For a language spoken fluently by only about 300 people, the Cornish language (spoken in Cornwall in Southwest England) has provoked more than its share of controversy.
A brief history first:
A language that began as a variation of the Welsh language around the 7th century CE, Cornish disappeared from everyday use at the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, a man named Henry Jenner began reading medieval Cornish plays and became interested in reviving the language. To this end, he spent many years travelling all over Cornwall interviewing Cornish speakers, learning Cornish from them and studying any Cornish texts he could find. In 1904, he published a "Handbook of the Cornish language," a textbook aiming to teach the language. His work sparked others' interest, and a man named Robert Nance reconstructed a version of Cornish he called Unified Cornish. This was the language promoted by the Cornish Language Board in the later 20th century. Yet as this version of the language grew more widespread, people began to notice inaccuracies and shortcomings of the language. The creation of several different versions followed. These are:
Phonemic (or Common) Cornish: Based on Medieval Cornish manuscripts, with phonetic spelling system
Modern Cornish: English-based orthography, somewhat simple grammar, language contains certain amount of English vocabulary
Unified Cornish Revised: Spelling somewhat regularized, but traditional orthographic practices of medieval scribes maintained (the first edition of the New Testament in Cornish was published in UCR in 2002)
The problem is that the existence of these differences created a divisive controversy, which threatened the Cornish language's ability to be fully revived. The differences between the various versions of Cornish are not huge and do not actually prevent speakers from communicating with one another; however, when Cornish was added to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and became eligible to receive funding to promote the language, it was necessary to consolidate the differences into one unified language.
But on October 14, 2007, a commission of learned experts ruled that all of the forms were valid, and an independent arbitrator was appointed to take the three or more forms of the language and create one single official written form.
My reactions to this issue?
Reading about the different forms of the language reminded me of a question we keep coming back to in class: how do you distinguish between a language and a dialect? I came up with a tenuous answer: People who speak the same language, but different dialects, can communicate with each other, if only imperfectly. People who speak different languages cannot communicate. It's the same sort of idea that is used in biology to define different species, as opposed to different variations of animals in the same species; animals of different species cannot mate.
I also thought it was interesting to learn about the methods of reviving a language; it seems like an uphill battle in today's increasingly globalized world. Hebrew is an example of a language that was revived extremely successfully--but the situation was pretty unique; with the creation of Israel, Hebrew was made the official language, and students were required to learn it in school. Furthermore, the general idea was that it was absolutely necessary for citizens to speak Hebrew in order to create a unified Israeli community. Without such intense conditions, it seems unlikely that a real revival can ever occur. (By a real revival, I mean that the language is revived to the extent that a person can be mono-lingual in that language, and never need another language to get along in society). And while in Cornwall, it has become more common to see signs posted in both English and Cornish, there is no real urgent motivation for the new generations to learn Cornish fluently--or actually use it as a way to communicate.
Finally, I'm curious to learn about how the "independent arbitrator" will consolidate the different forms the language. How will he decide which version is better or more valid?
http://www.cornish-language.org/english/faq.asp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,,2191378,00.html#article_continue
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cornish.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ben_yehuda.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4092664.stm
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5 comments:
It would be interesting to find out more about this "arbitrator" and what qualities he possesses that somehow qualified him above all others to take the future of this language into his hands!
thats a very good definition of dialect. so what's the point of reviving a language...other than this abstract notion that (and this is theoretical) different languages help us see the world differently...because if there is some odd african language that only a few people speak, maintaining it will only ensure that a few more people (b/c its def not gonna become widespread) see the world in new ways...not a remarkably efficient way to do this. bye maya
I can think of a couple reasons for reviving a language:
-Building/maintaining a community through shared language
-Maintaining culture (because there are probably stories that can't really bridge the translation gap)
-Sentimentalism :) just because it's sad to think of a language dying
i concur with your defintion of the dialect. Speaking from personal experience, I often get asked whether I, as a mandarin speaker, can understand cantonese (which, for all regards and purposes, I guess we can call a dialect in this case). It's really interesting though, because though cantonese can almost be considered a whole different language, if I listen closely to the influctuatations, do a little guess work about the context, and pick up a few words with similar pronunciations, I can generally get the gist of the conversation. I suppose it comes with sharing similar cultural background. I was discussing this with a friend, and he said that it's analogous with catalan and spanish. Do you find this to be true?
Great post and great discussion!
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