Cornish Language

It is undeniable that the Cornish language has become a more evident characteristic of Cornwall, especially since 2002. There is, however, much work to do. One of the most notable weaknesses of the Dasserghians is its lack of education through the medium of Cornish in schools. Education is not only essential in language maintenance, but it is also the domain where most European have learnt a second language. This preliminary paper on the subject attempts to extend the discussion over Cornish language education by putting the spotlight on the strategies that may be applied for a successful introduction of the language in this vital domain. It uses the results of a survey in which 367 participants from Cornwall and Scilly shared their views about the language and its promotion. Moreover, it also explores the adaptation and adoption of strategies already in use in Trebiñuko Enklabea, a region in Spain, where, despite the lack of institutional support by the Castilian authorities, Basque has been successfully revived after being extinguished in the early 1800s. An appropriate use of Cornish in education may result in the necessary difference between a second language mostly used by adults and the native language of many children.

Only download paper you can translate! When examining the local names of settlements was found a Celtic origin of the name of one of the villages - Košťany. The village has retained its Celtic name until such time when the name was in the 18th century Czechicized. The original name of the village is characterized by the activity of their inhabitants - tin mining.  First name was Costen - phonetic wording Costean?
Při zkoumání pomístních názvů osad byl zjištěn keltský původ názvu jedné z obcí - Košťan. Obec si zachovala své keltské jméno až do doby, kdy byl název v 18. století počeštěn. Původní název obce charakterizuje činnost jejich obyvatel - těžbu cínu. Původní název byl Costen fonetické znění názvu Costean?
KW: PREHISTORIC TIN , TIN MINING , ERZGEBIRGE , WASHING , TIN DEPOSIT , CELTS , KRUŠNÉ HORY , PRAMENÁČ , KOŠŤANY , latén, keltové,kosten, costean, pravěký cín, cornish, toponymy

A transcript and video of a TV interview with Sir Eric Pickles MP on 20 March 2017, in which he agrees that the first large-scale central government funding for promoting the Cornish language, delivered from 2010 to 2016, was a political ‘bribe’ to secure fiscal savings in other areas of government from his Liberal Democrat coalition partners. Includes some relevant background information.

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.

""The Vocabularium Cornicum is a multilingual glossary that has since the eighteenth century been regarded as a Latin-Cornish glossary.It is shown here that this glossary is in fact multilingual and includes not only Cornish glosses but also Old Welsh, Old Breton, Old Norman French and Old English glosses.This is corroborated by what is known regarding the historical development of glossography. The Old Welsh and Old Breton glosses are identifiable from their phonological features. The Old Norman French and Old English glosses lack reflexes in Middle and Late Cornish and thus cannot be assumed to have ever been loanwords into Cornish.It is concluded that the Vocabularium Cornicum was compiled from a corpus of glossed Latin texts that include Old Cornish, Old Welsh, Old Breton, Old English and Old Norman French glosses.

Das Vocabularium Cornicum ist ein mehrsprachiges Glossar, seit dem achtzehnten Jahrhundert wurde es als ein lateinisch-kornisches Glossar angesehen. Hier wird gezeigt, dass dieses Glossar in der Tat mehrsprachig ist und nicht nur die kornischen Glossen, sondern auch altwalisische, altbretonische, altnormannisch-französische und altenglische Glossen beinhaltet. Dies wird bestätigt durch das, was über die historische Entwicklung der Glossographie bekannt ist. Die altwalisischen und altbretonischen Glossen sind an ihren phonologischen Merkmalen zu erkennen. Den altnormannisch-französischen sowie den altenglischen Glossen fehlen Reflexe im mittleren und späten Kornisch und können somit nicht Lehnwörter für das Kornisch gewesen sein. Abschließend kann gesagt werden, dass das Vocabularium Cornicum aus einem Korpus glossierter lateinischer Texte entstammt, der altkornische, altwalisische, altbretonische, altenglische und altnormannisch-französische Glossen beinhaltet.
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Celtic Sociolinguistics Symposium 2018, NUI Galway

Proponents of the 'new speaker' concept have heralded a shift away from language learning ideologies that focus on emulation of native-speaker models, which they describe as 'essentialism' (O'Rourke and Pujolar 2013; O'Rourke and Walsh 2015), or 'native authenticism' (Hornsby and Quentel 2013). These ideologies are presented as potentially harmful and counter-productive both to native speakers (by romanticizing and museifying them) and to second-language learners and speakers (by stigmatizing hybridized new speaker varieties and focusing on language deficits rather than skills).

