Cornish in Relation to Welsh and Breton

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#48

Hello. concerning italian and “spanish” (castillan, better said) I agree that it’s more helpful than prejudiciable to know both languages : if you forget a word in one of those longues and you kinow this word in the other, you’ve just to “italianize” the spanish, or “castillanize” the italian, and here you go !
Anyway, ir’s true that there are “traps” ! For example, “burro” means “butter” in italian, but… “donkey” in spanish
There are more similitudes between catalan and italian than between “spanish” and italian

Thankyou Seren for finding breton beautiful.
I laughed when reading that it may be “intimidating”, because it’s exactly what I feel with welsh, full of W, of Y, of double D, double F and double L, which is not a problem in itself : the problem is that those letters are not pronnounced at all as they are in our english or french alphabet !!!
The same in irish : when you see “Siobhan” and you have to pronounce “shee-vone” !!!
REALLY intimidating ! :anguished: (frightening, terrifying !!!)
As I said in another topic, when I see the word “cysga” and realize that the singer says “kousk” (which have nothing common with the spelling !!!) : here is somethiing REALLY intimidating for new learners (I’m not a learner but I love welsh tongue)

Breton seems to me less intimidating, because the spelling is “international” : a V will be a V, a B will be a B, a K will be a K. Just the “c’h” is different, but you find it exactly the same in the spanis jota (J) or the german “ch”.
I don’t know about cornish spelling…

And as you are, Seren, I also am very moved when I recognize - wjen hearing, not when seeing !!! - common words of our tongues : daoulagad, mabig, kousk, noz, kalon… and a lot of others !

Oooops, I wrote a long post, as usual, in my “old fashioned english”, hoping beeing understood anyway !

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#49

Dydh da, @mcbrittany :slight_smile:

Cornish spelling is also very easy to follow. Actually, there are several different spelling systems in use, but the most popular ones are phonetic and not difficult to understand. I’m glad to hear Breton is the same! I’m only learning Cornish at the moment but I would love to learn Breton and Welsh too.

Hmmm… dewlagas (two eyes), meppik (little boy), kosk (sleep), nos (night), kolonn (heart)? :smile:

My a yll konvedhes oll dha Sowsnek — pur dha yw! (I can understand all your English — it’s very good!)

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#50

Thanks Courtenay ! Trugarezh (or “mersi bras”, more actual among young breton speakers : mix french “merci”, wrote “mersi”, and breton “bras” = big).and… what in cornish ?

Hmmm… dewlagas (two eyes), meppik (little boy), kosk (sleep), nos (night), kolonn (heart)?

Yes !!::smile:(“ya” in breton, but in breton you should not just say “ya” or “nann”. You should use an equivalent form of the english “I do” " “they are not”… If for example you ask me “are the papers on the table ?” in french I’ll just answer “yes”, but in breton I should say “yes, there they are”
But with the influence of french, people now simply say “yes”, or “no” (Ya, or Nann).

Sowsnek, in breton is “saozneg” (g at this place will be pronounced k) The same
Hmmm, I should go on the Say Something In Cornish site !!! You make me want to go and have a look there)
I’ll immediatly write those cornish words in my notebook, even if I’m not learning cornish (but sure it would be easier than welsh !!!)

And… oooooooops, MC, STOP, now !!! :smile:

Noz vat
(well I suppose there are mutations also in cornish. Terrific ! “mat” = good, but it becomes “vat” here because noz is feminine)

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#51

Meur ras. “Meur” means great and “gras” means grace (the g disappears there because of mutation). “Bras” means big in Kernewek too.[quote=“mcbrittany, post:50, topic:4642”]
Yes !!::smile:(“ya” in breton, but in breton you should not just say “ya” or “nann”. You should use an equivalent form of the english “I do” " “they are not”… If for example you ask me “are the papers on the table ?” in french I’ll just answer “yes”, but in breton I should say “yes, there they are”
But with the influence of french, people now simply say “yes”, or “no” (Ya, or Nann).
[/quote]

