The broad, flat sounds, compared to British English, and the rhotic r that you hear in this Cornish miner's speech reminds me where the American accent comes from. So many American Colonists came over from Cornwall and the West country. (I don't know a word of any Celtic language, so couldn't understand what this man was saying. But I'm a U.S. Anglophone, and the sounds of his Cornish remind me of American English.)
Very glad the language lives! My Granny, a Penzance girl born in 1888, and *our* miner Grandad would speak it to keep us kids out of the conversation - their accents were much thcker & deeper though, even in their English. Da to this kind den for braving to speak it (and getting me to finally sign up on UA-cam!). Dyw genes, all.
Breton,Cornish and Welsh sound similar and share words because they both come from the same language (brythonic) the language of the native Britons but they were separated from each other when the Anglo-Saxons invaded. Brittany,Cornwall,Wales 3 nation's 1 people.
Wales, Cornwall and Brittany are Brythonic before the Anglo Saxons invaded Britain mostly all the Brythonics lived in what is now called England, most of the Britons were forced west into what is now called Wales and the others were forced into what is now Cornwall the Bretons left Cornwall and migrated to what is now Brittany.
I couldn't understand a single word he said, but I loved it because he's walking around in mine in Cornwall and I just finished watching Poldark. Now I'm obsessed with this area and its people. So, thank you.
Hehe ye, it might be because it just sort of blends in with the cultural history of Cornish mining I think. Maybe I'm wrong but ye it sounds a bit spooky!
He basicly says, 'i agreed to do something in cornish in front of a camera because they kept asking me all day every day of the week. So here we are under the ground in a mine near Helston' *creepy music*
craig weatherhill the hobby Cornish spoken an hour a week by a few is not the same as the Cornish which was spoken naturally by a few hundred before dying out. It's hobby Cornish and i have never heard anybody using it in Cornwall at all.
Craig sweetheart it would be lovely if people in Cornwall really did say that, but sadly they don't. I occasionally reap hay from my field with a scythe and pitchfork, but I'm under no illusion that my doing it makes it a current agricultural practice- it just means I'm a hobbyist with an eye for the romantic. The death of the Cornish language is sad, but no one in Cornwall has any genuine interest in keeping it alive.
I love listening to this man talk, i feel like as a native English speaker i should be able to understand him if I listen closely but when I do I am reminded that this foreign language is so close yet so far from my own mother tongue, fascinating
Cornish probably sounder less anglicised then this back in the old old days.......but cornish was always softer than the harsh welsh words.....this is from a cymro/welshman :)
My family has deep Cornish roots. They immigrated to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, which is one of the most Cornish towns in the USA. I don't think anyone there speaks the language, though. I am glad to hear this tongue even though I don't understand it. Languages are so rich and diverse, but being lost to this corporate monoculture. They should ALL be preserved!
@@deanawade5878 Mother's side of the family were the Granges. Dad's side of the family was Prussian. Mineral Point is pretty much the pasty capital of the US.
Celtic culture is really so rich! Every time you discover something new. I am a philologist by my education... so it's really amazing in the sense of language too!!!
Well spoken by a lovely guy. Brings back memories of my time at South Crofty, and all the great guys who worked there.Will look you up next time I am back home Gus, still working in Africa at the moment. Phil Phillips (Penguin)
Honestly,the Cornish movement is friendly and welcoming , just misunderstood throughout the rest of the country we are loving, compassionate people. dyw genes everyone!
Example we say in west cornwall, ''Going Truro are e'' which may sound bad English but good Cornish grammar! Cornish was extinct in everyday speaking but research and local family/place names is enough to accurately bring the language back to eveyday usage!
Breton is extremely close to Cornish, though, possibly even closer than Cornish to Welsh. The links between the 2 areas goes back to the stone age after all
Right, you. "Tir ha Tavaz," the name of a Cornish group, can be read by a Welshman since it is "Tir a Tafod" in Welsh. (One trick is, wherever you see a zed in Cornish, change it to a d, dd, or th, and the word becomes Welsh.)
