LL-L "Resources" 2004.09.01 (04) [E]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Dan Prohaska <danielprohaska at bluewin.ch>
Subject: LL-L Resources


Críostóir Ó Ciardha wrote:

>No, that's Price, Glanville: The Languages of Britain (1984). Not at the
>Cornish revivalists hated his coining of "Cornic" for George's
>computer-aided pseudo-primordial "Kernewek Kemmyn". Some of us were quite
>relieved that someone with a bit of academic weight had put our own
>concerns, worries and fears quite succinctly.

>In fact, if anyone on the list wants a quick treatise on why any language
>revivalist should avoid taking on asterisked forms as the genuine article,
>Price's book is it.

>Criostóir.

Car ve,
Yes, you're right, which means I cannot help with the original request.

I very much agree with your final statement, though Price in this article
(or was it another articleby him - don't know) downplayed the amount of
extant literature available in traditional Cornish in order to argue how
difficult (impossible) it is to reconstruct the Cornish language with a high
degree of authenticity. Price said (I quote from Nicholas Williams' "Cornish
Today", KDL 1995):

"[It] is rather as if one were to attempt in our present century to
create a form of spoken English on the basis of the fifteenth century York
mystery plays and very little else (1984:144)."


Williams argues:

"Cornish literature in its entirety is longer than the York mystery
plays. In order for the parallel to be a valid one, one would have also to
include as sources the Chester Plays, "Everyman", a long devotional poem, a
collection of sermons, an Anglo-Saxon and a modern English glossary, an
eighteenth century grammar, a folk-tale in phonetic script, translations
from the scripture, various other fragments and survivals and innumerable
place-names.
>From all these sources one could deduce a great deal about the
phonology, accidence, syntax and lexicon of Late Middle and Early Modern
English. One would soon realise that the language was very close to Frisian
and Low Saxon and had borrowed extensively from Old Norse and Middle French.
One would therefore have ample resources with which to fill any lacunae in
the lexicon. In a short time Neo-English would become a viable system -
exactly as is now the case with Neo-Cornish."

Well, Reinhard, I think the last paragraph qualities this as just about
on-topic ;-).

Gans pub bolunjeth da,
Dan

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Resources


In reponse to my request for information about a book I used to have that
dealt in detail with the minority languages of Europe, Steven Hanson wrote:

"I did a search for Glanville Price on Amazon.com and came up with The
present position of minority languages in Western Europe: A selective
bibliography.  Perhaps this is what you're thinking of."

I am afraid not! The book I am thinking of is at least a couiple of decades
old, and though it had a lot of bibliographical detail, it was not a
bibliography as such. I have also done searches in Amazon and one the
abebooks site, but all were in vain. The book may not have been by Glanville
Price at all, or he may have been a contributor. Also I don't think it
covered just Western Europe; I seem to remember it included Turkish and
Aromanian, and the German of Transsylvania, and so on. There was a very good
section on Saami (Lapp).

Dan Wheag wrote: "Could it be "The Mother Tongue"? If I remember correctly
it had a lengthy article in it about Revived Cornish, which Glenville-Price
called "Cornic" which Cornish revivalists hated."

And Criostóir replied that the book Dan was referring to was actually
"Price, Glanville: The Languages of Britain (1984)." Again, the book that I
am thinking of had an excellent chapter on Cornish, but was definitely not
'The Mother Tongue', and covered a much wider area than the British Isles.

I was rather hoping that someone might come up with the correct title, but
it is not looking too promissing. A few people have also contacted me
offlist. I would like to thank everyone for trying to help.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK


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