Ni ynwedh (we too) — in Kernewek you shouldn’t really say yes or no but use the verb. We also sometimes say “ya” or “na” if we’re being very colloquial or can’t think of the proper answer quickly enough! :smile:

Tybyans da (good idea)! :wink: There are only 10 lessons so far in Say Something in Cornish, though there should be more. I think the problem is that they were produced with the aid of a Cornish language office that doesn’t get government funding any more… :frowning:

Probably (gav dhymm, mar pleg, A Gembregoryon — forgive me, please, Welsh speakers :grin:)

I just remembered, there is a textbook for learning Cornish, “Holyewgh an Lergh” (“Follow the Trail”), that has been translated for Breton speakers who are learning Cornish! :grinning:

You can buy it from here: http://www.cornish-language.org/Cornish-language-books.html#LearningCornish (click on the link and scroll down a little)

The same organisation that publishes those books also has a Cornish Language Weekend (Pennseythen Gernewek) every year in April (mis Ebrel), if you’re interested. I go every year (this will be my third year) and there are usually a few Breton speakers there as well! :slight_smile:

Nos is feminine in Kernewek too, but in some cases we don’t mutate a word following “s”, so we usually say “nos da” for “good night”. (We also have the word “mas” meaning good — I think that may be the same as “mat” — but “da” is the more usual word. “Mas” in Kernewek means something more like morally good, of a person who does the right thing.)

Nos da dhis ynwedh (good night to you too) :star2:

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#52

A lot of information, Cortenay, and really interesting I of course aplogize, me to all the nice welsh people of this forum !!! :slight_smile:
You’re a good seller, Courtenay, I’m going to buy this book, not really to learn, but I love having books about tongues I like.
And about the camp in April (miz ebrel :slight_smile: !!!), not this year sure, but really i’ld love it !!! Is there a level for new new speakers ??? It would also be a goof way for discovering Cornwall, so beautiful !
And concerning not beeing helped by government… alas, here we know a lot about !!!
Wales and Scotland are maybe more "lucky than Cornwall, beeing considered as nations, when Cornwall is just a “region”, as Brittany (or am I wrong ?). And globally, maybe there was not in GB this destructive rage agains local languages that we had in France after the revolution…

I did not give the right example for “yes” and “no”, even if you nicely understood what I meant (great !!!) . I’ld better say than in breton it works a bit as in english with “do”.
For example In english : “do you like football .”" Answer :“I don’t”. In breton “karout a rez futbol ?” Answer : “ne ran ket” (“ran” and “rez” are the same, but 1st and 2nd person) , but and mean the same as english “do”

But in my opinion, if new speakers just say “yes” and “no”, it’s not necessarely a bad thing. A tongue has to evoluate. We don’t speak the same english or french as 100, 200, or 500 years ago. So why other tongues would have to be fixed as marble statues ?
Just saying Yes or No can be a normal evolution of the tongue in a society where a lot of things have to go fast :where even words are shortened, which can be funny (young people now for “thankyou” don’t use the mix “mersi bras” nor real breton “trugarezh” (“grace” as in kerneweg) but just say “trug’”). They shorten" trugarezh". Funny)

More significant and serious matter is, in my opinion, the non respect of word stress, and more serious matter then, the fact of ordering sentences the same way as in french
In breton (as in kerneweg I suppose) you can say:

  • " The bread is on the table" (ar bara a zo war an daol)
    you really mean that 'the bread" (and not a pencil, for example) is on the table. It’s really a way of insisting," (in english you would have to stress “the BREAD”, in french you would have to use a special formulation “C’EST le pain QUI estsur la table”)

  • “on the table is the bread” (War an daol emañ ar bara)
    you mean that the bread is on the table and not somewhere else. And you use another verb for “to be” “:emañ” and not “a zo”; Breton (as spanish and catalan, and surely other tongues) has 2 different verbs for “to be”, verbs whose use is often a problem for french people

  • "is the bread on the table (not a question) " (Emañ ar bara war an daol)
    That would be the equivalent of the french or english sentence “the bread is on the table”. (but can alos be a way of insisting on the situation : “the bread IS on the table” that is : open your eyes ! :slight_smile: )