Very interesting as a Welshman and fluent though non native speaker that uses Welsh more than English that is actually really useful info (I'm trying to think of things and speak mainly in Welsh to make it more of a native language to me and English less so)
I came here after starting to read From Cornwell to Maryland, by Mona Gartrell. Mona is Married to a Gartrell and wrote this fictional book based on historic ppl. I'm actually a direct decedent of the ppl she speaks of here in the US. As I was reading the book I kept seeing the cornish language and I had to hear how it sounds.
@groinhat This is Gus Williams, he REALLY is a miner, Used to mine crofty and I believe wheal Jane before their closure. He now runs the old Holmans Test mine which is used by CSM students like myself for field study. He knows his stuff and it's very handy to have someone as experienced as Gus to show us all the ropes. Subtitles would be handy though!
This sounds so close to English but also decidedly not English enough and it makes my brain hurt. It’s like playing an Ace Attorney game when the Americans talk
@Solstisol I think you're missing the point of the revival of Celtic languages. We aren't doing it for practical reasons, we are doing it to preserve our culture. I speak English and Welsh and while English is more practical in the wider world, the Welsh language I feel is my main ancestral language and part of my culture which needs preserving. If the entire world decided to speak only one language and consisted of only one culture it would have no colour.
The decendants of the Cornish people are found all over the Eastern Seaboard of the United States; mostly waterman and woman, who make there living on the water. The accent is very noted in the Chesapeake Bay areas of Smith and Tangier Islands.
Good on you. My Dad, who was a Cornish miner who took us to Tanganyika in 1951, died of malaria when I was 5. Everyone spoke about him, and how he could speak Cornish. There's some pictures oh him on my youtube video.
Ok, I understand some of that, but as a Texan, I can tell you, the French language in Louisiana hasn't been killed and has not been actively removed. A lot of it has morphed into sub-dialects of French that many call Creole. True, most Louisianans speak English, but it's not as a result of an active campaign to strip them of the language. Now, in reference to Native American languages inside of the United States, that is so, but it's not the case with French. Still, I understand your view.
I am Cornish from west Penwith and I can tell that we used to and have many dialects and sayings that are not English. Dha Weles, just look at the place names!!
... one comment here from a fellow Englishman and linguist polyglot; although our lingo is quite nice I must state that there are plenty of languages more elegant, rich and complex than the grammatically simplistic Anglo-Danish French Fries that we hold in our speech organ ...
Sometimes he starts a sentence with something that sounds almost Spanish - "pues..." I wonder if there's any connection whatsoever? Fascinating and beautiful!!
This is fascinating. I was under the impression that there were no Cornish speakers left. Obviously I am wrong. I thought I read that the last person who spoke Cornish as a first language had died in my lifetime.
Dydh da. I am Cornish and that is what they taught me in school too. Dolly Pentreath was her name. But it's actually the case that some speakers continued into the 20th century, thus overlapping the start of the revival movement.
Charles Lawrence Thank you, Mr Lawrence. When I left that comment I didn't realize that Ms. Pentreath died in 1777. I'm not actually that old. LOL. Gald to see Cornish is being spoken in 2014. My Mother was from North Wales where in her childhood she was forbidden to speak Welsh. Its made a comeback now and its spoken in the South as well. Cheers.
@charliepeto Dolly Pentreath, passed away in 1777, not 1897. The Cornish language had a small revival starting in 1904, but there are very few people who're native speakers of the language.
In West Cornwall we would always use 'scat' instead of leggit when we were children. I think scat is a form of a drum beat maybe that's from when we rebelled against the English!
Our language may be dead as in speaking, but in place names and cornish slang not so! Anybody interested please contact me and i will try to help you! Peace and Love!!
Well in the old western films you hear pard alot and it is used in Cornwall but not as much nowadays, i think it was picked up when we emigrated for mining in the USA.
Hardly two generations since the practice of the 'Welsh Knot' ( a sort of 'dunce's cap' for Welsh children speaking Welsh in school), Welsh language is now taught in school. Is Cornish taught in Cornish schools? Could it be?
