My mother is Welsh (caerphilly and Treherbert via London). When I was
growing up, we used to listen to the welsh sunday evening service on
Radio Wales. I can still hear those voices if I listen hard enough.
I remember those phases you mention - particularly 'never you mind',
also 'down by yer' and 'listen now' - and, like you, still find myself
using them.
Dylan Thomas was a great influence on me growing up. I listened to
Under Milkwood avidly.
From the Devon side, I get a profusion of 'the's and 'to' as in 'where
be going to?' I still have to elide the 'the's from my poetry - it's
purely an emphasis device. I've just noticed, I' ve used 'the' instead
of 'my' as in 'from my Devon side...' bugger I usually have to go back
again and again to elide/replace the extraneous 'the's.
When I was young I was taken to various village halls where tales in
dialect were told to great delight - this was the 60s and the
'revolution' bypassed us completely - stuff which would make me cringe
now...
Potters TV plays - in particular, the Singing Detective - struck me
with its usage of the local accent (strike the the from local - see
what I mean?). The voices seem strange to me, even though,
geographically, the characters were set in a place no more than 200
miles hence.
Roger
On 3/12/06, Joanna Boulter <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> As I've probably said here before, my mother was Anglo-Welsh. She spoke
> barely a few words of Welsh, which wasn't a cultural thing in Swansea in the
> first few decades of last century -- hence Dylan Thomas didn't speak it
> either. What was very noticeable in her speech, all her life, was what I
> used to suppose was a sort of mixed-language dialect, but which might well
> have been an Anglo-Welsh syntax. She would say things like 'over by here'
> (pronounced 'yere') and 'never you mind'; and instead of saying'I don't
> believe believe you' it'd be 'Don't tell your lies', which made it sound as
> though lying was habitual. The strange thing is, though, that despite living
> my whole life in England I still find myself using these expressions.
>
> joanna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lawrence Upton" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 11:43 PM
> Subject: Re: help--translation query
>
>
> I'd say not, Knut. Or they're keeping it quiet, like everyone hiding behind
> the curtains and NOT jumping out yelling surprise!
>
> The awareness of Cornwall being truly different to "the rest of England" is
> limited, can be contentious - first thing you see as one crosses from
> Plymouth is a union flag painted on a house and it's a mile or 2 before I
> see a Cornish flag; and in part at least that must be due to the degree to
> which the language has been widely lost. Someone pointed out that it
> survives in the syntax so you'll hear people say "Going Truro, are you?"
> which I am *told is Cornish syntax
>
> I wouldnt know. Ive kept meaning to learn more, but it's difficult because I
> have been yo-yoing between the SE and the SW for more than ten years and so
> don't fit any classes. There are too few speakers to just pick it up
>
> And so few people have that syntax within them because the Cornish are a
> diaspora.
>
> It started out much as with Wales, I think. Exeter in S Devon was a "Cornish
> city" (the Roman regional capital) till the 9th century - and the Duchy of
> Cornwall too spreads further than the county indicating partly the degree to
> which the English have pushed the Cornish language back.
>
> But there doesn't seem to have been an equivalent lit tradition - if there
> was a substantial Cornish lit tradition, then it is lost. Nothing like the
> Welsh ap Gwilym for instance. There wasn't really enough written Cornish to
> work with when it was consciously revived
>
> There are some miracle plays, largely centred on a Glasney monastery near
> Falmouth and performed in the _playing places_ (2 left) around this area
> till the use of the vernacular was seen as revolutionary - all in the West.
> Place names in the east and central Cornwall are frozen in early forms of
> the language indicating that English took over early
>
> The bible was never translated into Cornish and that has been offered as an
> explanation for lack of a literature. To be monoglot Cornish was to be poor
> and few made a living here. How long did Humphrey Davy stay in Penzance? Not
> long
>
> There are people writing poetry in Cornwall. Possibly all those not making
> pasties; but there is some noteworthy poetry being made. Peter Redgrove, for
> instance, now dead, who lived in Falmouth for many years & the poet Penelope
> Shuttle, who was married to Redgrove - I saw her read here a few months ago
>
> Charles Causley, from Launceston, was, I think, a very fine poet... But I
> don't think it's Anglo-Cornish...
>
> Nicki Jackowska lived here many years
>
> This is pathetic - there are so many more, but I can't think
>
> There are poets writing in Cornish... I rely on translations and haven't
> been knocked over by any but would happily plead previous ignorance if I saw
> something I really liked. It would be exciting
>
> I spent a couple of weeks in and around Tenby in S Wales a few years back
> and was struck by the degree to which Welsh was being spoken as a matter of
> course - as compared to the situation the last time I had been there in the
> late 60s. And it seemed to me there was a pride with it - whereas before I
> had been aware of a suspicion of the Englishman before, now it was upfront
> and they switched to English courteously and then back. Maybe it was just
> that before I was a surly teenager...
>
> Anyway the sense of being a small country with its own traditions and
> language really has gone from here or been turned into trinkets.
>
> I find it useful, increasingly so; to work with that worked at awareness but
> it's a way of psyching myself and it's not a widespread enthusiasm.
>
> And the reality is I'm pacing the lanes with a south london whine in my
> voice...
>
> I might know ... er... penvounder really means end of the lane for all it
> rolls off the tongue or that chy an venton means something like house with
> its own spring, but if all the Cornish started speaking Cornish only I
> couldnt even get a cup of tea. My Cornish comes from place name history
>
> The association with artists comes largely from the Newlyn and St Ives
> Schools + a general sense that being in a beautiful place - and it's still
> an acquired taste for many, especially when you just want a loaf and the
> shop's two miles away - is somehow more aesthetic. A friend of mine who
> moved back to London after 15 years prophesied I wouldnt stand it when I
> largely abandoned London and is amazed that I am really content. (Alaric
> Sumner wrote to someone that one would always miss the city but after three
> years you can't leave - mind you he was planning to move to New York!)
>
> I've quoted somewhere being on a bus and hearing a teenager go ah! look! a
> pony and her mates laugh yelling That's a foal you daft f-ing cow! And then
> a long conversation in which the child of the farm disavowed all knowledge
> of nature. An urban mentality -
>
> I have been asked - and Alaric Sumner records being asked - How do you know
> the way home? when the distance is less than 10 miles, there is only one
> road fully one carriage wide and to go off it anyway takes you into hills or
> the sea.
>
> I don't think there is any great wide awareness of the landscape we are in
> rather than on. On the major dates of the Cornish calendar - Golowan at
> Midsummer, Crying the Neck at Harvest, there's always a scramble to find
> someone to say the Cornish bits
>
> So... there isnt a tradition and it's possibly dying out anyway!!
>
> Wish it weren't so
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Knut Mork Skagen <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Saturday, March 11, 2006 10:10 PM
> Subject: Re: help--translation query
>
>
>
> In the hopes you'll excuse a furriner's ignorance -- is there a strong
> Anglo-Cornish literary tradition today, or is it visibly being
> assimilated into the native English, and any more (or less) threatened
> than, say, the Anglo-Welsh?
>
> Poetry Wales has, at least, often impressed me with its awareness of
> blurred cultural lines, and of other subcultures and mixed language
> groups scattered around both Europe and elsewhere.
>
> --Knut
>
--
http://www.badstep.net/
http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
|