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Cornish Never Died

The subject of dead languages has come up a lot for me lately. In a recent conversation, I mentioned my desire to learn Cornish, a Celtic language closely related to Welsh, and the response I got was “Oh, yeah, that’s a dead language, right?” I quickly came to the defense of Cornish, a language alive and well by my standards, but what began was a lively debate on what exactly constituted a dead language and whether or not Cornish fit the suit (yes, that was a Johnny Bravo reference).

I won’t get into all of that particular debate now (articles on that subject are fast on the heels of this one) but I’d like to explain my take on Cornish, why it never died and why it is alive and well when there are, at best, a few thousand people who understand it, and a few hundred who are actually fluent.

By most accounts, the last native monoglot speaker of Cornish was Dolly Pentreath, who died in 1777. So, if we assume that the death of the last native monoglot speaker is a reasonable requirement for a language to be considered dead, then that’s it. Cornish is a dead language, right? Not so fast.

First of all, by some accounts, Dolly Pentreath wasn’t a monoglot speaker of Cornish. She could speak English but simply refused to do it, or so legend would have it. Cheers to Dolly. Secondly, there is plenty of evidence that there were other polyglot (bi-lingual with English) speakers of Cornish at the time, and of living use of the language between 1777 and the present. It’s possible the people of Cornwall never completely let it go.

There are accounts of Cornish fisherman counting in Cornish right up until the 20th century. I doubt the fishermen of Dollys time stopped counting when Dolly died and neither did they start counting in Cornish later in her honor. They had been using it all along. Sure, it’s not fluency but bear with me on this.

There was also a ‘revival’ of Cornish that began almost as soon as Dolly died. A small community of non-native Cornish enthusiasts (many of whom may have learned from native speakers) maintained the language until more popular revival movements took over. Kept alive by enthusiasts, it seems that Cornish never actually died.

Although there isn’t a need to establish a direct ‘lineage’ from the native speakers of pre-1777 to modern times, I think it helps to provide a real connection between the speakers of Cornish then and today. A small cadre of non-native speaking enthusiasts have kept the language ‘in trust’ until a larger community of native speakers were prepared to take it up again, as it appears they are now doing.

There are official government-recognized bodies with tax-dollar budgets, local church services and road signs in Cornish. There are festivals, public gatherings and competitions to promote the language. There is a recent and official recognition as a European language. The people of Cornwall are acting as if Cornish is not a dead language nor a dying language, but a living and growing one.

It is exactly this attitude which makes Cornish a living language, now that the larger community has taken it up again. There are thousands of languages worldwide that are dying and will truly be dead because the indifferent communities around them don’t care, and the people who speak them can’t see the cultural treasure which they possess. The people of Cornwall are realizing what they have, and if Cornish is a living language to them, it will be a living ‘native’ language to their children.

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