It is claimed by new speaker scholars that more 'social constructionist' ideologies are gaining ground among some L2 speaker communities, and that these offer a path away from more essentialist models. However, as these scholars also acknowledge, 'essentialist' deference to native-speaker models remains a prominent strand in the ideologies of new speakers. Focusing on the Celtic languages, this paper will argue that the case against 'essentialist' ideologies may be reductive and overstated, and that new speaker scholars have not adequately considered how a shift away from native-speaker models might play out in practice, e.g. in corpus planning and pedagogy.

'Essentialist' or 'native authenticist' ideologies may potentially have benefits in language learning, identity construction, and in some cases are clearly closely linked to deeply-held motivations for acquiring the second language. 'Native authenticists' are often among the most committed language activists and may play an out-sized role in development of resources and networks. Scholars should pay more attention to ways in which ideological clarification might take place, bringing actors with differing language ideologies and backgrounds together constructively.

Mac, mac, mac, mab, mab, mab- all mean ‘son’, inis, innis, hinjey, enez, ynys, enys - all mean ‘island.’ Anyone can see the similarities within these two cognate sets from orthographic similarity alone. This is because Irish, Scottish, Manx, Breton, Welsh, and Cornish are related. As the six remaining Celtic languages, they unsurprisingly share similarities in their phonetics, phonology, semantics, morphology, and syntax. However, the exact relationship between these languages and their predecessors has long been disputed in Celtic linguistics. Even today, the battle continues between two firmly-entrenched camps of scholars- those who favor the traditional P-Celtic and Q-Celtic divisions of the Celtic family tree, and those who support the unification of the Brythonic and Goidelic branches of the tree under Insular Celtic, with this latter idea being the Insular Celtic hypothesis. While much reconstructive work has been done, and much evidence has been brought forth, both for and against the existence of Insular Celtic, no one scholar has attempted a phonetic reconstruction of this hypothesized proto-language from its six modern descendents. In the pages that follow, I will introduce you to the Celtic languages; explore the controversy surrounding the structure of the Celtic family tree; and present a partial phonetic reconstruction of Insular Celtic through the application of the comparative method as outlined by Lyle Campbell (2006) to self-collected data from the summers of 2009 and 2010 in my efforts to offer you a novel perspective on an on-going debate in the field of historical Celtic linguistics.

Breton, Cornish and Welsh are thought to have originated in a language similar to the Gaulish Language in Continental Europe, known as Common Brittonic or Ancient British. We have little direct evidence of this Brittonic Language in England, that gave rise to Welsh and Cornish and Breton. The Bath 'curse tablet' is the only written example of Ancient British. The language is also known in place-names and in some personal names.

Unusually, the place-names don't preserve much of the language's grammar, and seem to date to a time when quite ordinary nouns had more specific or even religious meanings. An example of an Ancient British word is abonā for a river, likely with the stress on the final syllable. This is the origin of the name Avon, the name of several rivers in England. This implies that the word had some more important meaning than just being any river, this may be reflected in the grammar of the word as the ending-nā is probably later, so 'a river of abounding water' or similar? Modern Brythonic languages are very different from the Gaulish and Ancient British languages, and it often isn't possible to trace a development in Brythonic back to Gaulish. Similarly, a lot of the vocabulary isn't the same, whereas Gaulish tends towards IE roots similar to the Latin forms, such as-cue/-pe 'and', Brythonic has

"Abstract:

This is an investigation about linguistic diversity, examining its decline in different societal conditions over the last century, and interrogating claims in language policy and planning to be ‘protecting linguistic diversity’, using the UK as its main example.

Chapter 1 comprises a review of variationist sociolinguistics, showing how it has never fully defined linguistic diversity. Adjustments are suggested, and a working definition of linguistic diversity offered.

Chapter 2 presents data from two major nationwide dialect surveys, in 1889 and 1962, showing how local dialects were weakening in this period. The main focus is declining diversity, but information is presented about possible conditioning factors, primarily increases in literacy.

In the absence of such nationwide reports after 1962, Chapter 3 collates individual dialect studies from two regions of England, the northeast and southeast, describing dialect convergence across these large geographical areas. These changes are contrasted to those reported in Chapter 2. Again the main theme is declining diversity, but information is reviewed to help explain these contrasts, primarily increases in geographical mobility in the latter half of the 20th century, concentrated around these regions.