The last known native speaker (before the revival) died in 1777, but it is believed that there were elderly people who had some understanding of it even up until the late 1890's, unfortunately to the eternal shame of the philologists (language researchers) around at the time, they didn't bother to send anybody to do proper research into the dialects and the language while it was still remembered. About 100 years or so after it 'died' a few dedicated researchers began to piece it back together.
@charliepeto No, he wasn't a native Cornish speaker. He was Cornish and had quite good knowledge of the Cornish language. The last "native" speaker (meaning it was her mother tongue, & she didn't speak English) was, to my knowledge, Dolly Pentreath, who died about the time you mention, I think. speakswahilidammit 23 seconds ago
"probably spoke thousands of years ago". Well, rather than guessing and getting it wrong, why don't you find out? Cornish was spoken well into the 1800s, and has now been revived again. So people do speak it now.
@chelseamrb65 That's because that's what it is. Cornish is related to Welsh and Breton. Shelta (Pikey) and Gaelic are also related, but a little more distantly.
@squirell1952 It's semantically accurate. They weren't England's mountains and pastures then, but they are now. We still call pre-Columbian America 'America'.
How do we know what the original accent for Cornish was? Or accents? I lived in Wales for a while and studied the Welsh language. The accent varied from north to south, but it was distinctly its own. You could tell if an American or another English speaker was speaking it. I saw another video in which a fluent speaker of Cornish was speaking with a very broad southern England accent--very lax vowels. In a revived language, does one also insist on a uniform accent? a taut quality to the vowels, for instance, as in Welsh? Doesn't it have to SOUND Celtic? What is the SOUND of Cornish?
Richard gendall has videos on UA-cam, he's studied it for fifty Years and has probably the best idea of how it should sound; the Welsh and Cornish English accents would have developed from the way the Celtic languages were spoken (very evident in Welsh) so that helps some way to reconstructing the language
We know what old Cornish accents sounded like, at a time when Cornwall was still largely bilingual. How? The Cornish settled the Smith Islands, USA in the mid 1600s. Their accent is still similar, given some changes and influences of Carolina English on Smith Island accents. So the Cornish dialect is a good indicator. Plus listen to old Breton, as spoken by older Bretons, not the modern French influenced Breton. Breton came from Cornish, and they were mutually intelligible in the 18th C, several records of that from the time. Plus I spoke to a Breton speaker a few years ago who was able to understand spoken Cornish.
@@deanawade5878 Yes, we know the collapse of the mining industry resulted in over 250,000 people leaving Cornwall, with many also leaving west Devon, in the mid to late 19th C, but that does not replace the fact that many left to the Americas from the mid 17th C. As a result of Cornwall and Devon being the main sea fairing region of Britain.
Right on pard! The very name of this country comes from the Cornish language; English - Britain, Kernewek (Cornish) - Brython, named so after the language of the Britons, the real Brits. And that is fact and history. Kernow Bys Vyken!
this sounds like when someone is speaking english to you but you aren't paying attention at all
Wikipedia said its extinct !
I love the menacing tone of this vid.
I picked up on the menace too!!! Celtic magic at work!!!!!
Same
As a londoner I say please dont ever lose your Language,keep it going.
Cornwall ,I love you.
It already died, there are no native speakers.
@@Rolando_Cueva it does have native speakers.
@@Rolando_Cueva it has native speakers, all are young children aged 4 - 10. Cornish is on a strong revival
That's good to hear (I'm learning Gaelg/Manx)
@@katieb2931 glè mhath a charaid!
The broad, flat sounds, compared to British English, and the rhotic r that you hear in this Cornish miner's speech reminds me where the American accent comes from. So many American Colonists came over from Cornwall and the West country. (I don't know a word of any Celtic language, so couldn't understand what this man was saying. But I'm a U.S. Anglophone, and the sounds of his Cornish remind me of American English.)
Love Gus i have a lot of time for this guy as i not only spent 3 years at CSM with him, he also made me learn Cornish.
Common men of England, Kernow, Alba, Cymru, Eire. Rise up and fight damn it, fight!
