Cornish language
Spoken in
- Indo-European celtic Inselkeltisch Brythonic cornish
Cor
Cor
The Cornish language (also Kernewek, Kernowek or Kernuak ) is a Welsh and Breton to the closely related Celtic language that was spoken until the late 18th century in Cornwall and revived in the 20th century. The name of the language Kernowek or Kernewek ( britann. kornobika ) is derived, as well as the country's name from the late ancient inhabitants of Cornwall, the Cornovii. The Cornish language is considered endangered.
- 3.1 Kernowek Ünys Amendys ( UCR)
- 3.2 Kernewek Kemmyn
- 3.3 Spätkornisch
History and revival
The last known native speaker of Cornish, Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole ( korn. Porthenys ), died in 1777. It was long considered the "last speaker " traded because they had appeared in a travelogue of the English antiquary Daines Barrington. This had been looking for " the last " speaker of the Cornish, had been referred to them, and to the question whether it their native language even more pervasive, they showered him with insults Cornish. However, Dolly Pentreath, the last known by name a native speaker of the traditional Cornish; she gave herself to have learned the English until the age of 12 years.
1891 died John Davey, whose relatives alleged by him that he was the last person who dominated Cornish fluently. That should not have complied with the facts; Davey, however, we owe the tradition of some of the fragments verballhornter Spätkornischen. Individual language elements, however, had been preserved in some professions last significantly longer in the language, about the custom caught fish to count in Cornish.
The present " Neokornisch " is a reconstruction of the extinct language with the help of the traditions and written evidence from which a large part of neokornischen lexicon (70 %) was reconstructed. Since the mittelkornische corpus obtained is considerably more extensive than that of the Spätkornischen, come to him the most words. To find not only the Britannic native words, but about ten percent per loan words from Vulgar Latin or from English Even within the traditional vocabulary. A significant portion (25 %) of the neokornischen vocabulary was borrowed or constructed according to the related languages Welsh and Breton. Five percent come from English, in addition, there also Cornish borrowings international Termini v. a Latin and Greek origin.
The language is not nearly as well documented as the biblical Hebrew, in contrast to the Cornish never came entirely out of traffic. Purists among scholars of language and scientists are today's Cornish critical of because they think it is inauthentic, where similar can be said about today's Israeli Ivrith. A language movement is currently seeking the revival, but has split in the 1980s into several competing groups, the different orthographies use (see below). A given by the British government -commissioned study (see below) came to about 250 people who are fluent command of the language, more about 3000 (< 0.7 % of the population of Cornwall ) have only partly earned minimum basic skills. As before mentioned study never spokesperson figures have been compiled, can be found in older literature, mostly fantasy assumptions, where the wishful thinking of the nationalists is clearly noted. The number of families in which children grow up with Cornish mother tongue, 2000 was counted 13
A massive problem of language movement is its fragmentation: A given by the British government -commissioned study ( MacKinnon -Report 2000) gave about 250 fluent speaker, who divided on three warring groups used each with its own version of Neokornischen. Currently, the following variants are ( and spellings ) in use:
- Kernewek Kemmyn, based on the Mittelkornische and orthographically based on Breton.
- Kernewek Unys, the original version of the Neokornischen, which also is based on Mittelkornischen.
- Kernowek Unys Amendys, an improved form of the Unys.
- Kernuack Nowedga ( " Neukornisch "), which is based on Spätkornischen.
Since May 2008, the Cornish Language Partnership used for official documents and in the classroom a newly revised standard orthography (FSS ), see below.
Apart from bilingual city and street signs there are officially currently no efforts to spread this language. However, the Cornish has now been recognized by the British government as a minority language and is to be reinforced taught from 2008 schools.
Cornish may be taught in schools on a voluntary basis, provided that there is an appropriate teacher. In addition, official checks can be written in this language.
In the media Cornish is only represented by a five-minute weekly radio program. However, the web radio "Radio of the Cornish language community ", which exudes a half-hour magazine with interviews and music and a news broadcast per week exists.
Small speaker communities exist among descendants Cornish emigrants in London, Australia and the United States.
The most important stages of the revival
Language levels of the Cornish
At about 600, the language areas of the Cornish and the Welsh language by the Anglo-Saxon westward advance were spatially separated. The first stage of development in the history of Cornish as a separate language, which is set to 900, is referred to as Frühkornisch.
The Cornish forms, together with Breton, the south-western Britannic group of insular Celtic languages. The Breton it primarily has the vowel / ø / jointly, which has evolved from the Britannic long / a :/. From Breton it differs turn first primarily through the development of auslautendem / t / > / s / and / d / > / z /. Example: bret. tad (Eng. 'father' ) vs. grain. tas / ta: z /.
The period of 900 to 1200 is called Altkornisch. It is occupied mainly by glosses and the Vocabularium Cornicum, a Latin- altkornisches dictionary.
