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Language Revival: Cornish
It's not easy to bring a language back to life. Just ask Cornish speakers, who, after years of division over standardization of the language, have finally agreed on how their language should be spoken.
Cornish retreated down the peninsula. The last monoglot Cornish speaker is believed to have been a man called Chesten Marchant who died at Gwithian in 1676. Dorothy Pentreath, the last native speaker, died in 1777 at Mousehole. The last living link with the language was broken in 1891 with the death of John Davey, of Zennor, who took to the grave the Cornish phrases his grandfather had taught him.John Davey didn't take it all beneath ground. The language is considered to be a minority language today by the EU. And thank goodness for that; otherwise we'd be without great phrases like "Ple'ma an bysva?" (Where is the toilet?) and "Pinta korev marpleg." (A pint of beer, please.) next time we find ourselves in Cornwall.
Tags: Cornish, dying languages
May 29, 2008