Don't forget Ellan Vannin (Isle of Man)
Very glad the language lives! My Granny, a Penzance girl born in 1888, and *our* miner Grandad would speak it to keep us kids out of the conversation - their accents were much thcker & deeper though, even in their English. Da to this kind den for braving to speak it (and getting me to finally sign up on UA-cam!). Dyw genes, all.
Oll an gwella, Pixye!
Cornish Dialect and Language are not the same - Cornish died out in the 1800's, only to be resurrected/reinvented in the 1920's …
I support a revival of this rich and ancient language.
Breton,Cornish and Welsh sound similar and share words because they both come from the same language (brythonic) the language of the native Britons but they were separated from each other when the Anglo-Saxons invaded. Brittany,Cornwall,Wales 3 nation's 1 people.
+alan wxm Thank you for that information .
Very true. Wales,Cornwall and Brittany are all Brythonic.
Wales, Cornwall and Brittany are Brythonic before the Anglo Saxons invaded Britain mostly all the Brythonics lived in what is now called England, most of the Britons were forced west into what is now called Wales and the others were forced into what is now Cornwall the Bretons left Cornwall and migrated to what is now Brittany.
Devon and Cumbria were are Brythonic speaking well into the Middle Ages. Cumbria and Cymru have the same etymology.
What about the Manx?
I couldn't understand a single word he said, but I loved it because he's walking around in mine in Cornwall and I just finished watching Poldark. Now I'm obsessed with this area and its people. So, thank you.
Why is this music so spooky? Was the miner saying spooky things?
Charlie Bury Bloody hilarious! This tickled me!
Hehe ye, it might be because it just sort of blends in with the cultural history of Cornish mining I think. Maybe I'm wrong but ye it sounds a bit spooky!
Right? This could be a video for a creepypasta taking place in a mine and nobody would know any different. (Well, except for people who speak Cornish)
The Cornish flag it's powerfull and menacing at the same time,black flags are rare.
He basicly says, 'i agreed to do something in cornish in front of a camera because they kept asking me all day every day of the week. So here we are under the ground in a mine near Helston' *creepy music*
It's great to hear the Cornish language, or as they say in Cornwall, "It's great to hear the cornish language"
Actually we say: Da yw genev dhe glowes an yeth Kernowek.
craig weatherhill the hobby Cornish spoken an hour a week by a few is not the same as the Cornish which was spoken naturally by a few hundred before dying out. It's hobby Cornish and i have never heard anybody using it in Cornwall at all.
Craig sweetheart it would be lovely if people in Cornwall really did say that, but sadly they don't. I occasionally reap hay from my field with a scythe and pitchfork, but I'm under no illusion that my doing it makes it a current agricultural practice- it just means I'm a hobbyist with an eye for the romantic. The death of the Cornish language is sad, but no one in Cornwall has any genuine interest in keeping it alive.
Celtic Revival / Adfywiad Celtaidd thank you for spreading the truth. Go raibh míle maith agat.
@@chrisd8183 Da lowr, sows, ke y'n mor.
We Cornish salute our Welsh brothers too! Dyw genes!
I love listening to this man talk, i feel like as a native English speaker i should be able to understand him if I listen closely but when I do I am reminded that this foreign language is so close yet so far from my own mother tongue, fascinating
Nowhere near English. It’s evolved from Welsh
Cornish probably sounder less anglicised then this back in the old old days.......but cornish was always softer than the harsh welsh words.....this is from a cymro/welshman :)
My family has deep Cornish roots. They immigrated to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, which is one of the most Cornish towns in the USA. I don't think anyone there speaks the language, though. I am glad to hear this tongue even though I don't understand it. Languages are so rich and diverse, but being lost to this corporate monoculture. They should ALL be preserved!
so what are the surnames of your Cornish folks? Mine went to Galena, Jo Daviess Illinois and then to Wisconsin.
@@deanawade5878 Mother's side of the family were the Granges. Dad's side of the family was Prussian. Mineral Point is pretty much the pasty capital of the US.
@@deanawade5878so there isn’t just a cornwall in England… crazy…. love from Cornwall in England to cornwall in America brother🤝
I imagine this is what English sounds to non-English speakers
Not at all. The Brythonic languages (Welsh, Cornish and Breton) sound nothing like Germanic English. Totally different.