The mittelkornische period is set from 1200 to 1600. During this time though began the rapid retreat of the Cornish language boundary to the west, but it is the most productive literary period in which it can be considered by the highest number of speakers. Ken George puts this at a maximum of about 35,000 people in the late Middle Ages - before the country was colonized too thin, more and more families then changed their language, and the English began to supplant the Cornish. The most important primary sources for the Mittelkornische are dramas, almost exclusively mystery plays, dating from the environment of a concrete determinable school - the College of Glasney ( the Cornish title in the following paragraph are held in the FSS standard orthography ):
- The Charter Fragment ( 1400 ), 41 -line fragment of a pointedly witty dialogue
- The ordinals, which consist of three parts: Dalethvos to Bys ( " Origin of the World " ), Krist Pashyon ( " The Passion of the Christ " ), Dasserhyans agan Arlodh ( " The Resurrection of our Lord " ), early 15th century.
- Pashyon agan Arlodh ( "The Passion of our Lord " ), early 15th century.
- Bewnans Meryasek ( "Life of St. Meriadoc " ), 1504.
- Bewnans Ke ( "Life of St. Ke " ) containing motifs of the Arthurian tradition, early 15th century.
- Pregothow Treger ( " The sermons of Tregear " ), from 1555 to 1558.
- Gwreans to Bys ( " The Creation of the World"), 1611.
After the Reformation, the College of Glasney was closed and fell into the tradition of mystery plays. The language area comprised in the 17th century, only the westernmost part of Cornwall, and in many sources from this period show up for semi-speakers ( those who learned the language does not completely ) typical symptoms of decline in lexicon, phonology and morphology. This phase of extinction of the language is referred to as spätkornische period. Characteristic of the Spätkornische are out of the low skills of many speakers the change of the morphology towards analytical developments (conjugated prepositions personal pronouns replaced by preposition plus ) and characteristic changes in the phonological system. Most striking are probably the präokkludierten nasal consonants:
Medium grain.
The orthographic tradition of Mittelkornischen has not been passed, which is why the writers of the Spätkornischen had to make do with an English spelling aid. The Welsh linguist Edward Lhuyd, who toured Cornwall in the early years of the 18th century, designed with a phonetic pronunciation for the Spätkornische, which was taken up in parts of some enthusiasts. This group of authors has spätkornische texts of different genres leave - but especially prose. This means that level of language and vocabulary of spätkornischen texts far more from those of the mittelkornischen sources differ, as would be the case purely by language change phenomena, since most of the spätkornischen authors were not native speakers and the Cornish dominated only imperfectly. This is for the various neokornischen reconstruction models insofar relevant, as they are based on different language levels and is only attempted in Kernowek Unys Amendys to include all occupied periods in the history of the Cornish alike.
The last native speaker, which still dominated the language properly are likely to have died before 1800, the last semi-speakers during the 19th century. The last known adult monoglotte spokeswoman, Cheston Marchant, died in 1676.
The different variants of the spoken today, the revived Cornish are summarized under the terms Neukornisch or Neokornisch (see above). All variants of the Neokornischen with the exception of Nowedga based primarily on morphological Mittelkornischen. To acquire - because not traditional - to replace or to designate new concepts vocabulary, different methods are used depending on the variant: purists are based on Welsh and Breton, while pragmatists rather borrow words from English (which is the spokesman of the traditional Cornish done have ).
The fragmentation into different groups, however, is so far less problematic than it may at first looks as in the spoken language very well mutual understanding is possible, which is not least that all speakers today Cornish speak with a strong English accent: [i:, iw, ju: ] instead of / y :/ and [e: , ej ] instead of / ø :/ example, are customary in the variants that are based on Mittelkornischen and actually provide the use of rounded vowels. So there are some valid reasons for not talking about different revived languages, but dialects of the same language or sociolects. Nor can now harmonizing tendencies observed by about mittelkornische form referred to as " literary ", the corresponding spätkornische form as " colloquial " and both are next to each other informed. This trend follows also the first German -language textbook of the revived Cornish, Cornish - word for word from Daniel Ryan Prohaska, which was published in 2006. In this book, one on the mittelkornischen based orthography ( UCR) is taught alongside a spätkornisch influenced neokornischen pronunciation.
Phonology
Kernowek Ünys Amendys ( UCR)
The following discussion presents the in N.J.A. Williams' English - Cornish Dictionary (2000) system shown again and refers to Kernowek Unys Amendys ( UCR). For the actual phonetic realization of all variants in everyday life is to be noted that the pronunciation of most speakers of Neokornischen has strong English interference.
Consonants
UCR has no geminates, but Fortis variants [M, N, R, L] with the realization [ bm, dn, rh, lh ] on the Allophonebene.
Vowels
In the UCR two vowel lengths are distinguished ( in Kemmyn three: short, medium-length, long or / V, V ', V :/ ). Unstressed short vowels are usually realized as [ ə ], which has next to it, especially in a number of suffixes and clitics in, even Phonemstatus.
Kernewek Kemmyn
Kernewek Kemmyn is generally more archaic than UCR and distinguishes three instead of two vowel lengths, two different o- phonemes / o, ɔ /, and geminate consonants from simple.
Spätkornisch
Ivan Wmffre ( in: Late Cornish, Munich 1998 ) has reconstructed the phonemic system of Spätkornischen follows:
Wmffre is not sure whether it is in [z ] to be an allophone of / s / or a separate phoneme / z / is. We should also see / ħ / ( the reflex of Altkornischen / x / ) have coincided with / h / [h, Ø].