Chapter 4 examines dialect weakening that some researchers have attributed, at least in part, to the media. This also represents a change in societal conditions undergirding declining diversity. Some theoretical work is done to distinguish such changes from those observed in Chapter 3.

Chapter 5 reviews the rhetoric of minority language policy and planning, and its frequent and explicit claims to be ‘protecting linguistic diversity’. The insights developed in Chapters 1-4 are applied to two modern UK language revivals, Cornish and Welsh, to see how diversity overall is faring here.

The conclusion sums up the gaps in our thinking about linguistic diversity, and clarifies the limitations of planned interventions upon language."

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.

Authenticity is a multi-layered and highly elusive concept, which seems to change its significance when it is applied to an object, a statement or a situation. In folk songs, the matter is further complicated by the fact that, on the one hand, they can be referred to as objects collected on paper or sound-recordings, i.e. as artefacts, while on the other hand, they also come to life the moment they are being sung, i.e. in performance. In this chapter we discuss folk songs both as artefacts and in performance and evaluate how the concept of ‘authenticity’ changes according to these perspectives. We do so by introducing a concept of multiple authenticities, based on notions by Denis Dutton and Regina Bendix. In the second part, we demonstrate how these insights work in practice with a case study of a folk song complex called Where Are You Going To, Fair Maid? with Roud number  298. We conclude that ‘authenticity’ is a dialogic concept, which becomes ‘in-authentic,’ as soon as its parameters become static.

[Thesis, MA by research, University of York, 2016]

While orthography development involves detailed linguistic work, it is particularly subject to non-linguistic influences, including beliefs relating to group identity, as well as political context and the level of available state support. This thesis investigates the development of orthographies for Cornish, a minority language spoken in the UK. Cornish is a revived language: while it is now used by several hundred people, it underwent language death in the early modern era, with the result that no one orthography ever came to take precedence naturally. During the revival, a number of orthographies have been created, following different principles.

This thesis begins by giving an account of the development of these different orthographies, focusing on the context in which this took place and how contextual factors affected their implementation and reception. Following this, the situation of Cornish is compared to that of Breton, its closest linguistic neighbour and a minority language which has experienced revitalisation, and the creation of multiple orthographies, over the same period. Factors affecting both languages are identified, reinforcing the importance of certain contextual influences.

After this, materials related to both languages, including language policy, examinations, and learning resources, are investigated in order to determine the extent to which they acknowledge the multiplicity of orthographies in Cornish and Breton. The results of this investigation indicate that while a certain orthography appears to have been established as a standard in the case of Breton, this cannot be said for Cornish, despite significant amounts of language planning work in this domain in recent years.

The final chapter summarises the findings of the thesis, considers possible future developments for the status of revived Cornish orthographies, and affirms the relevance of this case to language planning for minority languages in general, emphasising the need to be aware of the importance of ideological factors of the kind highlighted throughout the thesis.

This project sets out to discover and develop techniques for the lemmatisation of a historical corpus of the Cornish language in order that a lemmatised dictionary macrostructure can be generated from the corpus. The system should be capable of uniquely identifying every lexical item that is attested in the corpus. A survey of published and unpublished Cornish dictionaries, glossaries and lexicographical notes was carried out. A corpus was compiled incorporating specially prepared new critical editions. An investigation into the history of Cornish lemmatisation was undertaken. A systemic description of Cornish inflection was written. Three methods of corpus lemmatisation were trialed. Findings were as follows. Lexicographical history shapes current Cornish lexicographical practice. Lexicon based tokenisation has advantages over character based tokenisation. System networks provide the means to generate base forms from attested word types. Grammatical difference is the most reliable way of disambiguating homographs. A lemma that contains three fields, the canonical form, the part-of-speech and a semantic field label, provides of a unique code for every lexeme attested in the corpus. Programs which involve human interaction during the lemmatisation process allow bootstrapping of the lemmatisation database. Computerised morphological processing may be used at least to partially create the lemmatisation database. Disambiguation of at least some of the most common homographs may be automated by the use of computer programs.

