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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face="Palatino Linotype"><span
lang=CY style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Palatino Linotype";color:navy'>Tobmas
wheg, <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face="Palatino Linotype"><span
lang=CY style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Palatino Linotype";color:navy'>‘Ma
whans dhebm a’th wolcobma jy dh’agan rol, y’wedh! Lowen o’vy dhe’th weles obma
ha meur ras dhis a’n geryow pur guv!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face="Palatino Linotype"><span
lang=CY style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Palatino Linotype";color:navy'>Dan<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face="Palatino Linotype"><span
lang=CY style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Palatino Linotype";color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=navy face="Palatino Linotype"><span
lang=CY style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Palatino Linotype";color:navy;
font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font size=2 color=navy
face="Palatino Linotype"><span lang=CY style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
"Palatino Linotype";color:navy'> Thomas Leigh<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> Monday, December 08, 2008
9:55 PM</span></font><font size=2 color=navy face="Palatino Linotype"><span
lang=CY style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Palatino Linotype";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Lowena dhewgh!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>My name is Thomas Leigh. Several list members already know me. I'm
American, raised in the Boston suburbs, currently living near Hartford,
Connecticut (roughly halfway between Boston and New York City). I have a
longstanding passion for languages in general, dating back to my youth, and a
deep interest in Celtic languages (and a few others) in particular. I have an
MA with Honours in Gaelic Studies from the University of Aberdeen (1998). I
speak Scottish Gaelic fairly fluently (though it gets ever rustier due to lack
of opportunities for use on this side of the pond), a fair bit of Manx, and
some Cornish. I've got a decent passive knowledge of Irish and read it with a
dictionary, though I have a hard time actually producing it.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I think I first discovered Cornish in the Aberdeen University library,
where there were several books on the language, including Jenner's Handbook and
Ken George's PSRC. While at home during one of the summer holidays I found
"Holyewgh an Lergh" and Caradar's "Cornish Simplified" in
the local foreign-language bookshop, though of course I knew nothing of UC
versus KK at the time, and was confused by the different spellings. I also
later on got hold of the KDL lessons for grades 1-3, and passed the first
grade exam back in 1999 or 2000. I believe it was the summer of 1997, when I
was about to enter my final year in Aberdeen, that I met and became friends
with Ben Bruch, who is the only real Cornish teacher I've had. I ended up
studying mostly KK, since that was the variety of Cornish that Ben used, and
also the variety that the majority of publications seemed to be written in —
practical rather than ideological reasons, in other words. I've since ended up
with a decent passive knowledge of Cornish — I read KK, UC and UCR with a
dictionary — but my active knowledge is much poorer, to my embarrassment (if
you think finding opportunities to speak Gaelic in North America is hard, try
finding opportunities to speak Cornish!)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I've been to Cornwall twice, once in 2000 for my honeymoon, and again
in 2002 with Ben for the Pennseythun in St. Austell. It was there that I
discovered that my (and Ben's) very textbook KK pronunciation was vastly
different from how every Cornish person there spoke, which caused me quite
a bit of anxiety for a long time afterwards (should I try to speak
like folk in Cornwall do, which was wrong from the prescriptive KK standpoint,
or should I continue to speak "proper" KK and not sound like anyone
in Cornwall?). <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I first heard Late Cornish four or five years ago, thanks to Dan
Prohaska, whom I met (so to speak) in some of the online Cornish forums and who
very generously took the time to send me scans of the first 40 or 50 pages of
Richard Gendall's "An Curnoack Hethow" (sp?) along with copies of the
cassette recordings, and I was instantly smitten. Listening to Gendall and
Dan speaking Cornish was quite a revelation for me, and I've since been trying
to learn as much as I can about Late Cornish — I managed to procure
copies of two of Gendall's more recent books ("Tavaz A
Ragadazow" and "Practical Modern Cornish 1"), and I discovered that
orthographic vagaries aside (though I rather like the look of Gendall's earlier
orthographies, perhaps because they remind me a lot of Manx, which is probably
my favourite language in the world) Late Cornish is really not at all so very
different from Middle Cornish. I'm having some trouble trying to adjust my
speech, though — some MC phonological features, such as front rounded vowels,
are so ingrained in my pronunciation habits that I can't seem to get rid of
them. I suspect I'll end up being completely "inauthentic"
(eccentric?) and using front rounded vowels, preocclusion, and third person
plural conjugated prepositions in -ans. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>As far as this list goes, I'm more interested in questions of usage and
style than in amending the SWF, though I want to remain current with your
(plural) work as one of my long-term goals in Cornish is to help produce
(write, translate, proofread, etc.) books in Cornish and for that I shall have
to know both the SWF as-is and SWF revised/KS, depending on who is putting
them out! So I will likely end up reading more than participating, but I'm sure
I'll have questions from time to time.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Gans oll ow holon vy,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Thomas / Tobmas<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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