>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<

If so, Lawrence, Cornish syntax also survives in Leicester as they use
exactly the same constructioin here: 'Going pictures' etc.

best

Dave


----- 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