Cornish evolved from the
Common Brittonic spoken throughout Britain south of the
Firth of Forth during the
British Iron Age and
Roman period. As a result of
westward Anglo-Saxon expansion, the Britons of the southwest were separated from those in modern-day
Wales and
Cumbria, which Jackson links to the defeat of the Britons at the
Battle of Deorham in about 577. The
western dialects eventually evolved into
modern Welsh and the now extinct
Cumbric, while
Southwestern Brittonic developed into Cornish and Breton, the latter as a result of emigration to parts of the continent, known as
Brittany over the following centuries.
Old Cornish The area controlled by the southwestern Britons was progressively reduced by the expansion of
Wessex over the next few centuries. During the Old Cornish () period (800–1200), the Cornish-speaking area was largely coterminous with modern-day
Cornwall, after the Saxons had taken over
Devon in their south-westward advance, which probably was facilitated by a second migration wave to Brittany that resulted in the partial depopulation of Devon. The maintaining of close links with Breton-speakers in Brittany allowed for a level of
mutual intelligibility between Cornish and Breton. The earliest written record of the Cornish language comes from a 9th-century
gloss in a
Latin manuscript of by
Boethius, which used the words . The phrase may mean "it [the mind] hated the gloomy places", or alternatively, as
Andrew Breeze suggests, "she hated the land". Other sources from this period include the ''Saints' List'', a list of almost fifty Cornish saints, the
Bodmin manumissions, which is a list of
manumittors and slaves, the latter with mostly Cornish names, and, more substantially, a Latin–Cornish glossary (the or Cottonian Vocabulary), a Cornish translation of
Ælfric of Eynsham's Latin–Old English Glossary, which is thematically arranged into several groups, such as the
Genesis creation narrative, anatomy, church hierarchy, the family, names for various kinds of artisans and their tools, flora, fauna, and household items. The manuscript was widely thought to be in
Old Welsh until the 18th century when it was identified as Cornish by
Edward Lhuyd. Some Brittonic glosses in the 9th-century colloquy were once identified as Old Cornish, but they are more likely Old Welsh, possibly influenced by a Cornish scribe. No single phonological feature distinguishes Cornish from both Welsh and Breton until the beginning of the
assibilation of
dental stops in Cornish, which is not found before the second half of the eleventh century, and it is not always possible to distinguish Old Cornish, Old Breton, and Old Welsh orthographically.
Middle Cornish ) (f.56v.) Middle Cornish Saint's Play The Cornish language continued to flourish well through the Middle Cornish () period (1200–1600), reaching a peak of about 39,000 speakers in the 13th century, after which the number started to decline. From this period also are the
hagiographical dramas (
The Life of Meriasek) and (
The Life of Ke), both of which feature as an antagonist the villainous and tyrannical King
Tewdar (or Teudar), a historical medieval king in Armorica and Cornwall, who, in these plays, has been interpreted as a lampoon of either of the
Tudor kings
Henry VII or
Henry VIII. Others are the
Charter Fragment, the earliest known continuous text in the Cornish language, apparently part of a play about a medieval marriage, and (
The Passion of Our Lord), a poem probably intended for personal worship, were written during this period, probably in the second half of the 14th century. Another important text, the , was realized to be Cornish in 1949, having previously been incorrectly classified as Welsh. It is the longest text in the traditional Cornish language, consisting of around 30,000 words of continuous prose. This text is a late 16th century translation of twelve of
Bishop Bonner's thirteen homilies by a certain John Tregear, tentatively identified as a vicar of
St Allen from
Crowan, and has an additional catena, Sacrament an Alter, added later by his fellow priest, Thomas Stephyn. In the reign of Henry VIII, an account was given by
Andrew Boorde in his 1542 . He states, "" When Parliament passed the
Act of Uniformity 1549, which established the 1549 edition of the English Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal form of worship in England, including Cornwall, people in many areas of Cornwall did not speak or understand English. The passing of this Act was one of the causes of the
Prayer Book Rebellion (which may also have been influenced by government repression after the failed
Cornish rebellion of 1497), with "the commoners of Devonshyre and Cornwall" producing a manifesto demanding a return to the old religious services and included an article that concluded, "and so we the Cornyshe men (whereof certen of us understande no Englysh) utterly refuse thys newe Englysh." In response to their articles, the government spokesman (either Philip Nichols or
Nicholas Udall) wondered why they did not just ask the king for a version of the liturgy in their own language. Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer asked why the Cornishmen should be offended by holding the service in English, when they had before held it in
Latin, which even fewer of them could understand.
