[Spellyans] Tregear's Cornish

nicholas williams njawilliams at gmail.com
Tue Aug 24 12:21:33 BST 2010


Some words in TH have been adapted to Cornish phonetic type, like  
spryngya, lyftya. These can surely be used.
Interestingly <spryngya, speringya, springya> was confined to Tregear  
until BK was discovered. Now we have

A Christ, re be benegas!
Attomma fyntan spryngys BK 785-86.

Decevya 'deceive' is used by both TH and SA, but the first attestation  
is in Pascon agan Arluth: Pehadoryon rag perna
o desevijs dre satnas 'to redeem sinners who had been deceived by  
Satan' PA 5c. Rebukya is used frequently by TH but the first  
attestation again is in PA: ena y an rebukyas 'then they rebuked him'  
PA 112a and ef a ve veyll rebukis 'he was vilely rebuked' PA 156a.
I have not done a thorough word count, but it always seems to me that  
PA has proportionally more borrowed verbs than any other
text apart from TH and SA; yet in date of composition PA is the oldest  
MC text.
And when it comes to adverbs BK takes the biscuit with ha sekretly bew  
hedre vy ow ro theso a vyth clere 'and secretly as long as you live my  
gift to you will be clear' BK 638-40.

Again forsakya 'forsake' looks like one of Tregear's words; oddly  
enough it is used three times in BM, once by Nicholas Boson in JCH and  
only twice by TH.

The word attendya 'attend, pay attention to' occurs 14 times:
PA x 1
BM x 7
BK x 3
CW x 1
and twice in TH. So this word, though obviously a borrowing, is well  
established long before TH.

For 'disciple' we all learnt dyskybel, plural dyskyblon. I have been  
criticised for using the plural dyscyplys, as though the word came  
from TH.
It does of course, but the first attestations are zyscyplys PA 52a; PA  
55c and dysciplys PC 391.

Moreover TH has some excellent native words not found elsewhere in MC:

coltrebyn 'candlestick'; denlath 'murderers'; an hollsens 'all saints'.

We should perhaps not be too quick to condemn TH's vocabulary out of  
hand.

Nicholas

On 24 Est 2010, at 11:16, Craig Weatherhill wrote:

> I think we have to take great care which we adopt into Cornish, and  
> why we do so.

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