A literature survey of prior research on 3SG.MASC English dialect en/un was carried out, with clarifications and additional questions raised pertinent to the use of this pronoun in English dialect in Cornwall. A statistical survey of the middle Cornish corpus was carried out, reporting findings about the use of certain instances of infixed pronouns, in chronological, textual and geographical terms – including the relative preponderance of 3SG.MASC ‘n. The use of infixed pronouns in the later Cornish corpus was discussed, examining 3SG.MASC ‘n among others. Circumstantial evidence was found, but no conclusive proof of 3SG.MASC English dialect en/un being a substratal reflex of Cornish 3SG.MASC ‘n.

(Presented in 2015 at Skians conference on Cornish language.)

ADDENDUM: I wrote, "No post posited pronoun ending /n/ is known." However, among a number of phrases recorded only in the Archæologia Cornu-Britannica (1790), edited by W Pryce, is found, "Cabm-thavaz en mettyn, Glaue boz etten" ('Rainbow in the morning, rain will be in it/en') (#5, 'A collection of proverbs, rhimes &c' (sic)). Note the conjugated preposition not <eta> (as in J Boson's Genesis 1:11,12,30, ) but <etten> in.3SG.MASC, carrying the couplet's rhyme with <mettyn> and of course ending /n/. Thus, contrary to what i wrote here, in fact there *is* a known conjugated pronomial 3SG.MASC ending /n/ in traditional Cornish language.

Paper presented at the Cambridge Endangered Languages and Cultures Group postgraduate workshop, June 2019.

Anti-prescriptivism has been axiomatic in most branches of linguistics since the inception of the discipline (Cameron [1995] 2012), which has largely stood aloof from the normative concerns and anxieties of lay-people. This has included many strands of language policy and planning-even though reflexive, subjective choices to speak a particular linguistic variety are often central to language revitalization. Linguists have nonetheless tended to view prescriptive ideological constructs such as 'purism' mostly as obstacles, to be minimized or tolerated at best (Dorian 1994).

More recently, scholars working with the 'new speaker' concept have heralded, and encouraged, a shift away from 'essentialist' understandings of language and identity among L2 speakers of minoritized languages, including weakening of the historical focus on the model of the L1 rural native dialect speaker.

Although the 'new speaker' framework is claimed to represent a departure from earlier assumptions within linguistics (O'Rourke and Pujolar 2013), this paper will contend that it faces similar problems to other iterations of anti-prescriptivism. It will be argued that linguists' efforts would be better spent on exploring paths towards ideological clarification among speakers, rather than denouncing particular ideologies with labels such as 'essentialism'.

The focus will be primarily on the Celtic languages.

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.

The attribution of names is a significant process that often highlights concerns over identity, ideology and ownership. Within the fields of minority languages and Celtic Studies, such concerns are especially pertinent given that the identities in question are frequently perceived as under threat from dominant cultures. The effect of concerns caused by this can be examined with reference to revived Cornish, which became divided into three major varieties in the later twentieth century; by examining the names of these varieties, we can draw conclusions about how they are perceived, or we are invited to perceive them. The motivations of those involved in the Cornish language revival are equally reflected in the names of the organisations and bodies they have formed, which equally contribute to the legitimation of revived Cornish. This paper examines both these categories of name, as well as the phenomenon of Kernowisation, a term coined by Harasta (2013) to refer to the adoption of Cornish personal names, and here extended to the use of Cornish names in otherwise English-language contexts.

Examining the names that have been implemented during the Cornish language revival, and the ways in which they are used or indeed refused by those involved, gives us an insight into the various ideologies that steer the revival process. Within the context of the precarious nature of Cornish and Celtic identity, we can identify the concerns of those involved in the Cornish revival movement and highlight the role of naming as an activity of legitimation, showing how the diversity of names that occur reflects an equally diverse range of motivations and influences.

This fundamental essay by R. Morton Nance is not unfortunately available online. I've, therefore, put it up for general use. Please share and disperse! A bit of Cornish heritage that deserves to be better known. The Newspaper article on the last page is dated 25 Oct 1956 and appeared in the Cornishman.

This chapter explores the concept of Cornish self-determination through
political cartooning. A selection of images from a range sources and dates has been chosen to reflect the variety of vested interests in the debate around self-determination in Cornwall. We have applied semiotic analysis to the visual and textual content of the cartoons, to explain the multi-modal representation of self-determination in a Cornish context.

This paper explores how ‘linguistic diversity’ is treated in English variationist sociolinguistics. Epistemological shortcomings are outlined, and their effects examined.

A distinction is necessary between ‘linguistic diversity’ and ‘linguistic heterogeneity’. Heterogeneity entails a discrete series of entities; that is, non-homogeneity. Sociolinguistics demonstrates this by showing statistical differences between identifiably discrete groups of speakers. Diversity, however, is more than this.

