Cornish is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is a revived language, having become extinct as a first language in Cornwall in the late 18th century. A revival began in the early 20th century. The language is often described as an important part of Cornish identity, culture and heritage. Cornish is currently recognised under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It has a growing number of second language speakers. A very small number of families now raise children speaking Cornish, which results in first language speakers of revived Cornish.
In an English-speaking country, Standard English (SE) is the variety of English that has undergone substantial regularisation and is associated with formal schooling, language assessment, and official print publications, such as public service announcements and newspapers of record, etc. It is local to nowhere: its grammatical and lexical components are no longer regionally marked, although many of them originated in different, non-adjacent dialects, and it has very little of the variation found in spoken or earlier written varieties of English. According to Trudgill, Standard English is a dialect pre-eminently used in writing that is largely distinguishable from other English dialects by means of its grammar.
Nicholas Jonathan Anselm Williams, writing as Nicholas Williams or sometimes N.J.A. Williams, is a leading expert and poet on the Cornish language.
Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek is a Cornish language association which exists to promote, encourage and foster the use of the Cornish language. It is represented on the Cornish Language Partnership.
Middle Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh. The name of the language in Middle Welsh was Cymraec Canawl which had alternate spellings using ⟨k⟩ for ⟨c⟩.
Cornish literature refers to written works in the Cornish language. The earliest surviving texts are in verse and date from the 14th century. There are virtually none from the 18th and 19th centuries but writing in revived forms of Cornish began in the early 20th century.
Robert Morton Nance (1873–1959) was a leading authority on the Cornish language, nautical archaeologist, and joint founder of the Old Cornwall Society.
Agan Tavas is a society which exists to promote the Cornish language and is represented on the Cornish Language Partnership. It was formed in 1987 to promote the use of Cornish as a spoken language in the Cornish revival. At that time only those observed to be using the language fluently could become members by invitation. In 1990 Agan Tavas was reformed by its members into an open society with the aim of ensuring continued support for the Unified form of revived Cornish first put forward in 1929 by Robert Morton Nance.
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.
Kernewek Kemmyn is a variety of the revived Cornish language.
Cussül an Tavas Kernôwek - The Cornish Language Council - is an association founded in 1987 to teach, research and further the Cornish language in Cornwall, UK. Since the adoption of a Standard Written Form of Cornish (SWF) in 2008, it has worked closely with other bodies to achieve these aims. The Cussül encourages research into the Cornish of all periods but has a particular interest in developments after c.1600 and accordingly recommends a standard pronunciation based on c. 1600 to 1700. The Cussül largely draws its inspiration from those who attempted to save the language in the 18th century.
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 MSS. 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.
Kernowek Standard, its initial version spelt Kernowak Standard, is a variety of the spelling of revived Cornish. It has two specifications, the first of which was published as a draft proposal in March 2007, and the second of which was published as a practical orthography in May 2012.
The Standard Written Form or SWF of the Cornish language is an orthography standard that is designed to "provide public bodies and the educational system with a universally acceptable, inclusive, and neutral orthography". It was the outcome of a process initiated by the creation of the public body Cornish Language Partnership, which identified a need to agree on a single standard orthography in order to end previous orthographical disagreements, secure government funding, and increase the use of Cornish in Cornwall.
The Cornish Language Partnership is a representative body that was set up in Cornwall, England, UK in 2005 to promote and develop the use of the Cornish language. It is a public and voluntary sector partnership and consists of representatives from various Cornish language societies, Cornish cultural and economic organisations and local government in Cornwall. The organisation is part-funded by the European Union's Objective One programme, the United Kingdom government's Department for Communities and Local Government and Cornwall Council.
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.
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.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Cornwall: Cornwall – ceremonial county and unitary authority area of England within the United Kingdom. Cornwall is a peninsula bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall is also a royal duchy of the United Kingdom. It has an estimated population of half a million and it has its own distinctive history and culture.
The Cornish language separated from the southwestern dialect of Common Brittonic at some point between 600 and 1000 AD. According to Jackson (1953), the Common Brittonic period ended around 600AD due to the loss of direct land communications between western and southwestern Britain following the Anglo-Saxon incursions. McCone (1996), however, assumes a later date, stating that Jackson "pays insufficient attention to maritime connections", and notes the various shared developments between the neo-Brittonic languages during this period, such as the accent shift and internal i-affection. Also, the similarity of Cornish to Welsh and Breton during this period is such that glosses in Old Cornish, Old Welsh, and Old Breton are said to be indistinguishable orthographically. By the time it had ceased to be spoken as a community language around 1800, however, the Cornish language had undergone significant phonological changes.
