Lesson 1.1

Gero Nei Deski Kernûak!
SWF: Gero'nei Desky Kernowek!
Revised Friday, 2 October 2009

Lesson 1.1

Kenza Descanz - radn wonen
SWF: Kensa Descans – radn onan
First Lesson – part 1

A note on Cornish spelling: The varieties of Revived Cornish known as Unified (UC), Unified Revised (UCR) and Common Cornish or Kemmyn (KK) are based on miracle plays and lives of saints produced in the scribal tradition of Glasney College and/or on Tudor writings. In Modern Cornish we have a choice of two systems. The first is based on the work of Edward Lhuyd who, in 1700, spent several months in West Penwith recording the Cornish spoken by local people. He devised a largely phonetic spelling system (the fore-runner of the IPA) which gives us a good idea of how words should be pronounced. The second system is that of the native writers in the century before Lhuyd, who often struggled to spell a word how they would say it – and came up with a variety of ways. Native writers after Lhuyd, when Cornish was last being spoken, used some of Lhuyd’s spelling and some of their own. Richard Gendall has produced a dictionary for users of Modern Cornish based on Lhuyd’s system. This is very useful as it gives a very clear indication of how to pronounce the words. For learners, the Cornish Language Council is producing a simplified dictionary which incorporates much of this Lhuydian system, but hopefully allows the traditional texts to be read and understood.

Now that the Standard Written Form has been ratified for official/educational use we also have that. Unfortunately, because it is common to mediaeval and modern (which have different pronunciations) it does not tell us how to say words. So I shall use both systems in parallel. Not every word is different. SWF words have been provided by Daniel Prohaska.

There are now Modern Cornish websites. If you want to read some of the work left by the native writers, have a look at www.cornishlanguage.org.uk or www.moderncornish.net

Some of the links on the Home Page give more lessons, etc. What you may notice is the variety of spellings!

If you want to hear Modern Cornish spoken with the proper pronunciation go to the following youtube clips and listen to Richard Gendall:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EQHSADF4FP8
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-boCJhBxyYE


A note on pronunciation: Where words contain more than one syllable, the stress is usually on the penultimate syllable. (This means that spelling differences in the last syllable make very little difference to the pronunciation.)

e.g. If a word has two syllables stress the first syllable, if it has three syllables stress the middle one.
Unless otherwise stated read a word as if it were English. There are some vowel sounds which have no exact English equivalent, but we can sort out the finer points when you become fluent!


Unstressed vowels (often in the last syllable) are usually vague – like the last syllable of London, Falmouth, cabbage, etc. (In linguistic terms “schwa”.)

The spelling (based on Lhuyd) used should help us to pronounce correctly, e.g.:

“th” (e.g. in therama = I am) is pronounced like the breathy th in thin or thank
“dh” (e.g. in dho = to) is pronounced like the soft th in then and than
“ei” (in whei = you) is approximately pronounced as in eye or my (though strictly speaking you should say the "e"and the "i" separately)
the “wh” in whei is pronounced as we should say Eng. “why” with breathy start
“â” (in tâz = father) is pronounced as in maze or maize
“ê” (in dên = man) is pronounced as in French née
“î” (in tîr = land) is pronounced as in fee
“ô” (in nôz = night) is pronounced as in nose or gnaws
“û” (in bûz = food) is pronounced as in truth
Some words start with “j”, but in the middle of a word the same sound is produced by “dzh”. (A more "traditional" spelling uses "j" in the middle of words as well.)
Although some of the SWF spellings look different, use the non-SWF pronunciation, e.g.ugens (twenty) is pronounced iganz not oogens.

(Your first alphabet)
SWF in bold
aval = an apple
aval
bara = bread
bara
cadar = a chair
cador
descanz = a lesson, teaching
descans
eglez = a church
eglos
fardel = a packet, a package, etc.
fardel
gorrib = an answer, a reply, etc.
gorthyp
hantar = a half
hanter
iganz = twenty
ugens
jedna = a doll
jedna
kenza = first
kensa
luzu = vegetables
losow
metten = a morning
mettin
nadar = an adder
nader
ôan = a lamb
on
padar = a prayer
pader
quilhan = a pen, a feather, etc.
pluven
redan = fern, bracken
reden
stevel = a dining room
stevel
tezan = a cake
tesen
ûla = an owl
oula
volan = a page, a sheet
folen
warbar(th) = together
warbar’, warbarth
yâr = hen, chicken
yar
zah = a bag
sagh