Unfortunatly, the first case is the unic one you hear more and more, just because it reproduces the french order of the words (subject-verb-complement), and not necessarely with the good verb for “to be”
So ; not the right orderr of the words, not the rigjht stress on words… : what remains, then, of a tongue ?.. For me, this is a biggger problem than vocabulary. Its the “spirit of the tongue” which is going away. And when the spirit of a tongue is going away, the tongue itself is becoming soomething artificial…
That’s why I’m very pessimistic about future of breton. alive tongue or dead tongue, it’s real “sound” is going awayn, anyway…

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#53

Yes, there is — everyone is welcome, including absolute beginners. There are classes and activities for different levels of learning, including for young children too. We also always have traditional dancing and singing and a guided walk to local places of interest with commentary in both Kernewek and English. It’s lots of fun and I’ve met so many nice people there. It would be lovely if you could come too some time! :slight_smile:

(There’s another discussion about it here: Cornish Language Weekend)

Yes, you’re right — it’s officially a county of England, even though it’s no more “English” than Wales or Scotland or Ireland. :unamused: You can actually feel the difference as soon as you cross the River Tamar, the border between Devon and Cornwall — partly because almost all the place names are suddenly Cornish instead of English, but the culture is different too. It’s really unique and most Cornish people want to keep it that way and not be thought of as just another “part of England”, which truly it’s not.

(I’m Australian, by the way, and I live near London now, but my ancestors on my father’s side were Cornish and I just love Cornwall — that’s why I’m learning the language. Some parts of Cornwall actually remind me of Australia! I think it’s the magnificent coastline and the fact that the climate is generally a bit warmer there, so they can grow a lot of the kinds of plants we have in Australia too.)

I don’t know the history that well — I know there were active efforts to stop Welsh people speaking Welsh (children being punished in school if they spoke Welsh and so on). In Cornwall, I think it was more that English gradually took over from Kernewek and became the language everyone most “needed” to speak, while Kernewek was thought of as a “peasant” language that only uneducated people spoke.

You probably know that Kernewek almost completely died out — the last few fluent speakers died in the 1780s and '90s, and while there were always a few people who remembered some old sayings and poems and phrases that had been passed down the generations, Kernewek wasn’t revived again as a spoken language until the early 1900s. It’s become stronger since then, but still fewer than 1000 people can speak it fluently and there is nowhere in Cornwall where you can find a whole community of people speaking Kernewek as their everyday language. But maybe that could change some day (maybe)… :slight_smile:

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#54

On the link you sent me, I saw the cornish lessons book (breton version !) but also the child boolk “Ple 'ma Spot”. We also have it in Breton “Pelec’h emañ Spot”

So… you come from far away !!! What a big jump from Australia. What a change (I mean, not concerning London, but concerning Cornwall !!!)
I went to London far far far ago, in the sixties. Carnaby street, mini skirts and so on… For us, teenagers from such a “serious” and “boring” country as France, England was a fabulous world ! And english people so “exotic”, dressed as they wanted to (when we had, in France, to be very careful about what people would say - or even just think - if we were dressed in an original way)
One of my daughters went to New Zealand and around, some years ago,with his boyfriend (now husband) they were travelling and working in various countries (to pay the travelling here and there) , and after New Zealand, they stayed one month in Australia. They liked both countries. It was a year with a lot of big big floods (2010 or 2011, I don’t remember very well). They met nice people there.

To go back to our subject tongues : breton too is going to die soon. Real native locutors are very few (or maybe all died),. Of course you have a lot of people learning breton, and this interest is very moving, we also have our schools “Diwan” our 2 tongues classes, and there are now, sure, children whose tongue, at home, is breton, but as I told you in another post, it’s a very artificial breton…

This “end” seems to me inevitable. Look : in Ireland (Eire), gaelic is an official tongue, learned, helped by the government, and loved by the people (but loved in a passive way), and despite of this help, officiality, love, and bilinguism everywhere, gaelic is slowly dying.
Those (beloved) celtic languages are so hard to study that when you can, in the same area, speak english (such an easy tongue with such a simple grammar, no gender, no mutations, etc) and which is also an official tongue of the area, the temptation is to go to the easiest, no ?.. It’s rather human :slight_smile: no ?
What occure to a tongue which is an offivcial one (as gaelic in Eire), will occure much more easily in Cornwall or Brittany… We are not Catalans, with their big economical force (and a tongue much easier to learn for people coming from other countries or even from other parts of Spain)

A question about kernewek : when you write “ni ynwedh” (we too) it’s like breton “ni ivez” : We don"'t necessarely pronounce the “z” (depends of the regions of Brittany) but then I wonder if the writing “dh” in kernewek is to indicate a “z” sound ?

