LL-L "Language status" 2003.01.06 (06) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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From: John M. Tait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2003.01.04 (04) [E/Cornish]

Ron wrote:
>
>Information about Celtic (or any other language group) is welcome on
>Lowlands-L if it is Lowlands-focused or at least indirectly helps us to
>better understand Lowlands-related subjects (for instance linguistic
>features, sociolinguistic phenomena or language policy issues by way of
>comparison).  Information that does not meet these criteria ought to be
>exchanged off the List.  Of course, contacts between Celtic languages and
>the Lowlands languages English and Scots are an extensive subject area.  To
>be permissible on Lowlands-L, however, the focus would have to be on
English
>and/or Scots rather than on the Celtic languages of the British Isles.

Perhaps these criteria could be met by contrasting the status of Scots and G
aelic, and the different ways in which they are approached.

John M. Tait.

http://www.wirhoose.co.uk

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From: Criostoir O Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2003.01.06 (02) [E/Cornish]

Dear all,

Dan wrote of Cornish's three varieties:

"The significance of this debate revolves around the so-called
"prosodic-shift" in Cornish, a process in which the old common British
three partite rules of vowel and consonant quantities shifted towards a
twofold system which brings Cornish phonology closer to the English,
regarding prosody. It is reasonable to assume that this shift occured
owing to English influence and long-term bilingualism."

It is equally applicable (and more relevant to the wider debate of language
survival which affects Lowlands languages as well as Celtic ones) that the
sundering of the Cornish language movements into three mutually
recriminatory brands (Kemmyn, Unified and Curnoack, although Unified and
Curnoack are united in their antipathy for Kemmyn) is attributable to, as
Dan writes, Ken George. However, the Unified/Curnoack analysis reserves its
vitriol more for the centrifugal effects Dr George's personal ambition had
on the Cornish language movement than anything else.

It is difficult to under-state the harmful effect of Ken George and the
Kemmyn cult within Cornish. Until George came along, Unified Cornish was the
ascendant variety - it had its faults (not least a methodology that sought
to effectively synthethise a new medieval Cornish rather than pick up where
the language left off - the equivalent of recreating English from
Shakespeare plays), but was generally accepted as a necessary evil (the
"unified" of its name could just as easily refer to its function as a
unifying force of the language movement).

Ken George, whom I should say I have never met, threw this out the window by
creating a suspiciously Bretonised computer-aided Cornish - an artificial
Cornish that "predicted" what Cornish "should" sound like rather than basing
itself on anything real or attested - for, if memory serves me correctly, a
doctoral thesis at a Breton university. This form - which was roundly
savaged as "Cornic" by its critics - somehow managed to gain official
approval, with this holy grail of advancement splitting the language
movement into those who believed that such limited steps forward were worth
compromising the language and those (Unified, Curnoack) who stuck firmly to
the tradition that the Cornish language should be the Cornish language as
historically and linguistically attested, rather than some kind of
bastardised, fooled-around-with, mechanically gerrymandered Breton.

The split was very bitter. Today I know Unified speakers who will not
acknowledge Kemmyn as Cornish, and I have to admit I have very little time
for "Cornic".

I raise the issue here for illustration. It is an example just as applicable
to Lowlands languages as elsewhere. In our desperation to promote our
languages, we may sometimes over-zealously compromise ourselves, our tongue
and our entire movements merely to make the slightest bit of what seems like
progress. This is especially the case in small movements with relatively few
members (the Cornish language movement is variously estimated to contain a
minimum of 5,000 and a maximum of 10,000 members worldwide). Particularly
within languages that have historically suffered extremely low self-esteem
(Cornish was and still is villified as "peasant" or "farmer" language, a
silly thing, a waste of time, the dodo of linguistics), there is a strong
pull towards academics such as Dr George who claim to offer all the answers,
a way out and some kind of prestige. Unfortunately, as the case of Kemmyn
has shown, such faustian bargains rarely do any good; in fact, they
compromise whole revivals merely for the sake of personal aggrandisement (Dr
George has been very quiet since his work in Brittany).

Lowlanders, take note.

Mer ras,

Criostoir.

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