Idiom and current usage

[Taran]

The problem here is it depends upon your point of view. Whether you think you are legitimately 'extending' Cornish into the 21st century by creating new and exciting idiomatic forms suitable for the future because the language has now been revived and the Cornish what me and me homies is spookin' is rad and real man so don't aksin' me to spook like no old priest. What we spooks IS Cornish, Blood, 'cuz we spooks to each other like this all the time, aaaalright. They isn't grammatical errors or mispronunciations nomore because this small group of regular spookers that all spooks together can each understand what the other is spookin' so it is right. Anything else, regardless of its correctness is now 'ancient priest spook'.

Or whether you think that we are attempting to revive Cornish, a language that has been dead as a vernacular for more than two centuries and needs careful research and sympathetic extension to make it suitable for usage in the 21st century and beyond. In this we are all learners, it is just that some learners are more advanced than others, but no-one is infallible.

OK, a little exaggerated perhaps, but a reasonable charicature of the two camps?

[Taran]

The hebrew analogy was one of Mr Reeves favourite ill-considered oneliners. He used to trot that out regularly.

[towlenner]

The problem has not been that either of the "stick rigidly to the texts" and the "allow Cornish to evolve" camps are right and the other wrong, for both are valid viewpoints. The problem was, and to a degree is, that hardliners from both camps have not been prepared to accept the right of the other camp to hold a different view, and have tried to silence them by whatever means possible. For Cornish to progress everyone has to accept that others hold different views and respect them regardless. Personally I agree that we should use attested grammar wherever possible, but I also agree with the viewpoint that the texts are limited and that they do not cover all Cornish grammar, so it makes sense to extrapolate grammar to other probable usages.

[Golvan]

Towlenner writes:

but I also agree with the viewpoint that the texts are limited and that they do not cover all Cornish grammar

There are many gaps in our knowledge of the lexicon of Cornish. There are for example no attested words for sloe, gooseberry, cherry or currant. There is no instance in any of the texts of how to say burst into tears. But as far as the inflection of Cornish is concerned and the essential syntax, most of it seems to be there. Not all parts of all verbs are attested, but that is because native speakers of Cornish used auxiliary verbs. Tregear, for example, says eff a rug sawya 'he saved' rather than eff a sawyas, and so on. And most of his conditional sentences are constructed with dos as an auxiliary, e.g. Mar ten ny ha leverell na gony pehadoryan 'If we say we are not sinners'. Similarly he introduces unreal conditions in the past with na ve : An kyth office ma ny vynsa pedyr kemeras na ve crist the ry thotha an auctorite 'this same office St Peter would not have accepted, had Christ not given him the authority'. This syntax is in Beunans Meriasek and in Bewnans Ke as well.

The complete paradigms of verbs that have been published for Cornish learners are largely aspirational and not really necessary when writing Cornish, and I am speaking here as somebody who has done a fair bit of translating into Cornish.
There are some gaps in the numerals and weights and measures, but we have the essentials.

What parts of the accidence or syntax of Cornish do you have in mind when you say that not all Cornish grammar is covered in the texts?

Golvan

[Bardh]

An interesting topic is the development of cursing and swearing in Recent Modern Cornish. Jenner's prescriptions (apparently, a man swearing by the patron saint of another parish might be suspected of a 'wilful economy of truth') seem not to have caught on, for the greater part. You occasionally hear Re Varia, or even 'Ria, but usually in a somewhat rhetorical context. James Whetter's famous article in the 70s came at a good time, when the literary Revival was beginning to turn oral. One or two of his more colourful expressions seem to be current, but I suspect that I'd better not post them here! By the way, is kurun spern for 'hangover' one of his? That's been around for at least thirty years, to my knowledge.