Whats with the ominous music? Jesus, is he telling a ghost story in Cornish?
No, he was talking about water leaking into the mine through the rocks.
Beautiful language- some of my ancestors were tin miners from Cornwall, who migrated to Australia.
I'm a proud tin miners' daughter and miss the land of my birth, nobody does a good spontaneous sing along down the pub like us Cornish do
Celtic culture is really so rich! Every time you discover something new. I am a philologist by my education... so it's really amazing in the sense of language too!!!
Elvish - it lives
Well spoken by a lovely guy. Brings back memories of my time at South Crofty, and all the great guys who worked there.Will look you up next time I am back home Gus, still working in Africa at the moment. Phil Phillips (Penguin)
What a treasure this language is. God bless
@iantonowful Cornish is being reborn, so to speak, the last native speaker of the original Cornish people passed away in the 1770's.
I can pick up a little bit of this, (being from North Wales). Very interesting ;)
Honestly,the Cornish movement is friendly and welcoming , just misunderstood throughout the rest of the country we are loving, compassionate people.
dyw genes everyone!
Love thia ancient Celtic language!! Thank you
this is what people who dont speak english hear when we speak english
if your are from Cornwall be proud please post more videos to show this fantastic Celtic country
Example we say in west cornwall, ''Going Truro are e'' which may sound bad English but good Cornish grammar! Cornish was extinct in everyday speaking but research and local family/place names is enough to accurately bring the language back to eveyday usage!
Yo, dawg, I hear you liked Cornish...
Breton is extremely close to Cornish, though, possibly even closer than Cornish to Welsh. The links between the 2 areas goes back to the stone age after all
Brittany was settled by Cornish people fleeing Anglo-Saxon occupation after all
Right, you. "Tir ha Tavaz," the name of a Cornish group, can be read by a Welshman since it is "Tir a Tafod" in Welsh. (One trick is, wherever you see a zed in Cornish, change it to a d, dd, or th, and the word becomes Welsh.)
Very interesting as a Welshman and fluent though non native speaker that uses Welsh more than English that is actually really useful info (I'm trying to think of things and speak mainly in Welsh to make it more of a native language to me and English less so)
I came here after starting to read From Cornwell to Maryland, by Mona Gartrell. Mona is Married to a Gartrell and wrote this fictional book based on historic ppl. I'm actually a direct decedent of the ppl she speaks of here in the US. As I was reading the book I kept seeing the cornish language and I had to hear how it sounds.
@groinhat
This is Gus Williams, he REALLY is a miner, Used to mine crofty and I believe wheal Jane before their closure. He now runs the old Holmans Test mine which is used by CSM students like myself for field study. He knows his stuff and it's very handy to have someone as experienced as Gus to show us all the ropes.
Subtitles would be handy though!
We are strange, we are misunderstood, but dig deep enough and you you will see
brotherhood.
peace, Kernow bys vyken.
Officially the most Cornish thing ever
Amen! I ffel ya, I'm from the Basque country, I feel just the same!
he seems like a nice, humble man.
Diolch yn fawr, o Gymru! Twll din bob Sais! Merci, gracias, grazie, danke!
This sounds so close to English but also decidedly not English enough and it makes my brain hurt. It’s like playing an Ace Attorney game when the Americans talk
My family worked up till the last Gevor mine closure and back before the Levant mine disaster!
Crib time boys!!
Well geez, how corny can you get ?
(sorry, couldn't help myself)
Kernow looks like a lovley place to visit, this makes me want to learn my peoples language, Ulster Scots.
keep this culture and language alive
At a distance you would think he is speaking Irish
@Solstisol
I think you're missing the point of the revival of Celtic languages. We aren't doing it for practical reasons, we are doing it to preserve our culture. I speak English and Welsh and while English is more practical in the wider world, the Welsh language I feel is my main ancestral language and part of my culture which needs preserving. If the entire world decided to speak only one language and consisted of only one culture it would have no colour.
But like me my grandmother passed on to me the cornish language!
