Modern Cornish (''Kernuack Nowedga'') is a variety of the revived Cornish language. It is sometimes called Revived Late Cornish (RLC) or ''Kernuack Dewethas'', to distinguish it from other forms of contemporary revived Cornish. When Unified Cornish came under heavy fire in the early 1980s, various attempts were made to rectify its problems. While some supporters stuck with original or modified UC, two main schisms arose, that of

Kernewek Kemmyn Kernewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish or "KK") is a variety of the revived Cornish language. Kernewek Kemmyn was developed, mainly by Ken George in 1986, based upon George's earlier doctoral thesis on the phonological history of Cornish. It takes muc ...

led by

Ken George Kenneth John George is a British oceanographer, poet, and linguist. He is noted as being the originator of Kernewek Kemmyn, an orthography for the revived Cornish language which he claims is more faithful to Middle Cornish phonology than its prec ...

, and that of Modern Cornish, led by Richard Gendall. Unlike

, which tended to go to medieval Cornish for inspiration, Modern Cornish uses the latest known forms of Cornish from the 17th and 18th centuries from writers such as Nicholas Boson, John Boson, William Rowe, Thomas Tonkin and others, and Anglo-Cornish dialect words of Brittonic origin. Proponents of

claim that the later forms of Cornish are corrupt and anglicised, but supporters of Modern Cornish such as

Cussel an Tavas Kernuak Cussül an Tavas Kernôwek (formerly ''Cussel an Tavas Kernûak''; the Cornish Language Council) is an association founded in 1987 to teach, research and further the Cornish language in Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow), UK. Since the adoption of a Stand ...

counter this by saying that they are continuing the natural evolution of the tongue where it left off. The

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

of Modern Cornish is a standardisation of the English-influenced orthographies of Cornish writers of the 17th and 18th centuries, and its grammar is more

periphrastic In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...

than that of Middle Cornish-based varieties. It retains a number of English borrowings discarded by Kemmyn and Unified, e.g. ''wolcum'' instead of ''dynargh'' for 'welcome'. It makes sparing use of accents and diacritical marks. For instance, the word for 'good' typically spelt ''dâ,'' could also be written ''daa,'' and the word for 'month' could be spelt ''mîz'' or ''meez''.

is the governing body of Modern Cornish. The need for standard spelling when learning a language has led Cussel an Tavas Kernuak to adopt the Modern Cornish spelling standardised by Gendall and Neil Kennedy. Modern Cornish provided a source of input into the creation of the Standard Written Form of Cornish in 2008.

Example text

The following is a letter by William Bodinar, written in 1776, translated into Modern Cornish.

References

* ''A Student's Grammar of Modern Cornish'' by R.R.M. Gendall (The Cornish Language Council, 1991) * ''Tavas a Ragadazow: The Language of My Forefathers'' by Richard Gendall (Teer ha Tavas, 2000)

External links

Cussel an Tavas Kernuak website
with information on Modern Cornish and learning materials {{Cornish language Cornish language Cornish language revival