Anthony Fletcher points out that this rebellion was primarily motivated by religious and economic, rather than linguistic, concerns. The rebellion prompted a heavy-handed response from the government, and 5,500 people died during the fighting and the rebellion's aftermath. Government officials then directed troops under the command of
Sir Anthony Kingston to carry out pacification operations throughout the West Country. Kingston subsequently ordered the executions of numerous individuals suspected of involvement with the rebellion as part of the post-rebellion reprisals. The rebellion eventually proved a turning-point for the Cornish language, as the authorities came to associate it with
sedition and "backwardness". This proved to be one of the reasons why the Book of Common Prayer was never translated into Cornish (unlike
Welsh), as proposals to do so were suppressed in the rebellion's aftermath. The failure to translate the Book of Common Prayer into Cornish led to the language's rapid decline during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Peter Berresford Ellis cites the years 1550–1650 as a century of immense damage for the language, and its decline can be traced to this period. In 1680
William Scawen wrote an essay describing 16 reasons for the decline of Cornish, among them the lack of a distinctive
Cornish alphabet, the loss of contact between Cornwall and
Brittany, the cessation of the miracle plays, loss of records in the Civil War, lack of a
Cornish Bible and immigration to Cornwall.
Mark Stoyle, however, has argued that the 'glotticide' of the Cornish language was mainly a result of the Cornish gentry adopting English to dissociate themselves from the reputation for disloyalty and rebellion associated with the Cornish language since the 1497 uprising.
Late Cornish By the middle of the 17th century, the language had retreated to
Penwith and
Kerrier, and transmission of the language to new generations had almost entirely ceased. In his
Survey of Cornwall, published in 1602,
Richard Carew writes:[M]ost of the inhabitants can speak no word of Cornish, but very few are ignorant of the English; and yet some so affect their own, as to a stranger they will not speak it; for if meeting them by chance, you inquire the way, or any such matter, your answer shall be, "," "I [will] speak no Saxonage." The Late Cornish () period from 1600 to about 1800 has a less substantial body of literature than the Middle Cornish period, but the sources are more varied in nature, including songs, poems about fishing and curing
pilchards, and various translations of verses from the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. Edward Lhuyd's
Archaeologia Britannica, which was mainly recorded in the field from native speakers in the early 1700s, and his unpublished field notebook are seen as important sources of Cornish vocabulary, some of which are not found in any other source.
Archaeologia Britannica also features a complete version of a traditional folk tale,
John of Chyanhor, a short story about a man from
St Levan who goes far to the east seeking work, eventually returning home after three years to find that his wife has borne him a child during his absence. In 1776, William Bodinar, who describes himself as having learned Cornish from old fishermen when he was a boy, wrote a letter to
Daines Barrington in Cornish, with an English translation, which was probably the last prose written in the traditional language. In his letter, he describes the sociolinguistics of the Cornish language at the time, stating that there are no more than four or five old people in his village who can still speak Cornish, concluding with the remark that Cornish is no longer known by young people. However, the last recorded traditional Cornish literature may have been the
Cranken Rhyme, a corrupted version of a verse or song published in the late 19th century by
John Hobson Matthews, recorded orally by
John Davey (or Davy) of
Boswednack, of uncertain date but probably originally composed during the last years of the traditional language. Davey had traditional knowledge of at least some Cornish. John Kelynack (1796–1885), a fisherman of Newlyn, was sought by
philologists for old Cornish words and technical phrases in the 19th century.
