Cornish dialect

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Cornish dialect
Cornish English
Native toEngland
RegionCornwall
EthnicityCornish
Early forms
Language codes
ISO 639-3
GlottologNone
IETFen-cornu

The Cornish dialect (also known as Cornish English, Anglo-Cornish or Cornu-English;

accents found within Cornwall from the north coast to that of the south coast and from east to west Cornwall. Typically, the accent is more divergent from Standard British English the further west through Cornwall one travels. The speech of the various parishes being to some extent different from the others was described by John T. Tregellas and Thomas Quiller Couch towards the end of the 19th century. Tregellas wrote of the differences as he understood them and Couch suggested the parliamentary constituency boundary between the East and West constituencies, from Crantock to Veryan, as roughly the border between eastern and western dialects. To this day, the towns of Bodmin and Lostwithiel as well as Bodmin Moor are considered the boundary.[1][2][3]

History

A colour-coded map of Cornwall, surrounded by a blue sea. Cornwall is shaded dark red in the east and pale pink in the west, with a range of intermediate shades of red between, intended to represent periods of time in which the Cornish language was used.
There was a shift away from the use of the Cornish language between 1300 and 1750, with the Cornish people gradually adopting English as their common language.

The first speakers of English resident in Cornwall were Anglo-Saxon settlers, primarily in the north east of Cornwall between the Ottery and Tamar rivers, and in the lower Tamar valley, from around the 10th century onwards. There are a number of relatively early place names of English origin, especially in those areas.[4]

The further spread of the English language in Cornwall was slowed by the change to

Norman French as the main language of administration after the Norman Conquest. In addition, continued communication with Brittany, where the closely related Breton language was spoken, tended to favour the continued use of the Cornish language
.

But from around the 13th to 14th centuries the use of English for administration was revived, and a vernacular Middle English literary tradition developed. These were probable reasons for the increased use of the English language in Cornwall.[5] In the Tudor period, various circumstances, including the imposition of an English language prayer book in 1549, and the lack of a Cornish translation of any part of the Bible, led to a language shift from Cornish to English.

The language shift to English occurred much later in Cornwall than in other areas: in most of

West Country dialects
.

Cornish was the most widely spoken language west of the River Tamar until around the mid-14th century, when

Bretons of Brittany.[16]

The English Civil War, a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists, polarised the populations of England and Wales. However, Cornwall in the English Civil War was a staunchly Royalist enclave, an "important focus of support for the Royalist cause".[17] Cornish soldiers were used as scouts and spies during the war, for their language was not understood by English Parliamentarians.[17] Following the war there was a further shift to the English language by the Cornish people, which encouraged an influx of English people to Cornwall. By the mid-17th century the use of Cornish had retreated far enough west to prompt concern and investigation by antiquarians, such as William Scawen who had been an officer during the Civil War.[16][17] As the Cornish language diminished, the people of Cornwall underwent a process of English enculturation and assimilation,[18] becoming "absorbed into the mainstream of English life".[19]

International use

"D'reckly" on souvenir clocks in Cornwall (meaning at some point in the future; soon, but not immediately; like "mañana", but less urgent)

Large-scale 19th and 20th century emigrations of Cornish people meant that substantial populations of Anglo-Cornish speakers were established in parts of

Australia, and South Africa. This Cornish diaspora
has continued to use Anglo-Cornish, and certain phrases and terms have moved into common parlance in some of those countries.

There has been discussion over whether certain words found in North America have an origin in the Cornish language, mediated through Anglo-Cornish dialect.

Academy Award-winning film of the same name starring Anthony Hopkins as Col. William Ludlow and Brad Pitt as Tristan Ludlow. Some words in American Cornu-English are almost identical to those in Anglo-Cornish:[21]

American Cornu-English Cornish Translation
Attle Atal Waste
Bal Bal Mine
Buddle Buddle Washing pit for ore, churn
Cann Cand White spar stone
Capel Capel Black tourmaline
Costean Costeena To dig exploratory pits
Dippa Dippa A small pit
Druse Druse Small cavity in a vein
Flookan Flookan Soft layer of material
Gad Gad Miner's wedge or spike
Yo Yo A derivative of 'You', a greeting or 'Hello'

South

Australian Aborigines, particularly the Nunga, are said to speak English with a Cornish accent because they were taught the English language by Cornish miners.[22][23] Most large towns in South Australia had newspapers at least partially in Cornish dialect: for instance, the Northern Star published in Kapunda in the 1860s carried material in dialect.[24][25][26] At least 23 Cornish words have made their way into Australian English; these include the mining terms fossick and nugget.[27]

Geography

There is a difference between the form of Anglo-Cornish spoken in west Cornwall and that found in areas further east. In the eastern areas, the form of English that the formerly Cornish-speaking population learnt was the general south-western dialect, picked up primarily through relatively local trade and other communications over a long period of time.[citation needed] In contrast, in western areas, the language was learned from English as used by the clergy and landed classes, some of whom had been educated at the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge.[28] English was learned relatively late across the western half of Cornwall (see the map in the "History" section) and this was a more Modern English style of language, since the standard form itself was undergoing changes.[29] Particularly in the west, the Cornish language substrate left characteristic markers in the Anglo-Cornish dialect.

