Cornwall gets National Minority Status :)
Welsh-lad
Posts: 51,924 Forum Member
✭
Cornwall has long fought for the European NMS, and it has finally been granted:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-27132035
Congratulations to Cornish folk - it is a very special place with a very distinct history and language
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-27132035
Congratulations to Cornish folk - it is a very special place with a very distinct history and language
0
Comments
Oh yeah I hadn't thought of that!
Should have done what with Danny Alexander's chinless mug plastered all over the story
Congratulations to the Cornish people - the original British.
I would celebrate by having a cornish pasty for my dinner, but I'm a veggie, so will settle for a cheese and onion pasty from Greggs instead.
This'll get some people frothing.
Some get angry at the Welsh language. What will they make of this?
When I last visited Camborne, some 5 years ago, streetname signs had Cornish translations on them.
Eh - but that's nothing compared to in my neck of the woods where we have the only public facility in Britain in which the signage is in Latin - Segedunum - on one of our Metro Stations.
Beat that rest of the UK.
Yes I've seen those too:
http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/council-news-room/media-releases/news-from-2014/news-from-february-2014/language-milestone-reached-as-the-cornish-language-partnership-completes-1000-cornish-street-signs/
It adds a little exotic touch doesn't it.
No doubt there'll be an outcry, as you said, not that it matters, it's a day for Cornwall.
That's quite whimsical - I think you win that one, unless there's a bus station name in Pictish in Inverness or somewhere
I saw "road" translated on the signs. In Welsh it's "ffordd". In Cornish, it was something like "fordh".
Wanting to be distinct and have the language is different, I guess.
Nationalism isn't that widespread, in my perception, but pride in distinctness is.
Really?
What do you think is going to happen now?
I say, good for Cornwall and the Cornish.
I agree with you, and in any case it's a reconstituted language, and quite a niche interest.
I think as long as it can have a presence and be acknowledged, most people will be content
Yes there are many many parallels. Both languages stem from Ancient British, and nearly all important words are cognate.
Ty / Chy = house
Llan / Lan = enclosure
Eglwys / Eglos = church
Tre / Tre = farmstead
Pen / Pen = headland
And those are just a few placename ones.
My favourite is 'Zawn' (cognate with Welsh 'Safn') which means 'mouth'.
Lots of bays and coves in Cornwall are prefixed 'zawn' - literally where the land makes a mouth around the sea.
There are hundreds more similarities obviously.
How grateful should we be to a bureaucratic bunch of toss pots telling us what everyone already knew.
People generally support the English football and rugby team. There's only been small outbreaks of pro-nationalist vandalism.
*http://anntrevenen.angelfire.com/biography.html
So by what criteria was this decision made?
I've met Ann Trevenen Jenkin! She was the Cornish representative at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in Llandeilo in 1996
Welsh, Cornish and Breton are very similar Celtic languages, however I understood that the last native Cornish speaker died over 100 years ago, and that only a handful of people mainly University professors, folk dancers and suchlike speak it now.
Don't forget Cumbrian too
She was such an engaging person when I met her and an excellent public speaker
Small world!
Her daughter (Loveday Jenkin) was speaking on Radio 4 this morning about this NM Status. She is the Mebyon Kernow county councillor for Crowan and Wendron.
We visited the Celtica festival in Brittany several years ago - music, dance, poetry, drink, processions etc. There were representatives from the UK celtic groups (though only the Welsh and Scottish folks actually spoke their own language,) from Galatia in Turkey, and Galicia in Spain, and Ireland, of course.
The Bretons have been trying hard to revive their language, but its an uphill struggle as regional languages are frowned on in France, but it was interesting to watch them speaking to the Welsh and each understanding a lot of the other.
Downside - a lot of it looked like people dressing up in 20th century ideas of their folk costume and singing 20th century inventions of what their music may or may not have sounded like.
Have to say the Welsh and Scots really stood out in having a living continuous lingustic and cultural tradition. The rest seemed a bit like play-acting.
Did you celebrate St Georges Day yesterday?
But lets be honest, the Cornish people are no different whatsoever than the rest of us british.
I can't see how they can be a minority ?