LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.09.18 (12) [E/LS/S]

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From: Daniel Prohaska <danielprohaska at bluewin.ch>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties"


From: john feather

>>I thought Criostoir might like to get his teeth into (or grind them about)
>>the Abominable Bryson's statement that Cornish "survives only in two or
>>three dialect words, most notably _emmets_ ('ants'), the word locals use
>>to describe the tourists who come crawling over their gorgeous landscape
>>each summer." Even allowing that (as in the case of Pennsylvania Dutch) he
>>is confusing the language with the English dialect influenced by it,
>>'emmet' is a good old OE word.

John,
Never mind Críostoir - wait till I get started... ;-)

I'm not sure, but Bryson might have been talking about the Cornish dialect
of English anyway. The Cornish Cornish word for 'ant' is <muryon> which
seems to have precious little to do with <emmet>, the latter indeed being a
good old Old English word. However, in the western Cornish English dialect
the word "muryans" survived into the 20th century (I'm not sure how much and
by whom it is used today). So maybe he was using an eastern Cornish dialect
word to describe a feature of western Cornish dialect.

The plural ending is particularly interesting in <muryon> as in Cornish it
was/is a collective noun - the singular had to be formed by adding a suffix
<-en>, so 'an ant' would be <muryonen>. In Cornish English dialect there is
also a singular <muryan>: "She's father's little muryan."

When Eastern Cornwall was anglicised it generally took over dialect speech
from Devon. Much later when western Cornwall gave up Cornish in favour of
English, Standard English was already a prestigious language and this is
probably why Western Cornish English exhibits fewer "South-Western" dialect
features than eastern Cornish English does. Western Cornish English dialect
(today only heard among the oldest generation) does have a distinct accent
and melody some features of which are most likely to be a substrate of
Cornish which became extinct as a community language in Western Cornwall
between 1770 and 1800.

There are many more Cornish words in the traditional English dialect of
western Cornwall, and among some professional groups whole chunks of Cornish
survived into the 20th century.

The Vowel Sounds of Penwith (Western Cornwall) English (RP in brackets):

[i.] 'sleep' ([i:])
[I] ~ [e] 'bit' ([I])
[e:] 'day', 'they' ([EI])
[e] 'babies' ([eI])
[i:] 'nails' ([eI])
[E:] 'cave' ([eI])
[e@] 'bear' ([E@])
[@:i] 'die', 'time' ([aI])
[ei] 'pint' ([aI])
[a:] 'father' ([A:])
[eu] 'house', 'mouth' ([aU])
[@:U] 'gound', 'out' ([aU])
[o] 'round' ([aU])
[A], [a] 'bottom', 'off', 'clock' ([Q])
[OI] 'boil' ([OI])
[Q:] 'blow' ([@U])
[O] 'broken', 'over' ([@U])
[V] 'bushes' ([U])
[o] 'school', boots ([u:])
[o:] 'rules', ([u:])
[o:] 'poor' ([U@])
[o:] 'under' ([V])
[O] 'rough' ([V])
([@:]) 'young' ([V])
[@] 'Sunday' ['sVnd@]

Dan

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Thanks for the phonetic overview (above), Dan.

Am I deluding myself or is much of this similar to English dialects of
Wales, especially instances like the following?

> [@:i] 'die', 'time' ([aI])
> [ei] 'pint' ([aI])

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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