Obviously not fluent but in the know, St.just-Pendeen area!
Splaan!!
The decendants of the Cornish people are found all over the Eastern Seaboard of the United States; mostly waterman and woman, who make there living on the water. The accent is very noted in the Chesapeake Bay areas of Smith and Tangier Islands.
I believe, the American accent is related to the west country English,dialect
Good on you. My Dad, who was a Cornish miner who took us to Tanganyika in 1951, died of malaria when I was 5. Everyone spoke about him, and how he could speak Cornish. There's some pictures oh him on my youtube video.
Exactly. Gobbledegook, but nice sounding, especially when drunk or stoned.
Ok, I understand some of that, but as a Texan, I can tell you, the French language in Louisiana hasn't been killed and has not been actively removed. A lot of it has morphed into sub-dialects of French that many call Creole. True, most Louisianans speak English, but it's not as a result of an active campaign to strip them of the language. Now, in reference to Native American languages inside of the United States, that is so, but it's not the case with French. Still, I understand your view.
I am Cornish from west Penwith and I can tell that we used to and have many dialects and sayings that are not English. Dha Weles, just look at the place names!!
... one comment here from a fellow Englishman and linguist polyglot; although our lingo is quite nice I must state that there are plenty of languages more elegant, rich and complex than the grammatically simplistic Anglo-Danish French Fries that we hold in our speech organ ...
Love the doom music at the beginning.
The celts shall rise again
Sometimes he starts a sentence with something that sounds almost Spanish - "pues..." I wonder if there's any connection whatsoever? Fascinating and beautiful!!
Indo-European
Ohh, I see Cornish people are magical and can be found in enchanted mines.
This must be what english sounds like to foreigners
i would love to learn all the old celtic languages cornish welsh manx irish and scottish gaelic cant stand the thought of them being lost for ever
This is fascinating. I was under the impression that there were no Cornish speakers left. Obviously I am wrong. I thought I read that the last person who spoke Cornish as a first language had died in my lifetime.
Dydh da. I am Cornish and that is what they taught me in school too. Dolly Pentreath was her name.
But it's actually the case that some speakers continued into the 20th century, thus overlapping the start of the revival movement.
Charles Lawrence Thank you, Mr Lawrence. When I left that comment I didn't realize that Ms. Pentreath died in 1777. I'm not actually that old. LOL. Gald to see Cornish is being spoken in 2014. My Mother was from North Wales where in her childhood she was forbidden to speak Welsh. Its made a comeback now and its spoken in the South as well. Cheers.
Splann!
The pleasure is all mine Sir
Charles Lawrence Nadelik Lowen ha Blydhen Nowydh Da
Bledhen nowyth da my friend
I remember Gus Well he was our surveying Technician, top Guy, helped the B.Eng group @ Great Condurow and King Edward Mine in the early 90's ;-)
@charliepeto Dolly Pentreath, passed away in 1777, not 1897. The Cornish language had a small revival starting in 1904, but there are very few people who're native speakers of the language.
In West Cornwall we would always use 'scat' instead of leggit when we were children. I think scat is a form of a drum beat maybe that's from when we rebelled against the English!
john stevens
Scat is or was used in other places than Cornwall. Might it not be a shortening of the word scatter?
Our language may be dead as in speaking, but in place names and cornish slang not so! Anybody interested please contact me and i will try to help you!
Peace and Love!!
good input. could be vital.
Greetings
Wish I'd studied Cornish back in school! At least I visited Grass Valley, CA.
he sounds like he's speaking swedish with an irish accent. what even
I thought it sounded like he was speaking nonsense (in so much as i didn't understand any of it) with a cornish accent.
@SirHoratioNelson That's my favourite beer too!
Well in the old western films you hear pard alot and it is used in Cornwall but not as much nowadays, i think it was picked up when we emigrated for mining in the USA.
yeah, i live i cornwall and i wish i could learn how to speek it :(
This sounds exactly like English except you can't understand a word. XD
Very true.
multiple primary schools are attempting to teach cornish
@helltopay1 Thank you!! It's great to be loved.
Nice opinion tool.