Linguistic diversity is the totality of linguistic variation and variability: all the different sounds coming from all the speakers, plus the capacity for new differences to arise in future. But since variationist sociolinguistics has traditionally focused on orderly heterogeneity – as a counter to myths about homogeneity and the imperfection of nonstandard dialects – it has tended to miss the opposite contrast: between heterogeneity and diversity. This is carefully caveated in some instances, but remains insufficiently articulated.

This is not just nit-picking. When conclusions about linguistic diversity are taken from a descriptive discipline like sociolinguistics into a normative discipline like language policy and planning, certain changes take place. There are frequent claims to be ‘protecting linguistic diversity’ by promoting minority languages, yet this neglects exactly the kind of language-internal variation, and future variability, that variationism could be used to spell out.

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.

Assibilation of Middle Cornish word-medial /θ/ <th> voiceless dental fricative in Later Cornish is found most consistently where /θ/ is in a front-vowel-fronted consonant cluster. Several cases are examined: severally and jointly, no steady rule of LC assibilation is found.

Celtic and German toponyms in the Ore Mountains. Prospectors tin vs. bushmen, sounding ore vein vs. thief coats. Original and new explanations toponyms in area of prehistoric washing tin. Keltské a německá toponyma v Krušných horách. Hledači cínu vs. křováci, znějící rudná žíla vs. zloději kabátů. Původní a nová vysvětlení toponym v oblasti pravěkého rýžování cínu. KW: Krušné hory, toponyma, cín, rýžování, Ore Mountains, toponymy, tin, washing, zuckmantel,costean,kosten, prehistoric tin, pravěký cín, celtic, german

This presentation descibes the work I have been doing working for the Cornish Language Office in creating a new version of the Standard Written Form of Cornish dictionary website published by Akademi Kernewek, the Cornish language academy.

It will describe the features required in the new version of the website, and how open source software in Python was used to process the XML data exported from the previous version, and make improvements within the data to support the new website.

I describe our collaboration with Dewi Bryn Jones and Delyth Prys of the Language Technologies Unit@Canolfan Bedwyr in Bangor University, using their software Maes T which has been used previously for Welsh dictionaries including the terminology portal Termau Cymru among other resources. Maes T now also serves as a backend for the Cornish dictionary website.

Some of the Welsh dictionaries and resources based on Maes T have made use of Wikimedia and/or Wikipedia content, and we have applied this for the Cornish terminology entries.

This draft gives an overview over diminutives used in Welsh in order to alter the meaning of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Such a change of meaning can be linked to a change in word class or grammar category, like the singulative, i.e. a number category.

(Scroll down for the English version)
Dres moy es hanter bledhen an yeth Kernewek o kov passys yn Kernow. Y’n jydh hedhyw, byttegyns, yma an yeth yn argerdh dasserghyans ha, wostalleth yma niver kernewegoryon freth ha nebes kowsoryon a vyhan. An Ruwvaneth Unys a sinas an Chartour Europek rag Yethow Ranndiryel po Byhan ha res yw dhedha gwitha an yeth Kernewek. Y’n gwettha prys, nyns eus hwithrans sad dhe selya an niver gernowegoryon, avel yma yn Kembra. Tus ha governans a deby yma ‘ogas veth’ po ‘marnas nebes kansow’ a gewsel Kernewek, ytho yma fowt a arhasow ha gwriansow a-barth an yeth. Dhe orthtreylya an studh ma, an kows ma atemptya selya niver kernewegoryon yn Kernow mar hardlych dell bossybyl. An niver ma a yll bos gwerek dhe besya gans an difressyans an yeth Kernewek yn fordh wiw.

For more than a hundred years, Kernewek, the Cornish language, was only a memory of the past in Cornwall. Nowadays, however, it is experiencing a process of revitalisation or rather resuscitation, since, for the first time since the eighteenth century, there are fully competent and even a few native Cornish speakers. The United Kingdom, as one of the states that ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, is compelled to protect and promote Cornish. Unfortunately, there is not any serious and extensive study to establish the actual census of speakers, as happens in Wales. Since it is often assumed that ‘almost nobody’ or a vague ‘few hundred’ can speak some Cornish, there are important shortages of funds and actions in favour of the language. In order to help reversing this negative situation, the current presentation attempts to establish, as accurately as possible, the number of Cornish speakers in Cornwall. This number should be useful to proceed in an appropriate way with the protection that Kernewek needs and deserves.

