[Spellyans] Nance's purism (again)

[nicholas williams]

Agreed in all particulars.
Where I criticise Nance it is for ignoring words that are attested, and using words that are not, or do not mean what he wants them to mean.

Nicholas

On 2011 Gor 26, at 11:12, Craig Weatherhill wrote:

> To be fair, though, the texts we have probably only represent a fraction of what was once available, so we're making judgements on a very incomplete set of evidence.
> 
> Where there were gaps, Nance took educated guesses, so (for example) he included 'yeth' based upon Welsh 'iaith'.  When Tregear was discovered, there it was, as 'eyth'. The discovery of BK also exonerated Nance in several instances of words not previously attested.  Who knows what is to found in those documents still to be discovered?
> 
> While this information is more than valuable, it has to be remembered that Cornish is being revived and promoted for the 21st century.  New words will be coined.  Some already have been and are in use.  New preferences will be made and, in time, will be superseded by others.  Grammatical construction will undergo changes, too, because that is the nature of languages if they are to live and progress.
> 
> Some disagree with my view that place-name history is textual evidence that we should include, and that's one of my main reasons for collecting all the place-name evidence that I can find.  Let's face it, we need every scrap of evidence that's available to us.  That even includes words that don't occur in any known texts and we have no idea of their meaning.

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