Brythonic Celtic language indigenous to Cornwall From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cornish (Cornish: Kernewek) is a very old language from Cornwall in the southwest of England. Cornish is a Celtic language and is very similar to Welsh and is related to Gaelic.
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![]() | This article contains weasel words, vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. (July 2024) |
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A long time ago, Cornish was the only language spoken in Cornwall, but more and more people began to speak English, instead of Cornish. In 1550, when the prayer book was written in English instead of Latin, the Cornish people got angry and there was a rebellion. [source?]
By 1800, only a few people [weasel words] could speak Cornish.
People say that a woman called Dolly Pentreath [source?] was the last person who could speak Cornish. That is not quite true, but she was one of the last people to use it instead of English. [source?]
Cornish started to diverge from Welsh towards the end of the 7th century AD and the earliest known examples of written Cornish date from the end of the 9th century AD. These were in the form of glosses scribbled in the margins of a Latin text [source?]
Cornish is a language of the Brythonic language family, along with Welsh and Breton.
The words 'Cornwall' and 'Cornish' are derived from the Celtic Cornovii tribe who inhabited modern-day Cornwall prior to the Roman conquest. [source?]
Some people [weasel words] learned about Cornish by travelling around talking to people who could still speak it and by reading old plays and books. [source?] Some people [weasel words] wanted to learn the language and speak it and so in 1904 a learned man, Henry Jenner, wrote a book to help people. [source?] Some people [weasel words] then began to learn the language and speak it again. [source?]
No one knows how many Cornish-speakers there are now. [source?] It is estimated that about 300 people speak Cornish. [weasel words] Some young people [weasel words] have grown up speaking it. Most people in Cornwall know a few sentences or words in Cornish. [source?] In 100 years, Cornish has grown from almost no speakers to many thousands [source?]
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