It's interesting how the imprecation Gast! has become popular, presumably under the influence of its Breton homophone. You also hear Gast an ast!, and even Gast gast an ast! Bretons tell me that, to their ears, it sounds very bad, as the word has a different meaning in their speech. There's an interesting parallel here with Modern Hebrew, which has absorbed a number of relevant words and expressions from Yiddish and Arabic. I remember once watching an Israeli film in the company of people from another Middle Eastern country, and seeing their shock at some of the words in the dialogue. Even though these were very much 'not-in-front-of-the-ladies' expressions, here were those very ladies uttering them. Whoops!

Everybody seems to know ilow, but most people look at you blankly if you try menestrouthi. Some people have come across it, but regard it as rather formal or archaic. I've also heard it used to refer to specifically instrumental music. That might be the best bet, if we want to encourage its use. As for musyk, if you say that then people just correct you to ilow. Anybody trying to replace the normal word for 'music' is, I think, on a hiding to nothing.

[AnDonnNowydh]

One or two of his more colourful expressions seem to be current, but I suspect that I'd better not post them here!

Oh, come on Bardh! No need to be so prude in this day and age.
This is the learners forum. Would you rather we went around bastardising English words for our expletives rather than attested Cornish ones?

eg. Fuk, Kunt, Boloks, cok,
I'd much prefer to see Kyj, Kons, Kalgh, etc.

[towlenner]

@Golvan, well you raised some yourself: numbers and verbs. I don't know which ones aren't attested but let's say three is missing. If you only allow the use of attested words then you cannot say three, 23, 43, 63 etc. Let's pretend 1s preterite of prena was not attested. You'd be able to ask "A brensys an aval ma?" but not to reply "Prenav" if you only use attested forms. Interpolation and extrapolation is necessary in Cornish to produce a viably complete language, so I don't see a problem with the idea that if a grammatical feature is only attested once or twice that it may not only have been used in the attested ways.

OT: one apparently missing verb which would be useful is to miss, in both the emotional and throwing senses. Is there something better than inventing *missya?

[Albert Bock]

Re Breton gast, gast ar c'hast, puten c'hast, tribledie gast etc. - these have become pretty much everyday expressions in the Revival and feature more or less prominently in all recent textbooks. Old ladies still mostly avoid these expressions like the plague, but that does not diminish their immense popularity with young speakers. Cornish gast an ast looks like a Bretonism, but even if it is it fits very well and neatly fills a gap in Cornish idiom. A real pity that Cicely did not call Agnes Davey whore bitch in Cornowok instead of English and that Barrington did not record any of the abuse heaped upon him by Dolly Pentreath. It may have prevented Jenner from getting the absurd idea that the Cornish were on the whole too noble a nation to swear at all.

For a collection of Neo-Cornish swear words, take a look at http://www.geocities.com/mollethi/ as long as it exists. We should probably offer Matthi to host it on the Kernewegva.

[branvras]

OK, a little exaggerated perhaps, but a reasonable charicature of the two camps?

It looks to be a very one-sided charicature, so no, I don't think it is reasonable . One side with its 'anything goes' approach is described in fairly ridiculous terms while the other side with its 'careful research and sympathetic extension' is described in wholly measured terms. That's not reasonable. But for me the basic premise is false. In my experience there aren't two camps. There is a whole range of opinions about this subject and I've yet to meet anyone that believes that something that has been challenged is correct just because they and other speakers use it. But the simple fact is, there are people that use Cornish every day and they use the words they use. For them, those words are 'suitable for usage in the 21st century' otherwise they wouldn't be using them - they would use something suitable. They will doubtless take note when an expert, or group of experts (should it ever come to pass that they can all agree), do some careful research on sympathetic extensions. My guess is that some of those extensions will be accepted and catch on and others won't. It's just a guess, but it seems to me that that's the way language works - words and phrases come in and out of fashion in a fairly unpredictable manner. And Cornish, as spoken today, is a language - regardless of any distinctive attributes it may have and labels people may assign to it.

[Evertype]

For a collection of Neo-Cornish swear words, take a look at http://www.geocities.com/mollethi/ as long as it exists. We should probably offer Matthi to host it on the Kernewegva.

What a splendid list. We could host it on Kernowek.net, if the author (who is?) will permit it.