Cornish

Where it’s spoken

Cornish (Kernewek) is spoken in Cornwall in southwestern England, where about 600 people use it as a daily language and several thousand have learned it. The UK government recognized Cornish under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2002 and the Council of Europe upgraded the status in 2010. Modern Cornish is part of a small but vibrant revival community.

What it sounds like

Cornish, as reconstructed and used today, has Celtic initial consonant mutations, broad/slender (velarized/palatalized) consonant pairs, and a similar phonology to Welsh and Breton. Several orthographic conventions reflect slightly different reconstructions of historical pronunciation. The voiceless lateral fricative was lost in modern dialects but is sometimes reintroduced.

How it’s written

Cornish has been written in several orthographic norms — the Unified Cornish, Common Cornish (Kemmyn), Modern Cornish, and the 2008 Standard Written Form (SWF) which combines elements of the others. All use the Latin alphabet.

History

Cornish ceased to be a community language around the death of Dolly Pentreath in 1777 (traditionally called the last native speaker). The 20th-century revival began with Henry Jenner’s 1904 Handbook of the Cornish Language and was reinforced by Robert Morton Nance.