West Country dialect area, but not in west Cornwall. The second person pronoun, you (and many other occurrences of the same vowel) is pronounced as in standard English in the west of Cornwall; but east of the Bodmin district, a 'sharpening'[further explanation needed] of the vowel occurs, which is a feature also found in Devon dialect. Plural nouns such as ha'pennies, pennies and ponies are pronounced in west Cornwall ending not in -eez but in -uz. The pronunciation of the number five varies from foive in the west to vive in the east, approaching the Devon pronunciation.[30]
This challenges the commonly held misconception that the dialect is uniform across the county.

Variations in vocabulary also occur: for example the dialect word for

Late Cornish
periods are in evidence.

When calling a horse to stop "wo" is used in most of east Cornwall and in the far west; however "ho" is used between a line from Crantock to St Austell and a line from Hayle to the Helford River; and "way" is used in the northeast.[31]

There are also grammatical variations within Cornwall, such as the use of us for the standard English we and her for she in East Cornwall, a feature shared with western Devon dialect.[32] I be and its negative I bain't are more common close to the Devon border.[30]

The variety of English in the Isles of Scilly is unlike that on the mainland as Bernard Walke observed in the 1930s. He found that Scillonians spoke English similar to "Elizabethan English without a suspicion of Cornish dialect".[33]

Lexicon and grammar

There are a range of dialect words including words also found in other West Country dialects, as well as many specific to Anglo-Cornish.[34][35][36]

There are also distinctive grammatical features:[30]

  • reversals (e.g. Her aunt brought she up)
  • archaisms (e.g. give 'un to me'un is a descendant of Old English hine)
  • the retention of thou and ye (thee and ye ('ee)) – Why doesn't thee have a fringe?
  • double plurals – clothes-line postes[clarification needed]
  • irregular use of the definite article – He died right in the Christmas
  • use of the definite article with proper names – Did 'ee knaw th'old Canon Harris?
  • the omission of prepositions – went chapel
  • the extra -y suffix on the infinitive of verbs – I an't one to gardeny, but I do generally teal (till) the garden every spring
  • they as a demonstrative adjective – they books
  • use of auxiliary verb – pasties mother do make
  • inanimate objects described as he
  • frequent use of the word up as an adverb – answering up
  • the use of some as an adverb of degree – She's some good maid to work

Many of these are influenced by the substrate of the Cornish language. One example is the usage for months, May month, rather than just May for the fifth month of the year.[citation needed]

Sociolinguistics

From the late 19th to the early 21st century, the Anglo-Cornish dialect declined somewhat due to the spread of long-distance travel, mass education and the mass media, and increased migration into Cornwall of people from, principally, the south-east of England. Universal elementary education had begun in England and Wales in the 1870s. Thirty years later Mark Guy Pearse wrote: "The characteristics of Cornwall and the Cornish are rapidly passing away. More than a hundred years ago its language died. Now its dialect is dying. It is useless to deplore it, for it is inevitable."[37] Although the erosion of dialect is popularly blamed on the mass media, many academics assert the primacy of face-to-face linguistic contact in dialect levelling.[38] It is further asserted by some that peer groups are the primary mechanism.[39] It is unclear whether in the erosion of the Anglo-Cornish dialect, high levels of migration into Cornwall from outside in the 20th century, or deliberate efforts to suppress dialect forms (in an educational context) are the primary causative factor. Anglo-Cornish dialect speakers are more likely than Received Pronunciation speakers in Cornwall to experience social and economic disadvantages and poverty, including spiralling housing costs, in many, particularly coastal areas of Cornwall,[40] and have at times been actively discouraged from using the dialect, particularly in the schools.[41][42] In the 1910s the headmaster of a school in a Cornish fishing port received this answer when he suggested to the son of the local coastguard (a boy with rough and ready Cornish speech) that it was time he learned to speak properly: "An what d'yer think me mates down to the quay 'ud think o' me if I did?"[43]

A. L. Rowse wrote in his autobiographical A Cornish Childhood about his experiences of a Received Pronunciation prestige variety of English (here referred to as the "King's English") being associated with well-educated people, and therefore Anglo-Cornish by implication with a lack of education:

