Cornish language
For the Cornish-English dialect see West
Country dialects and List of Cornish
dialect words.
Cornish
Kernewek, Kernowek
Spoken in United Kingdom
Region
Cornwall, elsewhere in the United
Kingdom, and handful of speakers
in Australia, the United States,
Brittany and Wales
Total
speakers
~ 840 fluent in everyday
conversation, 2,900 in simple
conversation (estimate)[1]
Language
family
Indo-European
Celtic
Insular Celtic
Brythonic
Cornish
Writing
system
Latin alphabet
Official status
Official
language
in
Not an official language;
but a recognised minority
language in the United Kingdom
Regulated
by
Cornish Language Partnership
Language codes
ISO 639-1 kw
ISO 639-2 cor
ISO 639-3 cor
The Cornish
language
(in
Cornish:
Kernewek or Kernowek)
is one of
the
Brythonic group of Celtic languages. The lan-
guage continued to function as a community
language in parts of Cornwall until the late
18th century, and a process to revive the lan-
guage was started in the early 20th century,
continuing to this day with some success.
The revival of Cornish began in 1904
when Henry Jenner, a Celtic language enthu-
siast, published his book Handbook of the
Cornish Language. His work was based on
Cornish as it was spoken in the 18th century,
although his pupil Robert Morton Nance later
steered the revival more to the style of the
16th century, before the language became in-
fluenced by English. This set the tone for the
next few decades; as the revival gained pace,
learners of the language disagreed on which
style of Cornish to use, and a number of com-
peting orthographies were in use by the end
of the century.
Nevertheless, many Cornish
language
textbooks and works of literature have been
published over the decades, and an increas-
ing number of people are studying the lan-
guage.[2] Recent
developments
include
Cornish music[3],
independent films[4] and
children’s books, a small number of children
in Cornwall have been brought up to be bilin-
gual native speakers,[5] and the language is
taught in many schools.[6] Cornish g