This file contains a comma-delimited edition of the text of the Vocabularium Cornicum. It has been hand-transcribed from the edition of MS British Library Cotton Vespasian A.xvi ff. 7a-10a included in Johann Kaspar Zeuss, Grammatica Celtica (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1853), with some corrections based on the 1962 thesis about Vocabularium Cornicum by E.V. Graves..

All entries in this file are found in their original order from the manuscript, and the original manuscript foliation is marked. The entries' comma-delimited format is intended to make it easy for you to move the data into a database.

In both Latin and Cornish, the abbreviations l. (standing in the manuscript for the common cross-barred l form) and ul. stand for Latin vel ("or"). Common scribal spelling abbreviations have been silently expanded, mostly because of the difficulties of representing them in plain ASCII text.

Note that the entries in this file have not yet been extensively proofread and may contain copying errors!

After over twenty years of debate over Cornish orthographies, recognition by the UK government according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2003 led to the creation of what was initially intended as a “single written form” for use in official contexts. However, the inevitable impossibility of finding a compromise that pleased opposing groups of speakers with differing ideologies meant that the eventual Standard Written Form (SWF) was pluricentric, comprising two “main forms”. While these were initially stated to be of equal status, this has been hard to maintain since the SWF’s implementation: with more speakers using Middle Cornish forms, the Late Cornish forms are less visible and commonly believed to be subsidiary. Drawing on such perceptions, along with learning materials and other resources, this paper examines the status of the SWF today and offers some reflections on this unsuccessful attempt at pluricentricity in a minoritised language.

The Cornish language " Kernewek " is one of the oldest tongues still spoken in Britain today. Like Welsh, Breton – its closest relatives – Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx Gaelic, Kernewek is a Celtic language. Yet it has not enjoyed the same protection that some of the former have. Now the British government is cutting the funding that supports the survival of this language. The period following the Norman conquest was the era of Cornish classical literature, when the Cornish miracle plays – one of the earliest forms of theatre – were written. This episode came to an abrupt halt, however, with the accession of the Tudor dynasty, when, following a series of unsuccessful rebellions, the Cornish-speaking population was brutally reduced and Kernewek went into rapid decline. By the beginning of the 18th Century, Kernewek was confined to the far west of Cornwall. But, by the early 20th century, speaker numbers slowly grew once more. In 2010 the language was officially brought " back from the dead " , as UNESCO changed its classification of Kernewek from extinct to critically endangered. Today it is guarded by the few hundred fluent speakers left. Though fierce, this current local protection and celebration of the Cornish language is apparently not persuasive enough for it to be protected like other British languages.

This paper investigates the role of minority language commodification in alcoholic drinks’ branding, with a specific focus on Celtic languages and a particular emphasis on Cornish. The topic is introduced by exploring the ongoing and significant connection between language, culture and food, taking phrases and rhymes from historical sources and comparing their use. The aim is to establish cross-disciplinary synergies between semiotics and cultural analysis and to shed new light on marketing issues in the alcoholic drinks sector. The methodology section features the first ever analysis of alcoholic drinks’ labels from four Celtic national minorities (N = 1.937) that illustrates what proportion of labels exists in each minority’s language. The paper further explores unique branding positions in relation to the marketing theory of positionality, and positional innovation. It concludes with a discussion of Spolsky and Cooper's (1991) third sign rule and the concept of linguistic landscapes in relation to alcoholic drinks’ labelling.

The text of my provocation for this session at the Museums Association Conference 2018, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Perspectives from Cornwall, including a view from the Isle of Man.

England has dominated the museum scene in the UK for generations and British identity politics have always been skewed by the view from England, and particularly London and the big cities. As the UK enters unknown territory leaving the European Union, the time is right to create a better balance within the British museum sector. Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Manx and Cornish museums can work together across borders to shape a modern Celtic museum sector that aims to promote the complexity of national identity and diversity in the British Isles. Will England be brave and open enough to join the conversation as well? This panel will put forward provocations from Cornwall, Wales, the Isle of Man, Scotland and Northern Ireland to explore the value of collaboration across the Celtic Nations of the British Isles. How can our museums make sure that the emphasis on national identity is inclusive and diverse rather than exclusive and alienating? And can they help balance out the identity discourses in the rest of Britain?