Cornish language

**Cornish** (Standard Written Form: *Kernewek* or *Kernowek*) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is a revived language, having become extinct as a living community language in Cornwall at the end of the 18th century. However, knowledge of Cornish, including speaking ability to a certain extent, continued to be passed on within families and by individuals, and a revival began in the early 20th century. The language has a growing number of second language speakers, and a very small number of families now raise children to speak revived Cornish as a first language. Cornish is currently recognised under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and the language is often described as an important part of Cornish identity, culture and heritage.

## Phonology

Cornish ceased to be spoken as a community language around 1800. The revival of the language is generally dated to the publication of Henry Jenner's *Handbook of the Cornish Language* (1904). Jenner's work aims to pick up where the language left off and, as such, is mainly based upon Late Cornish vernacular and Lhuyd. Since this time, a variety of other recommended phonologies have been proposed, based upon various target dates and different theoretical reconstructions.

* **Jenner's system**

Jenner's system is largely based on the phonology of late Cornish, and therefore is characterised by pre-occlusion, the loss of the rounded front vowels, and the raising of /a/ to [æ]. This system was used by the earliest revivalists, until it was replaced by Nance's Unified Cornish.

* **Unified Cornish**

Robert Morton Nance developed what came to be known as Unified Cornish from the 1930s. Nance based his system more on the earliest Middle Cornish texts, Pascon Agan Arluth and the Ordinalia. With a target date of around 1500, Nance's system is characterised by the addition of the rounded front vowel /y/ and a recommendation not to use pre-occluded forms.

* **Revived Late Cornish**

Mainly associated with Richard Gendall, who began to promote this system in the early 1980s, Revived Late Cornish again seeks to base its phonology upon an analysis of Lhuyd and the other Late Cornish sources.

* **Kernewek Kemmyn**

Developed mainly by Ken George following the publication of his thesis, *A Phonological History of Cornish* (1985), Kernewek Kemmyn again returns to a Middle Cornish target date. This system has a number of differences from Nance's reconstruction, including the addition of a second rounded front vowel /œ/, an additional vowel /o/, and a phonemic contrast between /i/ and /ɪ/. Also Kernewek Kemmyn is characterised by phonemic consonant length, half-long vowels in stressed penultima of polysyllables where appropriate, and a number of diphthongs which are not used in other systems.

Vowels

* **Unified Cornish Revised**

Nicholas Williams published his revision of Nance's system in the form of a grammar, Clappya Kernowek, and an English-Cornish Dictionary. UCR is notable for the absence of George's /o/ and /ɪ/ phonemes, lack of half-length, and a phonemic contrast between long and short vowels rather than consonants. However, it retains the /œ/ vowel of KK, which Unified Cornish does not use.

* **Standard Written Form**

The Standard Written Form, agreed in May 2008, was developed with the intention of allowing all users of previous systems to write as they pronounce the language. It attempts to represent the pronunciation systems of UC, UCR, KK and RLC in a single orthography. As such, it does not represent a single phonology, but seeks to cover a range of pronunciations based on a period of several hundred years.

* **Kernowek Standard (KS)**

Kernowek Standard is an orthography and recommended pronunciation developed mainly by Nicholas Williams and Michael Everson in response to perceived problems with the SWF. Like the SWF, it attempts to represent a diverse range of pronunciations, with the exception of KK, the recommended phonology of which is not catered for. Although it mainly differs from the SWF orthographically, it has a number of phonological features which distinguish it from the SWF.

Vowels