Cornish: Language and Legislation (2005) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Standardising Cornish: The politics of a new minority language
The last recorded native speaker of the Cornish language died in 1777. Since the nineteenth century, amateur scholars have made separate attempts to reconstruct its written remains, each creating a different orthography. Later, following recognition under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2002, Cornish gained new status. However, with government support came the governmental framework of “New Public Management”, which emphasises quantifiable outcomes to measure performance. This built implicit pressure towards finding a single standard orthography, for greatest efficiency. There followed a six- year debate among supporters of the different orthographies, usually quite heated, about which should prevail. This debate exemplified the importance of standardisation for minority languages, but its ultimate conclusion saw all sides giving way, and expediency, not ideology, prevailing. It also showed that standardisation was not imposed explicitly within language policy, but emerged during the language planning process.
A Brief History of the Cornish Language, its Revival and its Current Status
E-Keltoi, 2013
Despite being dormant during the nineteenth century, the Cornish language has been recently recognised by the British Government as a living regional language after a long period of revival. The first part of this paper discusses the history of traditional Cornish and the reasons for its decline and dismissal. The second part offers an overview of the revival movement since its beginnings in 1904 and analyses the current situation of the language in all possible domains.
Cornish: The Cornish language in education in the UK
2001
The content of this publication may be reproduced in print, except for commercial purposes, provided that the extract is proceeded by a complete reference to Mercator-Education: European Network for Regional or Minority Languages and Education. and all the people teaching and studying Cornish who have been kind enough to inform him about their involvement with the language. Special thanks go to Graham Sandercock for his help during the revision. Alie van der Schaaf has been responsible for the edition of the Mercator regional dossier series from 1999 onwards.
Studia Celtica Fennica, 2019
The promotion of Cornish as a widely-spoken community language has become more evident, especially after the creation by Cornwall Council of the first language strategy in 2004 and the current strategy for the period 2015–2025. However, since Cornish speakers constitute not much more than 1% of the total population, it is important to take into account not only their position but also the attitudes of non-Cornish speakers in order to achieve some success (Fishman 1991: 174). The literature about the use of Cornish and attitudes towards its promotion is very scarce. SGRÙD Research provided some details about the use of Cornish amongst speakers in 2000, such as the approximate number of speakers, totalling about 300 individuals. PFA Research (2007) described general apathy and rather weak opposition to the promotion of Cornish while the Cornish Language Partnership (2013b) and Croome (2015) presented some positive data amongst employees of Cornwall Council and teachers. The present study, based on the answers of 367 individuals to a questionnaire, provides a more detailed and updated report concerning the views of the inhabitants of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. It describes a very different panorama from those outlined reviously, with attitudes radically opposed between self-declared Cornish nationals and those not identifying with Cornish nationality. It is expected that the recommendations based on these results may help increase the possibilities of success of the Cornish Language Strategy 2015–2025 in a way that may benefit Cornish and attract people to the language without encouraging opposition from the rest of the population.
Language Death and Revival: Cornish as a Minority Language in UK
The paper introduces the worldwide phenomenon of language death, and briefly elaborates on the arguments for saving endangered languages. The main focus of the paper is revived Cornish. Cornish is a Celtic language that was spoken in Cornwall, UK between the 7th and 16th century. Due to Anglicisation, it became gradually endangered and finally died out as a community language during the 18th century. The revival of Cornish started with the publication of Henry Jenner's Handbook of the Cornish Language in 1904. Today Cornish is recognised by UNESCO as a 'critically endangered' language. The paper presents an analysis of revived Cornish along Fishman's Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS).
