Cornish Language

A Brythonic language, formerly spoken in the south of England, in what is now Cornwall, Devon, and western Somerset. Cornish is considered to be extinct because there are no longer any native speakers. However, there are efforts underway to revive it for use as a second language.

Cornish was called "Kernuak" by its speakers, who called themselves "Kernowyon". It is most closely related to Breton and had two dialects, Eastern and Western. From the 17th century, encroachment by English-speakers forced Cornish into decline, and the last native monoglot speakers most likely died in the late 1800s. The interest in reviving Cornish started in the late 19th century when research into what of the language was still being spoken began. In 1904 Henry Jenner of the British Museum published his Handbook of the Cornish Language, which was the first modern attempt at producing a Cornish Grammar. A "Unified" Cornish grammar was written by Robert Morton Nance in the 1930s based on medieval Cornish texts. Since the 1980s there have been various revisions of Unified Cornish, including Kernewek Kemmyn developed by Ken George which is an attempt at a more consistent phonemic orthography, and the more recent Unified Cornish Revised developed by Nicholas Williams. Another branch of Revived Cornish, also popularized in the 1980s as a result of dissatisfaction with Unified Cornish is Late or Modern Cornish, initially popularized by Richard Gendall, which is based on the language as it was spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Much more detailed information is available at: http://www.agantavas.com/

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