Cornish Today: An Examination of the Revived Language

by Nicholas Williams, Michael Everson (Editor)

The publication of "Cornish Today" by Kernewek dre Lyther in 1995 was a landmark event in the Cornish Revival. In that book, Professor Williams offered the first professional analysis of the various systems of Cornish in use, and also outlined his suggested emendations for Unified Cornish. The present revised edition makes this most important work available to those who may have missed the earlier editions. As companion volumes to "Cornish Today", two further works by Professor Williams are being published: "Writings on Revived Cornish" and "Towards Authentic Cornish". Nicholas Williams was born in Essex. While still at school he taught himself Cornish and became a bard of the Cornish Gorsedd for proficiency in the Cornish language in Newquay in 1962, taking the bardic name Golvan. He won first prize in the Gorsedd verse competition in 1961, 1964, and 1965. He read classics, English language, and Celtic in Oxford and was awarded a PhD in Celtic in Queen's University, Belfast in 1972. He is currently Associate Professor in the School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Folklore and Linguistics in University College, Dublin. He has written widely on the Celtic languages and literatures, in particular Irish, Manx and Cornish. He published "Cornish Today" in 1995, "Clappya Kernowek" in 1997, "English-Cornish Dictionary" in 2000 (second edition 2006) and Testament Noweth in 2002. He won first prize in the Gorsedd verse competitions of 1997, 1998, and 1999. With Graham Thomas he has produced an editio princeps of the recently discovered Cornish play, "Bewnans Ke", which was published by the University of Exeter Press in October 2006. Philip Payton, Professor of Cornish Studies, University of Exeter, has described Nicholas Williams as "the foremost inter­­national authority" in the Cornish language.

Genres: Language

360 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2006

Reviews

[Owain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did much enjoy reading this book, although I don't quite agree with some of what Williams says, however he is very much an expert in his field and regardless of whether one agrees with him it's certainly very useful to know what he says and this book certainly gives a good insight into why the FSS/SWF spelling system came about. I find it especially useful as a 4th grade student having to study the manuscripts etc. for part of my examinations this year. It also makes a very good study of how the language changed over time from the 800's through to the present day and gives a good summary of East/West dialects and accents.

Despite agreeing with Williams on many things I don't ascribe to his prescriptivism and whilst I believe that Cornish is a living, evolving language, I should mention that I'm not at the other end of the spectrum either and am not one of those who might make a conscious effort to purposefully change the language for the sake of it, as some seem to do.