[Spellyans] Yn...wir?

Craig Weatherhill craig at agantavas.org
Fri Mar 24 13:11:02 GMT 2017


Typo…..!  It should be NOW!

You might get them from the St Ives Times & Echo office, or I might be able to scan them in from the copies I have here.  If they'll fit onto an A4 scanner, because that's all I have.

Anowr,
Craig


On 2017 Mer 24, at 12:38, Ken MacKinnon wrote:

> Craig,
> ‘… no evidence…’  or: NOW evidence?
>  
> The articles in the St Ives Times & Echo look intriguing.  Can they be accessed?
>  
> -        An ken Ken
> -         
> From: Spellyans [mailto:spellyans-bounces at kernowek.net] On Behalf Of Herbie Blackburn
> Sent: 24 March 2017 10:53
> To: 'Standard Cornish discussion list'
> Subject: Re: [Spellyans] Yn...wir?
>  
> Great piece of history – thanks Craig.
>  
> eMail: kevin.blackburn1 at ntlworld.com
> P Please consider the environment before printing this eMail –  try re-cycling your clutter
>  
>  
> From: Spellyans [mailto:spellyans-bounces at kernowek.net] On Behalf Of Craig Weatherhill
> Sent: 24 March 2017 10:34
> To: Standard Cornish discussion list <spellyans at kernowek.net>
> Subject: Re: [Spellyans] Yn...wir?
>  
> I'e always maintained a soft spot for Late Cornish and have to say that the Late version of SWF actually does look rather good - far easier on the eye than Main Form.
>  
> Of course, it's not a "different language".  It's merely a later development of an ever-evolving tongue.  That it's associated with West Cornwall is, of course, because native speakers tended to be located there as the relentless domination of English pushed its use ever further west.
> There is no evidence to suggest that it survived well into the 19th century, and that at least two native speakers did not die until the early years of the 20th century.  One was still alive (aged 80) in 1914, 10 years after Jenner's handbook.  He stated that Cornish was the language used between children at play in the parish of Zennor where he was brought up, especially Boswednack, so he would have known Anne Berryman and John Davey (senior and junior).  This would have been during the 1840s.  The other lived within sight of my house:  Elizabeth Vingoe of Higher Boswarva, Madron, who died in 1902.  It was her nephew, Richard Hall, who interviewed Richard Mann of Boswednack and latterly St Just, in 1914.
>  
> We used to think that Mann's forename was John, but that was his brother who emigrated to America.  John Ellery Bodrugan discovered that his name was Richard.
>  
> The 18th and 19th century antiquarians only seem to have looked around the fishing ports, like Mousehole and Newlyn for native speakers.  They never went near remote parishes like Zennor, or the moorland parts of Madron!  There's a very strange late 18th century discrepancy, in that Dr William Borlase, rector of Ludgvan, stated that he knew of no one who could speak Cornish, and yet his own brother Walter, just 3 miles away at Castle Horneck, not only knew Dolly Pentreath, but wrote of her, and her Cornish speech to Daines Barrington!  It's not as though the two brothers never conversed.  They must have done, as William built his mineral grotto at Castle Horneck (it's still there!).
>  
> Last year, the St Ives Times and Echo published an extensive article over 2 weeks about John Davey, Junior, and J. Hobson Matthews who, it seems, conversed at length in Cornish.  The article was entitled "The Last Conversation in Cornish" and is quite detailed.
>  
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> Craig
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> On 2017 Mer 24, at 09:47, Daniel Prohaska wrote:
>  
> 
> Lowena dhe whei oll! 
>  
> Thank you for the interesting discussion. Very insightful and, as usual, Nicholas’s examples help a lot. And indeed this is what RLC speakers have been following, e.g. using ‹gwir› without the particle, dropping mixed mutation in favour of lenition, except common phrases such as ‹et ta›. 
>  
> On 23 Mar 2017, at 21:45, Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com> wrote:
>  
> On 23 Mar 2017, at 20:08, Harry Hawkey <bendyfrog at live.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Not quite sure what you mean. The adverbial particle 'yn' does not seem  to cause mixed mutation in late Cornish. Instead, if Lhuyd's examples are anything to go by, the mixed mutation is replaced by lenition, at least after 'yn’.
> 
> I don’t usually consider “Late Cornish” to be a different language. There are “late" features found in Pascon agan Arluth. Too much is made of the differences when it’s clear there are continua of varying features in the texts we have.
>  
> Indeed. What is often called a “Late” feature is often something Nance simply didn’t standardise in Unified Cornish. I do not consider Middle Cornish to be a different language from Late Cornish in as much as I do not consider literary Welsh to be a different language from a colloquial and/or dialectal form of Modern Welsh. I enjoy writing the Late Cornish based variant of the SWF because this is the pronunciation I prefer and I also like sticking up for the underdog ;-) 
>  
> 
> Typically we have “yn tâ” ‘well’, “yn few” ‘alive’ in Cornish though “yn vew” is also attested. Throughout all MSS of all periods we have a lack of expected mutation written. 
> 
> 
> Are you saying that, because there is no mixed mutation, it is not in fact the adverbial particle, but something else? Please explain.
> 
> I don’t know whether Lhuyd could distinguish what we write as “in” vs what we write as “yn” or not.
> Michael Everson
>  
> In the SWF/L we write ‹en› for both. 
>  
> Dan
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