Hmmm : enough now !!! :smile:

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#55

No; “dh” in Cornish is a voiced “th” sound as in English “the, this, that”. It often corresponds to a “z” in Breton.

Similarly, “th” in Cornish is a voiceless “th” sound as in English “thick, both”. It often corresponds to a “zh” in Breton.

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#56

diolch yn fawr iawn, Philipnewton ! (I don’t forget we are in a "say somsething in Welsh forum !..)
Trugarezh, Meur ras. !!! :smile:

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#57

I found it very interesting what you are saying. I find the same thing listening to Irish speakers. My (very poor) Irish came from the school system - and decades later from making a great deal of effort to learn on returning home to live. However when I hear old people speaking Irish and compare it to what I hear spoken by second-language learners (of which I am a very bad example!) there is something missing which I don’t believe any amount of learning or immersion can ever replace. This does not mean that we shouldn’t try - and, as you say language evolves - however there is that richness of sound in a speaker for whom a language is a true mother tongue that just cannot ever be learned. It is both an amazing honour and a very sad experience to listen to an old person speaking a language that you can only grasp fragments of and know that you are hearing a tune on the wind that is about to get whisked away and never heard again.

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#58

Very moving, what you said, Dyvrig. It’s the same sadness I feel (which does not mean at all that we are living in the past. Just that we are conscient that “someone” (the tongue) we love is going away, we see him/her becoming weak, we help as we can, but…

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#59

Hi,

We don’t use the verb “karout” for things. Only for your boyfriend/girlfriend, your son, your mummy… “Plijout” is the verb to use.

there is no “h”. it’s “trugarez” :slight_smile:

I do know real native speakers, young an old, (and they are numerous) I do know people who have learned and you won’t be able to guess they are not native speakers (and they are even more numerous). There has never been so much people able to write in breton, and to defend it. There is more and more people who decide to raise their children in breton. There has never been so much children learning in our history !
Breton is like rock and roll, it won’t die.:heart:

And I do know french native speakers who speak a very bad french !:laughing:

Languages die in people’s mind at first. It won’t in mine.

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#60

My mother once mentioned to me that on a visit to an Irish speaking area her friend (a former teacher) paused a local native-speaker mid-sentence to point out that they had made an error in grammar (in spoken Irish). My mother was relating the story to me as she was horrified at what her friend had done. Enthusiasm for the preservation of language is paramount - but should we not also have respect for those who come from that tradition themselves (no matter how rusty or divergent from the approved version they might be)?

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#61

Of course, respect for natives speakers, an d respect for the new ones. I agree.

however, do not believe that all native speakers are perfect. There are good native speakers and others who are less fluent in the language, as in any language. In Brittany many native speakers (but not all) use french to count for example. Should we abandon the numbers in Breton? (while their grandparents mastered the math perfectly well in their language.). Some of them (not all) speak less well than their grand parents. Who is right ? Which one will be un example for learners ?
Everyone mistakes in his mother tongue too. Why would it not be the case for Breton, Cornish, Welsh or Irish?

