Cornish is a Celtic language within the Indo-European language family.
- Other Celtic languages are Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx (or Manx Gaelic), Welsh and Breton.
- More specifically, Cornish is part of the Brythonic (also referred to as Brittonic) subgroup, along with Welsh and Breton.
- It is a recognized minority language of the United Kingdom.
- It maintained mutual intelligibility with Breton until the Middle Ages.
Cornish was historically spoken in the British region of Cornwall.
- It was the community language in certain parts of the region until the late 18th century. It has been pushed out over the centuries by English.
- Efforts to revive the language have seen some success – some children are being raised as bilingual speakers of Cornish and English.
- Cornish is also taught at some schools.
Like other Celtic languages, Cornish has grammatical features which are unfamiliar to those who have no experience with such languages.
- One feature is the verb-subject-object word order.
- Another is the mutation, which changes the spelling at the beginning of a word. Cornish uses four types of mutations – soft, aspirate, hard and mixed.
- There are two grammatical genders – masculine and feminine.
- There is no indefinite article (‘a’, ‘an’ in English).
Here is a sample of what Cornish sounds like:
Interested in learning the language? Visit the new Cornish language page for resources.
References
Polyglot in Progress 