Related Research Articles
Cornish is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is a revived language, having become extinct as a living community language in Cornwall at the end of the 18th century. However, knowledge of Cornish, including speaking ability to a certain extent, continued to be passed on within families and by individuals, and a revival began in the early 20th century. The language has a growing number of second language speakers, and a very small number of families now raise children to speak revived Cornish as a first language. Cornish is currently recognised under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and the language is often described as an important part of Cornish identity, culture and heritage.
Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, France. The Continental Celtic languages, although once quite widely spoken in mainland Europe and in Anatolia, are extinct.
Henry Jenner was a British scholar of the Celtic languages, a Cornish cultural activist, and the chief originator of the Cornish language revival.
Gorsedh Kernow is a non-political Cornish organisation, based in Cornwall, United Kingdom, which exists to maintain the national Celtic spirit of Cornwall. It is based on the Welsh-based Gorsedd, which was founded by Iolo Morganwg in 1792.
Robert Morton Nance (1873–1959) was a leading authority on the Cornish language, nautical archaeologist, and joint founder of the Old Cornwall Society.
Professor Richard Roscow Morris "Dick" Gendall was a British expert on the Cornish language. He was the founder of "Modern Cornish"/Curnoack Nowedga, which split off during the 1980s. Whereas Ken George mainly went to Medieval Cornish as the inspiration for his revival, Gendall went to the last surviving records of Cornish, such as John and Nicholas Boson, in the eighteenth-century. He taught at the University of Exeter.
Unified Cornish (UC) is a variety of the Cornish language of the Cornish revival. Developed gradually by Robert Morton Nance during and before the 1930s, it derived its name from its standardisation of the variant spellings of traditional Cornish manuscripts. Nance's recommended spelling and grammar, based on Middle Cornish, soon supplanted Henry Jenner's system, which had been based largely on Late Cornish. Most of the older generation of Cornish users alive today would have started under this system. It was also the form originally used by Gorsedh Kernow, although they now use the new Standard Written Form.
The Ordinalia are three medieval mystery plays dating to the late fourteenth century, written primarily in Middle Cornish, with stage directions in Latin. The three plays are Origo Mundi, Passio Christi and Resurrexio Domini. The metres of these plays are various arrangements of seven- and four-syllabled lines. Ordinalia means "prompt" or "service book".
Louis Charles Richard Duncombe-Jewell, born Louis Charles Richard Jewell, was a soldier, special war correspondent of The Times and The Morning Post, sportsman and sometimes poet. He was a champion of the Cornish language, having been born at Liskeard in Cornwall. He assumed the additional surname Duncombe in accordance with his grandmother's will in 1895. His parents were members of the Plymouth Brethren, which when they moved to South London brought him into contact with Aleister Crowley. The two remained lifelong associates. Duncombe-Jewell lived at Crowley's Scottish residence 'Boleskine' for several years from 1903. He later converted to Catholicism.
The "Cranken Rhyme" is a Cornish-language song known by farmer John Davey or Davy (1812–1891), who was one of the last people with some knowledge of the tongue. It was recorded by J. Hobson Matthews in his History of St. Ives, Lelant, Towednack, and Zennor, and is probably the latest known traditional Cornish verse.
John Davey or Davy (1812–1891) was a Cornish farmer who was one of the last people with some traditional knowledge of the Cornish language. According to Henry Jenner, the level of his ability in the language is unclear, but was probably restricted to a few words and phrases. A song attributed to Davey's memory, the "Cranken Rhyme", is not known from any earlier source and is notable as possibly one of the last survivals of Cornish literary tradition.
Prophecy of Merlin, sometimes called The Prophecy of Ambrosius Merlin concerning the Seven Kings, is a 12th-century poem written in Latin hexameters by John of Cornwall, which he claimed was based or revived from a lost manuscript in the Cornish language. The original manuscript is unique and currently held in a codex at the Vatican Library.
Translations of parts of the Bible into Cornish have existed since the 17th century. The early works involved the translation of individual passages, chapters or books of the Bible. The first full translation of the Bible into the Cornish language was published in 2011. The New Testament and Psalms in another translation went on-line in 2014.
Arthur Saxon Dennett Smith was a Cornish bard, writer and linguist, known by the bardic name Caradar. He taught Modern Languages at Blundell's School, Tiverton, Devon. He was born in Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, England, of Cornish parents, Harriet Annie and Arthur Smith, and became a collaborator with Robert Morton Nance and Henry Jenner on the Gerlyver noweth Kernewek ha Sawsnek. He compiled several grammars to make learning Cornish easier and edited some of the surviving Cornish texts. He also wrote an important series of books aimed at teaching Welsh to English speakers. In 1927, he married Dorothea Sophia Bazeley. He died in Worthing and is buried at Amberley, Sussex.
John Keigwin (1641–1716) was a Cornish antiquary, born at Mousehole, Cornwall. He was a leading member of a group of antiquaries in west Penwith: this group also included John and Thomas Boson, William Gwavas, Thomas Tonkin, William Borlase, Oliver Pender, and James Jenkins of Alverton. His teacher was John Boson. In addition to Cornish and English, Keigwin had a command of the French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages.
Identifying the last native speaker of the Cornish language was a subject of academic interest in the 18th and 19th centuries, and continues to be a subject of interest today. The traditional view that Dolly Pentreath (1692–1777) was the last native speaker of the language has been challenged by records of other candidates for the last native speaker, and additionally there are records of others who had knowledge of the language at a later date, while not being native speakers.
The Cornish language revival is an ongoing process to revive the use of the Cornish language of Cornwall, England. The Cornish language's disappearance began to hasten during the 13th century, but its decline began with the spread of Anglo-Saxon in the 4th and 5th centuries. The last reported person to have full knowledge of a traditional form of Cornish, John Davey, died in 1891. The revival movement started in the late 19th century as a result of antiquarian and academic interest in the language, which was already extinct, and also as a result of the Celtic revival movement. In 2009, UNESCO changed its classification of Cornish from "extinct" to "critically endangered", seen as a milestone for the revival of the language.
Henry Lascelles Jenner was a nineteenth century Anglican bishop.
James Jenkins was a Cornish scholar who left some verses giving moral advice on child raising and marriage in the Cornish language. In his day he was considered a learned scholar of the Cornish language. Little of his work has survived.
Kitty Lee Jenner was an English artist, bard and writer who helped to set up the Cornish Gorsedh. She grew up in Cornwall and studied art in London. She later became an author, publishing six novels under the name Katharine Lee, as well as writing books on Christian symbolism. She became known as Mrs Henry Jenner and Katharine Jenner following her marriage to Henry Jenner in 1877. The couple had one child together. To begin with, she was the more famous person in the relationship.
References
- ↑ Jenner, Henry (February 2010) [1904]. Henry Jenner's Handbook of the Cornish Language. Evertype. ISBN 1904808379.
- ↑ "Cornish language, alphabet and pronunciation". omniglot.com. Retrieved 10 October 2014.