Genocide and Ethnocide: The Suppression of the Cornish Language
Published in Interfaces in Language., 2010
This paper investigates the relationship between the Cornish language and officialdom over the past thousand years. The social status of Cornish is examined along with attitudes towards the language held by monarchy, government and their agencies. During the middle-ages, Cornish was relatively stable and indeed enjoyed some prestige amongst the gentry who used Cornish as their preferred language for family mottoes. However, following the Tudor accession, the number of Cornish speakers was greatly reduced following the brutal repression of several popular uprisings when a significant proportion of the Cornish speaking population were exterminated. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Cornish continued to be used amongst the poor in Cornwall's fishing communities. The revival of Cornish began around 1900 and the number of speakers grew throughout the 20th century. Nevertheless, the government and state education system provided no support for Cornish language learners until 2002 when the European Union granted Cornish official “minority language” status under Part II of the 1992 Council of Europe Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. In 2005, the government confirmed modest funding support for the Cornish language. Local government in Cornwall are currently implementing a Cornish language strategy to determine a standard written form for Cornish that can be used for official purposes, such as signage, and for education in schools.
Cornish Lexicography in the Twentieth Century: Standardisation and Divergence
Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée, 1999
In this century the Cornish language has been revived so that today Cornish is spoken by many Cornish people as a second language. Moreover a few people currently living in Cornwall have been raised as bilingual from birth. Texts from the Middle Cornish C1200 to 1575 AD) and Modern Cornish (1'575 to 1800 AD) periods form the basis upon which Cornish has been revived in the twentieth century. Dictionaries have made an important contribution to the pedagogical basis of this revival and several lexicographers have introduced standardised spelling systems for Cornish. The WILLIAMS' (1865) dictionary and LEWIS' (1923) grammar form the basis of later twentieth century pedagogical dictionaries. Both Williams and Lewis are Welsh and have been led astray by analogy with the Welsh language on a number of issues. As a result, some subsequent dictionaries are not faithful to native Cornish practices. Analogy v/ith Welsh and Breton has also led some revivalists to adopt Middle rather than Modem Cornish as the basis for standardising Cornish spelling and grammar. Furthermore Welsh and Breton have been used as sources for borrowing new words into twentieth century Cornish. Other writers, notably JENNER (1904) and Gendall (1997), have shown a preference for Modern Cornish as a pedagogical basis for the revival of Cornish. Jenner chose to take up the language where it had left off and disapproved of the inclusion of Welsh and Breton borrowings for which no authority exists in Cornish (JENNER 1904: XV). Jenner also adapted Modem Cornish orthography along loosely phonetic lines in order to create a consistent spelling system. GENDALL (1997), on the other hand, has selected a single preferred spelling for each lexeme from those spellings that are attested in the historical literature. The result is that today there are three different standardised spelling systems in common usage amongst revivalists. Cornwall is situated in the southwest peninsula of the European Archipelago. Cornish, the language of Cornwall, is a Brythonic Celtic Language. It is frequently said that Cornish died out at the end of the eighteenth century. There is, however, some evidence for the continued use of the Cornish language in the 19th-century. Although this evidence is small, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is possible that there was some continued usage of the Cornish vernacular during the nineteenth century. Today Cornish has been revived and is spoken by several hundred people in Cornwall. The situation where one language is holding its own despite the influence of powerful neighbours is known as language maintenance. Minorisation refers to the opposite process in which a language is yielding to the influence of a more dominant neighbour and speakers are assimilating the dominant culture. Minorisation may be caused by a number of factors. Minorisation may occur either spontaneously or as the result of government pressure. Language planning 4i
Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium , 2012
Work conducted over the past fifty years within the fields of linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics has demonstrated that the relationship between language and socio-cultural identity is extremely complex, due in large part to the fluid, varied and constantly-changing natures of both language and culture. This is especially true of minority languages in contexts of language shift, as a wealth of sociolinguistic literature attests. Taking these issues as conceptual starting-points, this paper considers the case of Cornish, a language that was in decline from the early medieval era. As the language regressed to the westernmost skirts of the territory of Cornwall in the early modern period, its relationship to the popular Cornish identity was modified substantially. The context therefore provides a fascinating case-study in the language-identity nexus from an historical and contemporary perspective. Based on research undertaken at Jesus College, Oxford, this study traces the decline of the Cornish language and its changing relationship to Cornish culture and identity in the early modern period. The analysis presented is based firstly on the writings of contemporary commentators from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and secondly on the historiographies of subsequent writers and researchers.