Decline of Cornish speakers between 1300 and 1800 (died 1777), said to be the last native speaker of Cornish, in an engraved portrait published in 1781|alt=A black and white engraving of a woman in 18th century clothing with a bonnet. Fish, a crab, a crustacean and a jug are below It is difficult to state with certainty when Cornish ceased to be spoken, due to the fact that its last speakers were of relatively low social class and that the definition of what constitutes "a living language" is not clear cut. Peter Pool argues that by 1800 nobody was using Cornish as a daily language and no evidence exists of anyone capable of conversing in the language at that date. However,
passive speakers,
semi-speakers and
rememberers, who retain some competence in the language despite not being fluent nor using the language in daily life, generally survive even longer. The traditional view that
Dolly Pentreath (1692–1777) was the
last native speaker of Cornish has been challenged, However, although it is clear Davey possessed some traditional knowledge in addition to having read books on Cornish, accounts differ of his competence in the language. Some contemporaries stated he was able to converse on certain topics in Cornish whereas others affirmed they had never heard him claim to be able to do so.
Robert Morton Nance, who reworked and translated Davey's Cranken Rhyme, remarked, "There can be no doubt, after the evidence of this rhyme, of what there was to lose by neglecting John Davey." The search for the last speaker is hampered by a lack of transcriptions or audio recordings, so that it is impossible to tell from this distance whether the language these people were reported to be speaking was Cornish, or English with a heavy Cornish
substratum, nor what their level of fluency was. Nevertheless, this academic interest, along with the beginning of the
Celtic Revival in the late 19th century, provided the groundwork for a Cornish language revival movement. Notwithstanding the uncertainty over who was the last speaker of Cornish, researchers have posited the following numbers for the prevalence of the language between 1050 and 1800.
Revived Cornish In 1904, the Celtic language scholar and Cornish cultural activist
Henry Jenner published
A Handbook of the Cornish Language. The publication of this book is often considered to be the point at which the revival movement started. Jenner wrote about the Cornish language in 1905, "one may fairly say that most of what there was of it has been preserved, and that it has been continuously preserved, for there has never been a time when there were not some Cornishmen who knew some Cornish." The revival focused on reconstructing and standardising the language, including coining new words for modern concepts, and creating educational material in order to teach Cornish to others. In 1929
Robert Morton Nance published his
Unified Cornish () system, based on the Middle Cornish literature while extending the attested vocabulary with neologisms and forms based on Celtic roots also found in Breton and Welsh, publishing a dictionary in 1938. Nance's work became the basis of revived Cornish () for most of the 20th century. During the 1970s, criticism of Nance's system, including the inconsistent orthography and unpredictable correspondence between spelling and pronunciation, resulted in the creation of several rival systems. In the 1980s,
Ken George published a new system, ('Common Cornish'), based on a reconstruction of the phonological system of Middle Cornish, but with an approximately
morphophonemic orthography. It was subsequently adopted by the Cornish Language Board and was the written form used by a reported 54.5% of all Cornish language users according to a survey in 2008, but was heavily criticised for a variety of reasons by Jon Mills and
Nicholas Williams, including making phonological distinctions that they state were not made in the traditional language , failing to make distinctions that they believe
were made in the traditional language at this time, and the use of an orthography that deviated too far from the traditional texts and Unified Cornish. Also during this period,
Richard Gendall created his Modern Cornish system (also known as Revived Late Cornish), which used Late Cornish as a basis, and Nicholas Williams published a revised version of Unified; In 2010 a new milestone was reached when UNESCO altered its classification of Cornish, stating that its previous label of "extinct" was no longer accurate. == Geographic distribution and number of speakers ==