[Spellyans] Porth

[Eddie Climo]

On 24 Jul 2008, at 20:02, Michael Everson wrote:
> I have not seen it. What is it?

A series of books commissioned by the CLP for ab initio Primary  
School learners of Cornish. Have a look at
http://www.magakernow.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=44044
for details of the project. There are links on that URL to a couple  
of sample pages.

Fwiw, my take on the books, based on the 2 sample pages on MAGA's  
site is that:

-- the artwork is well done and attractive, 

-- the typography is poor in places: black text against medium cobalt  
sky is hard to read, and is a flaw that would be trivial to fix.

-- the story-lines are so politically correct they're utterly limp,

-- the mixing of fragments of Cornish in with much longer chunks of  
English is an awful way to try and teach a language.

-- the spelling is sometimes ludicrously anglicised. For instance, we  
find that English "Whee!" allegedly becomes *Cornish . . . "Whee!".  
This prompts 2 observations:
(1) SWF 'Main' Form has <hw> not <wh>, if memory serves me aright,
(2) it does not have Cornish <--ee> for the English /i:/ sound (as in  
E. 'tea', 'we'). In fact, I don't think SWF has <ee> at all, does it?

-- some of the 'Cornish' idioms sound strangely anglicised. Surely,  
E. "I can fly" would not normally be translated (as they do) "My a  
yll neija" but rather as "My a wor neija".

If I had kids of school age, I wouldn't be buying any of these for  
them (irrespective of the nasty SWF 'Main' Form orthography they've  
used).


Eddie Foirbeis Climo
- -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- -
Dres ethom akennow byner re bons lyeshes
Accenti non multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kernowek.net/pipermail/spellyans_kernowek.net/attachments/20080725/580c5150/attachment.htm>