornish hamlet articles, so I'll leave any improvement to you or other experts.----Pontificalibus 09:52, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

The claim in the lead seems just a bit counterintuitive. The implication is that multiple generations of non-native speakers continued to teach their children Cornish as a second language for over a century after the death of the last native speaker. Really?

These people speaking Cornish "in the home" are explicitly not native speakers after 1777. So, after acquiring English as their native language, they learnt Cornish in later childhood or adulthood for use in the home. Presumably from their parents? Who, after 1777, are also not native speakers. So they too spoke English natively and learnt Cornish in later childhood or adulthood. But randomly switched to Cornish in the home when their children were just old enough not to acquire the language natively?

And if we accept that some parents might do this, bear in mind that the claim relies on this happening - at least in some families - consistently through the generations for over 120 years. This seems unlikely. It seems more likely that what this refers to is a Cornish substrate in Cornish English, i.e. English-speakers in Cornwall using Cornish-derived words in place of standard English words for some concepts, particularly in the home.

In any case, since the source for this text is offline, I would like a quote from that source. Kahastok talk 10:18, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

The term speaker (of a language) is not defined in wikipedia. This causes a lot of confusion, pointless circular discussions and not infrequent edit wars. Articles about minority languages often attract editors with an agenda to push, which can complicate the article further. Thoughtful editing should be able to overcome the problem. I generally try to insert L1 or L2 to separate the native from second language speakers. This isn't ideal either because those terms are somethings open to interpretation. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:39, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all. Roger 8 Roger, agreed about the need for careful editing and avoidance of agendas. Kahastok - all good points. I think the claim in the lead is wrong, but I suggest fixing the main first because it is not clear what the summary should say until we settle on what the fuller discussion in the main says. I have seen some quotations that do indicate that Cornish was spoken into the 19th century - but you may be right that what was observed was indeed a substratum in Cornish English. There is also the possibility that Dolly Pentraeth was not the last speaker after all, but without clear evidence, any discussion in the main can only report the controversy, and not come down on a final verdict. The source cited in the lead is by a historian and historical fiction writer who has qualifications in Celtic studies, but it may not be saying what the editor who inserted it thinks it is saying, so I will see if I can get hold of it to check. I do note that the book is only 32 pages long, so despite the qualified author, this looks like a book written to sit in tourist shops at heritage sites and the like. The detail of its discussion may be lacking. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 10:43, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I have just returned from the library, where they had a reference copy of "The Story of Cornish Language" (the ref for which a quotation is requested - advangtage of being in Aberystwyth - we have several libraries here with this kind of work). I made a number of notes and will choose an appropriate quotation shortly, although again, not sure there is much point fixing the lead before the main is correct.

The author does indeed assert that the Cornish Language may never have died out at all (pp. 20-22), and speaks of the "myth" that Dolly Pentreath was the last speaker (page 19). He mentions a number of names that I will need to follow up now, but the source itself is problematic. There are no footnotes or references at all in it. As I suspected, it was written for a general reader, and the only way to evaluate the claims he makes about later supposed speakers is to research their names. There is a pro Cornish revivalist slant to the work (and he gives a lot of space to the revival of the language). If it were on Wikipedia I would reluctantly conclude that it is a little POV. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 15:39, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with your approach of getting the article body right and summarising that text in the lede.

I think it sounds like we need to evaluate WP:WEIGHT here to determine what weight to give this point in the article body. My impression - and I am open to correction on this point - is that the mainstream view is that presented by the article body, i.e. that the last Cornish native speaker died at some stage in the late eighteenth century.

That said, this theory would not rule out the idea that some elements of Cornish - even whole sentences or set phrases - may still have been passed down among speakers of Cornish English. The article Last speaker of the Cornish language repeatedly mentions the counting system and the Lord's Prayer, for example, and we know that another Celtic counting system has survived among English-speakers for far longer than a couple of centuries. Kahastok talk 22:10, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I have made some changes. The article Last speaker of the Cornish language is quite congruent with the Berresford Ellis source I looked at yesterday. However, looking at all the evidence presented, I think the wikipedia page quite wisely does not come down firmly on any view. Lots of evidence is presented of people who may have spoken Cornish (Berresford Ellis even mentions someone who taught it to his daughter) but none of it tells us that these people actually verifiably did fluently speak the language. I made changes to the lead on Last speaker of the Cornish language, hopefully faithfully summarising the thrust of that page. I then updated this page based on that summary.

What we have now is mention of Dolly Pentreath, and also of the question of whether she was really the last native speaker, and mention of both the interest in later speakers and the problems identifying the last speaker. Finally, I united that paragraph with the academic research and re-asserted the point that we have no evidence that any native speaker lived beyond the 18th century. Hopefully this is better, admitting to both some uncertainty, whilst not having some rose tinted view that the language never died out (which I know some people argue - so in the update in the lead I allowed the possibility whilst making it clear that there can be no certainty on that).

Learned poems, prayers and counting systems would indeed persist beyond actual knowledge of he language. The Cranken Rhyme looks to me like such an example (which is interesting because it would suggest that Davy, whom Berresford Ellis cites, may have had such knowledge of the language whilst not necessarily being an actual speaker of it). As you say, Cumbric's celtic counting system survives to this day, and many Cornish words do remain to this day in Cornish English dialect.

Anyway that is my proposed update... please feel free to rewrite, amend etc. as you see fit. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 15:58, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Extinction date

List of languages by time of extinction gives 1777 for the extinction of Cornish, with the death of Dolly Pentreath. I made an edit to reflect that, which was reverted saying that we cannot be sure of the exact date. I feel these two pages should match; I do not care which one should be taken as correct but the other should have the same precision. DancingGrumpyCat^talk | (ze/zir or she/her) 21:06, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Look again at the other list site. It says: When the exact time of death of the last remaining speaker is not known, either an approximate time or the date when the language was last being recorded is given. It also has a note tag next to 1777 that explains 1777. Therefore, there is no contradiction between articles, as you claim. It has been long accepted here that Dolly may not have been the last L1 speaker, but her death has often been used as the date when the last L1 speaker died. Late 18th century is probably as accurate a date as anyone can get without further evidence. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 23:01, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Missing endonym and orthography

There's at least one missing endonym, a Welsh-influenced, C-based spelling, from one of the formerly competing orthographies, which were all still in active play into the 1990s. All the various spellings of the name for Cornish in Cornish should appear as MOS:BOLDSYNs, and should redirect here, since readers may encounter them (as I did, especially through the journal Carn, though I no longer own any copies, so I don't have a cite handy, and am not certain what that spelling was, something like Cernowec).

There's also at least one orthographical/dialectal variation missing from this period; I believe it was called Legacy Cornish or something very similar to that (Heritage Cornish?). This may be the variant that was using c for k. I also read about it in Carn, back in the day. Maybe issues of that have been scanned and put online somewhere. The issues I had were from the ca. 1989–1993 range (and included articles written in multiple forms of modern Cornish, actually). Now that I think of it, one of the competing orthographies may actually have been named Revived Cornish, too. I know there were at least three at that time, but it could have been four or more.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:28, 20 January 2021 (UTC)