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Kernewek/Kernowek/Kernuak/Curnoack

Simon on 04 Oct 2007

Language and Language revival and Cornish | Comments (3)

3 Responses to “Kernewek/Kernowek/Kernuak/Curnoack”

1. GeoffB on 05 Oct 2007 at 5:56 am #

   I recently picked up the Assimil Breton sans peine, and have been running into the same thing with Breton. I keep my own journal of what I’m learning in which I use the same spellings and vocabulary options throughout - I’ll speak it consistently if incorrectly!

   The Breton case is both encouraging and discouraging. It’s discouraging because they’ve been working at it some time without coming to a unified spelling. On the other hand, they’ve done some ingenious things to help the dialects pull together:

   In the Leon dialect, a “z” between vowels sounds as in English. But in most dialects, it doesn’t. The solution: write the “z”s in all dialects but don’t pronounce them outside of Leon. Then there’s a dialect split that even affects the name of the language: In most parts, they say “Brezoneg,” but in Vannetais, they say “Brehoneg.” (This comes from the same source as the word “Brythonic.”) The solution: It’s written “Brezhoneg,” honoring both pronunciations and giving all Breton speakers a way to know which sound they’re talking about. Because of tricks like this, while the different writing systems can be a challenge, they’re not insurmountable, and there’s some delightful symbolism in how the writing system brings the dialects together, instead of making their contrasts seem all the greater.

2. Pokorny on 06 Oct 2007 at 10:31 pm #

   @GeoffB:
   Kalon vat dit evit da studioù! Plijet bras on o welout ez eus tud er bed a-bezh hag a zo o teskin~ ar yezh vrav-man~.
   The problem with Cornish is a little different in that there are only two main dialects (Revived Middle Cornish and Revived Late Cornish) - but still more than one orthography for each of them. Only recently have there been attempts to design spelling systems which would be usable by speakers of both dialects, namely KS (Kernowak Standard) and KD (Kernewek Dasunys). In the case of Breton, the first interdialectal orthography, Peurunvan, was designed in the 1940s and a second one, Etrerannyezhel, in the 1970s. The Breton Spelling Debate from ca. 1950 to the present has basically been following ideological and not linguistic criteria. Only recently the balance seems to be shifting towards a universal recognition of Peurunvan - the system which first introduced the digraph. This is mainly due to the fact that the Diwan schools adopted Peurunvan early on. In the Cornish case, the decision about the future official orthography will be announced next week-end. Maybe this will, after a period of transition, make the spelling debate subside.

3. Howlsedhes Services on 21 Mar 2008 at 1:51 am #

   Here are two sites that will be developed as Cornish Language Resources.

   Online dictionary (still quite basic but already useful) :

   http://www.howlsedhes.co.uk/cgi-bin/diskwe.pl?hwilger=kernow

   A wiki for learners’ and reference material (nothing really there as I write, but please leave a comment to tell us what you need)

   http://kernewek.wikidot.com/