Hardly two generations since the practice of the 'Welsh Knot' ( a sort of 'dunce's cap' for Welsh children speaking Welsh in school), Welsh language is now taught in school. Is Cornish taught in Cornish schools? Could it be?
The last known native speaker (before the revival) died in 1777, but it is believed that there were elderly people who had some understanding of it even up until the late 1890's, unfortunately to the eternal shame of the philologists (language researchers) around at the time, they didn't bother to send anybody to do proper research into the dialects and the language while it was still remembered.
About 100 years or so after it 'died' a few dedicated researchers began to piece it back together.
It never really died, its been spoken here and there, nobody gave a shit until 20 years ago is what should be said.
@olemanofcury thanks for sharing.
* lol'ed at the title and title description *
he was reading in front of him!
I wish they’d used more Cornish in Poldark.
@charliepeto No, he wasn't a native Cornish speaker. He was Cornish and had quite good knowledge of the Cornish language. The last "native" speaker (meaning it was her mother tongue, & she didn't speak English) was, to my knowledge, Dolly Pentreath, who died about the time you mention, I think.
speakswahilidammit 23 seconds ago
@cjaygrove Really well put!
Gus is a top bloke
"probably spoke thousands of years ago". Well, rather than guessing and getting it wrong, why don't you find out? Cornish was spoken well into the 1800s, and has now been revived again. So people do speak it now.
@chelseamrb65
That's because that's what it is.
Cornish is related to Welsh and Breton.
Shelta (Pikey) and Gaelic are also related, but a little more distantly.
haaha I love this!!
that's crazy. i wanna be able to speak it.
Even more to Breton. Nearly 80% of the vocab is similar.
KERNOW ... " one and all "
Ha ha so much is not known about us , all I can say and know is what has been passed down to me!
Forever Cornish!
@squirell1952 It's semantically accurate. They weren't England's mountains and pastures then, but they are now. We still call pre-Columbian America 'America'.
Ahhh thanks :) xx
How do we know what the original accent for Cornish was? Or accents? I lived in Wales for a while and studied the Welsh language. The accent varied from north to south, but it was distinctly its own. You could tell if an American or another English speaker was speaking it. I saw another video in which a fluent speaker of Cornish was speaking with a very broad southern England accent--very lax vowels. In a revived language, does one also insist on a uniform accent? a taut quality to the vowels, for instance, as in Welsh? Doesn't it have to SOUND Celtic? What is the SOUND of Cornish?
Richard gendall has videos on UA-cam, he's studied it for fifty Years and has probably the best idea of how it should sound; the Welsh and Cornish English accents would have developed from the way the Celtic languages were spoken (very evident in Welsh) so that helps some way to reconstructing the language
In the Cornish dialect
We know what old Cornish accents sounded like, at a time when Cornwall was still largely bilingual. How? The Cornish settled the Smith Islands, USA in the mid 1600s. Their accent is still similar, given some changes and influences of Carolina English on Smith Island accents. So the Cornish dialect is a good indicator. Plus listen to old Breton, as spoken by older Bretons, not the modern French influenced Breton. Breton came from Cornish, and they were mutually intelligible in the 18th C, several records of that from the time. Plus I spoke to a Breton speaker a few years ago who was able to understand spoken Cornish.
@@kernowforester811 the mass exodus from Cornwall to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Africa etc didn't happen until the mid 1840's on.
@@deanawade5878 Yes, we know the collapse of the mining industry resulted in over 250,000 people leaving Cornwall, with many also leaving west Devon, in the mid to late 19th C, but that does not replace the fact that many left to the Americas from the mid 17th C. As a result of Cornwall and Devon being the main sea fairing region of Britain.
Interesting
WE'RE NOT BRITISH - WE'RE CORNISH - BRITS OUT OF CORNWALL - INDEPENDENCE FOR CORNWALL - TRE HWEG TRE
Right on pard! The very name of this country comes from the Cornish language; English - Britain, Kernewek (Cornish) - Brython, named so after the language of the Britons, the real Brits. And that is fact and history. Kernow Bys Vyken!
Thank you fletch2002!