Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Colloquial Doesn't Mean Corrupt: Observations on contemporary Revived Cornish

Colloquial Doesn't Mean Corrupt: Observations on contemporary Revived Cornish

Lyon, Rod
Everson, Michael

Paperback

Series: Studies in Cornish Language and Culture, Book 7

Celtic Languages

ISBN10: 178201246X
ISBN13: 9781782012467
Publisher: Evertype
Published: Aug 8 2019
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.38
Height: 0.30 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

William Scawen, writing in the seventeenth century when Cornish was still the vernacular, compares Cornish with other Celtic languages, and says that Cornish is lively and manly spoken. When we hear the majority of present-day Cornish speakers, however, this can rarely be said--particularly when considering the lively part. Rod Lyon believes that for a number of years matters have been getting worse. He therefore has undertaken some research to find out why this appears to be the case. Inevitably his research has led him to study in depth the traditional Cornish texts. Present-day teaching methods and a particular approach to the texts seem to be the main causes of the problem. As Lyon illustrates in this book, current teaching of the language is concentrated far too heavily on the lin­guistic structure of the old texts, which were by and large all theological works, often following strict poetic measures and by their very nature, lacking in any idiomatic, everyday Cornish. This approach of mainly written, academic thinking towards the language has resulted in the most important aspect of any language--fluent and lively conversational Cornish--being sidelined or even ignored. This is proven by the number of people who can write lengthy, academi­cally perfect passages of Cornish, but are unable to string to­gether a sentence in an impromptu everyday conversa­tion. Are these above reasons then solely to blame for the lack of lively speakers? Although they point to the root problem, Lyon also highlights other aspects of the revived language which are strong contributing factors.

Also in

Celtic Languages

View All