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#62

Hello Erwan, and thanks for reminding me certain rules :slight_smile:
As I said in my profile, I don’t speak fluent breton anymore, living out of Brrittany for a while, and having very few contacts now with this tongue that I spoke much more than wrote.so I I sometimes,use forms I heard when I was young, even if I know that they are not the correct theorical forms (as it would in french or any tongue : see french verb “adorer” so strong, normally used for God, but in reality used for anything)

Fortunately, my ambition here was not to give breton lessons but just to give an opnion about the future of the tongue, according not to its number of locutors, but to their way of speaking… And I still think that a tongue which looses its own way of building sentences, its stress (on words, but also on this or that part of the sentence) is a dying tongue (or this “bizarre” breton tongue that we call “roazhoneg” - a joke a bit long and too “breton” to be explained here) :laughing:

Of course old breton native spekers make mistakes : they won’t always use the very right word, but for my part I don’t care at all if they will say “karout” in place of “plijout” : what I “love” (?!) is their such alive “accent”, stres on words; Not the same depends of the regions of Brittany, but a real stress. What a pleasure to hear them talking or singing !..

Well : maybe there is one thing we share with the reputation of french people : not goot at speaking foreign languages :laughing:. And breton language is a foreing languages for those who learn it.
Unfortunately, the number of locutors does not make neither the quality of a tongue nor its staying alive : there are surely millions of people practicing latin or ancien greek…
And I’m not sure that rock and roll is not dead… Or will we start a topic about “which rock and roll” ?.. :laughing::sweat_smile::laughing:

Ooooops, MC you’re wirting too long again !!! STOP :imp:

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#63

That’s what the Blue Books said about Welsh.

There’s something about languages on the rise (historically) - be it English in the British Isles or French in the area we now know as France - that have this overweening desire to crush all other languages. But it’s still going on. More recently, after WWI, when Italy gained part of German-speaking Austria, Mussolini banned the use of German. This may sound naïve and simplistic, but why can’t people let others live their own lives as they see fit?

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#64

Just as English has evolved over the centuries, maybe it’s healthy to let languages such as Irish evolve. I know the kids of today have their own teen-speak, which infuriates parents, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

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#65

Not sure it’s the language that has the desire to crush all other languages… :wink: Seriously, as far as I can see, it usually happens with a ruling class or a colonial power — if those who are in power can establish their language as the dominant one and preferably the only one, it gives them that much more power. Allowing only the one language also helps to establish a more homogenous sense of national identity and have fewer pockets of potential resistance from rebels and separatists. I would also guess it’s simply that much easier to govern a monolingual country than a multilingual one!

I don’t know how far reasons like that have been consciously in the minds of governments past and present that have worked to stamp out minority languages; I’m sure it’s often been framed benevolently as “unifying” the country or as making life easier for everyone when we all speak the one language. But those are some of the political power advantages I would guess are behind it.

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#66

It’s been so quiet around here lately for Kernewegoryon / Cornish speakers (ha Kernewegoresow… Cornish speakers, feminine :wink: ) that I’ve been nosing about a bit in the Welsh forum and have even tried the first few minutes of SSiW, both North and South, just to see what it’s like and where the dialect differences come in. :slight_smile:

I’m beginning to think I may be right in assuming that Cornish is a little closer to Southern Welsh than Northern, which would make sense geographically. Someone earlier in this thread mentioned “Dw i’n moyn” (“I want”, Southern), which sounds quite close to Cornish “My a vynn”. I appreciate the dictionary link that suggests “moyn” has a different root from “mynnaf” / “mynnes” (to want), but there’s still a similarity there, even if it’s by chance. More to the point, I picked up on another Welsh thread that milk is “llaeth” in South Wales and “llafrith” in North Wales (with a few variations here and there). In Cornish, it’s definitely “leth”.

So I’m thinking SSiW Southern would be slightly easier for me to learn as a Cornish speaker, when I get to it. The dilemma is that I may in the future be getting some work in the Greater Manchester area (this is still speculative), which would put me close to North Wales. Which means I’d love to nick over the border regularly if I can, but does anyone know if I would get into big trouble with Northern speakers if I try to converse with them in Southern dialect?? :astonished:

(I’m being half serious, half silly here, but would genuinely like to know how great the North/South divide is when it comes to linguistics. I don’t want to put my foot in it, so to speak.)

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#67

No. Absolutely not. You might get into a few good-natured “we don’t say that here” type conversations (and a conversation’s a conversation, so it’s all good), but it’s far from unusual for southerners to pitch up in the north (and particularly vice versa) these days.

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