'It does arise directly from the consideration of the struggle to get away from speaking Cornish dialect and to speak correct English, a struggle which I began thus early and pursued constantly with no regret, for was it not the key which unlocked the door to all that lay beyond—Oxford, the world of letters, the community of all who speak the King's English, from which I should otherwise have been infallibly barred? But the struggle made me very sensitive about language; I hated to be corrected; nothing is more humiliating: and it left me with a complex about Cornish dialect. The inhibition which I had imposed on myself left me, by the time I got to Oxford, incapable of speaking it; and for years, with the censor operating subconsciously ... '[44]

Preservation

Once it was noticed that many aspects of Cornish dialect were gradually passing out of use, various individuals and organisations (including the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies)[45] began to make efforts to preserve the dialect. This included collecting lists of dialect words, although grammatical features were not always well recorded. Nevertheless, Ken Phillipps's 1993 Glossary of the Cornish Dialect[30] is an accessible reference work which does include details of grammar and phonology. A more popular guide to Cornish dialect has been written by Les Merton, titled Oall Rite Me Ansum![46]

Another project to record examples of Cornish dialect[47] is being undertaken by Azook Community Interest Company. As of 2011 it has received coverage in the local news[48] and more information on the project should, one hopes, be uploaded dreckly.

Literature

The Cornish Fishermen's Watch-night, and Other Stories; Religious Tract Society, 1879

There have been a number of literary works published in Anglo-Cornish dialect from the 19th century onwards.

  • John Tabois Tregellas (1792–1863) was a merchant at Truro, purser of Cornish mines, and author of many stories written in the local dialect of the county. (Walter Hawken Tregellas was his eldest son.)[49][50][51][52] Tregellas was well known in Cornwall for his dialect knowledge; he could relate a conversation between a Redruth man and a St Agnes man keeping their dialects perfectly distinct.[53]
  • William Robert Hicks (known as the "Yorick of the West") was an accomplished raconteur. Many of his narratives were in the Cornish dialect, but he was equally good in that of Devon, as well as in the peculiar talk of the miners. Among his best-known stories were the "Coach Wheel", the "Rheumatic Old Woman", "William Rabley", the "Two Deacons", the "Bed of Saltram", the "Blind Man, his Wife, and his dog Lion", the "Gallant Volunteer", and the "Dead March in Saul". His most famous story, the "Jury", referred to the trial at Launceston in 1817 of Robert Sawle Donnall for poisoning his mother-in-law, when the prisoner was acquitted. Each of the jurors gave a different and ludicrous reason for his verdict.[54]
  • There is a range of dialect literature dating back to the 19th century referenced in Bernard Deacon's PhD thesis.[55]
  • 'The Cledry Plays; drolls of old Cornwall for village acting and home reading' (
    guise-dance
    drolls, as they were called, was their love of the local speech and their readiness to break here and there into rhyme or song". And of the music he says "the simple airs do not ask for accompaniment or for trained voices to do them justice. They are only a slight extension of the music that West-Penwith voices will put into the dialogue."
  • Cornish Dialect Stories: About Boy Willie (H. Lean, 1953)[57]
  • Pasties and Cream: a Proper Cornish Mixture (Molly Bartlett (Scryfer Ranyeth), 1970): a collection of Anglo-Cornish dialect stories that had won competitions organised by the
    Cornish Gorsedh.[58][59]
  • Cornish Faist: a selection of prize winning dialect prose and verse from the Gorsedd of Cornwall Competitions.[60]
  • Various literary works by Alan M. Kent, Nick Darke and Craig Weatherhill

See also

Other English dialects heavily influenced by Celtic languages:

References

  1. ^ Perry, Margaret. "Cornish Dialect and Language: a potted history". Newlyn.info. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 17 June 2011.
  2. ^ "Old Cornwall Society Dialect Webpages". Federation of Old Cornwall Societies (Cornwall, United Kingdom). Archived from the original on 22 June 2011. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
  3. ^ Couch, Thomas Q. "East Cornwall Words". Federation of Old Cornwall Societies (Cornwall, United Kingdom). Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  4. .
  5. .
  6. .
  7. ^ Spriggs, Matthew (2003). "Where Cornish was spoken and when: a provisional synthesis". Cornish Studies. Second Series (11): 228–269. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
  8. ^ a b "Overview of Cornish History". Cornwall Council. 23 June 2009. Retrieved 3 July 2009.
  9. ^ a b "Timeline of Cornish History 1066–1700 AD". Cornwall Council. 10 June 2009. Retrieved 3 July 2009.
  10. ; p. 225
  11. ^ ; p. 226
  12. ^ Pascoe, W. H. (1979) A Cornish Armory. Padstow: Lodenek Press; p. 27
  13. ; p. 122
  14. ; p. 26
  15. ; pp. 2–3
  16. ^ ; p. 230
  17. ^ ; p. 113
  18. ; p. 64
  19. ^ Stoyle, Mark (1 January 2001). "The Cornish: a Neglected Nation?". Bbc.co.uk. p. 1. Retrieved 4 July 2009.
  20. ^ Kent, Alan (26–27 July 2007). ""Mozeying on down ..." : the Cornish language in North America". The Celtic Languages in Contact: Papers from the Workshop within the Framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies.
  21. .
  22. . Retrieved 16 June 2011.
  23. .
  24. .
  25. ^ "Northern Star (Kapunda, S. Aust.)". State Library of South Australia, State Library of Victoria: National Library of Australia. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
  26. ^ Stephen Adolphe Wurm; Peter Mühlhäusler & Darrell T. Tryon. Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996
  27. ^ Bruce Moore Speaking our Language: the story of Australian English, Oxford University Press, 2009
  28. ^ These were the only universities in England (and not open to Nonconformists) until the 1820s, when University College London was established.
  29. .
  30. ^ .
  31. .
  32. ^ These pronouns are not the only ones, of course.
  33. ^ "Cornish Dialect Dictionary". Archived from the original on 7 July 2011. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  34. ^ Fred Jago (1882). "The Ancient Language and the Dialect of Cornwall: with an enlarged glossary of Cornish provincial words; also an appendix, containing a list of writers on Cornish dialect, and additional information about Dolly Pentreath, the last known person who spoke the ancient Cornish as her mother tongue". Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  35. ^ P. Stalmaszczyk. "Celtic Elements in English Vocabulary–a critical reassessment" (PDF). Studia Anglica Posnaniensia. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  36. ^ Pearse, Mark Guy (1902) West Country Songs. London: Howard Marshall & Son; p. vii
  37. ^ Kerswill, Paul. "Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English" (PDF).
  38. ^ Paul Kerswill and Peter Trudgill. "The birth of new dialects" (PDF). Macrosociolinguistic Motivations of Convergence and Divergence. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 17 June 2011.
  39. .
  40. ^ Schwartz, Sharron P. "Bridging" the Great Divide": Cornish Labour Migration to America and the Evolution of Transnational Identity" (PDF). Paper presented at the Race, Ethnicity and Migration: The United States in a Global Context Conference, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Institute of Cornish Studies, University of Exeter, Hayne Corfe Centre, Truro, Cornwall, Great Britain. Retrieved 16 June 2011.[permanent dead link]
  41. .
  42. ^ Archer, Muriel F. "Sounding a bit fishy" [letter to the editor], The Guardian; 3 August 1982
  43. ^ Rowse, A. L. (1942). A Cornish Childhood. London: Cape. p. 106.
  44. ^ "Old Cornwall Society Dialect Webpages". Federation of Old Cornwall Societies (Cornwall, United Kingdom). Archived from the original on 22 June 2011. Retrieved 17 June 2011.
  45. .
  46. ^ "Website of Azook Community Interest Company, based in Pool, Cornwall". Retrieved 19 June 2011.
  47. ^ "Plenty of tales with Cornish accent still to tell". West Briton (thisiscornwall.co.uk). Archived from the original on 5 April 2012. Retrieved 19 June 2011.
  48. ^ Dictionary of National Biography; ed. Leslie Stephen
  49. ^ Tregellas, Walter Hawken (1884). Cornish Worthies: sketches of some eminent Cornish men and families. London: E. Stock.
  50. ^ Tregellas, John Tabois (1890) [1868]. Cornish Tales in Prose and Verse. Truro: Netherton & Worth.
  51. ^ Tregellas, John Tabois (1894) [1879]. Peeps into the Haunts and Homes of the Rural Population of Cornwall: being reminiscences of Cornish character & characteristics, illustrative of the dialect, peculiarities, &c., &c., of the inhabitants of west & north Cornwall. Truro: Netherton & Worth.
  52. ^ Vyvyan, C. C. (1948) Our Cournwall. London: Westaway Books; p. 21
  53. ^ Boase, G. C. (1891). "Hicks, William Robert (1808–1868), asylum superintendent and humorist". Dictionary of National Biography Vol. XXVI. Smith, Elder & Co. Retrieved 23 December 2007.
  54. ^ Deacon, Bernard. "Research: Bernard Deacon – personal webpage at Institute of Cornish Studies". Archived from the original on 21 July 2009.
  55. ^ Nance, Robert Morton (Mordon) (1956). The Cledry Plays; drolls of old Cornwall for village acting and home reading. Federation of Old Cornwall Societies (printed by Worden, Marazion).
  56. ^ Lean, H. (1953). Cornish Dialect Stories – About Boy Willie. Falmouth, Cornwall: J. H. Lake & Co., Ltd.
  57. ^ Bartlett, Molly (1970). Pasties and Cream: a proper Cornish mixture. Penzance, Cornwall: Headland Printing Company.
  58. ^ Brenda Wootton: the Voice of Cornwall; songwriters
  59. .
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain"Hicks, William Robert". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

Further reading

External links