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Post by deuce on Mar 27, 2018 9:59:56 GMT -5
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Post by kemp on May 24, 2018 9:05:14 GMT -5
Considering that Celtic languages were once spread over continental Europe, it is noteworthy that they have all been supplemented by Germanic, Slavic and Latin based languages due to certain historical forces. The one exception is Breton, of Brittany France, but that was brought over to France by migrating Britons in the early middles ages, as opposed to being a continental Celtic language. Breton is a Brittonic language, related to the Welsh and Cornish languages. Interesting to note that Cornish is making a small comeback of sorts. Of course, Irish and Scottish are considered Gaelic as opposed to Brittonic, although part of the Insular Celtic languages.
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Post by kemp on Jul 28, 2018 9:38:39 GMT -5
Somewhat disjointed article about recent skeleton find under an Irish pub: "“The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view,” said Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford who has written books on the origins of the people of Ireland. DNA research indicates that the three skeletons found behind McCuaig's are the ancestors of the modern Irish and they predate the Celts and their purported arrival by 1,000 years or more. The genetic roots of today's Irish, in other words, existed in Ireland before the Celts arrived. “The most striking feature” of the bones, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal, is how much their DNA resembles that of contemporary Irish, Welsh and Scots. (By contrast, older bones found in Ireland were more like Mediterranean people, not the modern Irish.)" www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/17/a-mans-discovery-of-bones-under-his-pub-could-forever-change-what-we-know-about-the-irish/There were people and then there were other people seems to be a traditional account. Devils' in the details. Happy St. Patrick's Day. This is really interesting. The Irish Book of Invasions recounts the different groups of people that invaded and subsequently settled Ireland, and I have always looked at the Irish as simply having a Celtic layer in their history ( linguistic and other influences ) as opposed to being directly descended from Celtic settlers from central Europe. Of course, there are also some that are challenging the traditional scholarly view about the spread of Celtic languages. From your link. 'To be sure, some think that Celtic languages originated with the Celts on continental Europe and subsequently spread to Ireland, Wales and Scotland. This is the traditional view, and it dovetails with the idea that the Celts moved into Ireland during the Iron Age. But over the last decade, a growing number of scholars have argued that the first Celtic languages were spoken not by the Celts in the middle of Europe but by ancient people on Europe’s westernmost extremities, possibly in Portugal, Spain, Ireland or the other locales on the western edges of the British Isles. Koch, the linguist at the University of Wales, for example, proposed in 2008 that “Celtic” languages were not imports to the region but instead were developed somewhere in the British Isles or the Iberian Peninsula — and then spread eastward into continental Europe. His doubts about the traditional view arose as he was studying inscriptions on artifacts from southern Portugal. The inscriptions on those artifacts strongly resembled the languages known as Celtic, yet they dated as far back as 700 B.C. This placed Celtic languages far from the Celt homelands in the middle of Europe at a very, very early date. “What it shows is that the language that became Irish was already out there — before 700 B.C. and before the Iron Age,” Koch said. “It just didn’t fit with the traditional theory of Celtic spreading west to Britain and Iberia.”'
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Post by kemp on Jul 28, 2018 9:49:28 GMT -5
The King Arthur statue at Tintagel, Cornwall. Nos da
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Post by kemp on Aug 2, 2018 6:22:50 GMT -5
A blacksmith (An Gof) named Michael Joseph was one of the leaders of the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, along with Thomas Flamank. The rebels marched to London to protest against King Henry VII's levy of a tax to pay for an invasion of Scotland in response to the Scots' support of the pretender Perkin Warbeck. The Cornish believed that this was a northern affair and had nothing to do with them; they also believed that the tax was the work of the King's corrupt counsellors and marched to London to bring this to the King's attention. About 6,000 Cornishmen initially set out, but attracted recruits along the way until it was 15,000 strong. The Cornish rebels were beaten by the King's forces at the Battle of Deptford Bridge on 17 June 1497. Michael fled to Greenwich after the battle, but was captured and sent to the Tower of London. As one of the leaders, Michael An Gof was executed with Flamank on 27 June 1497. Deemed to be traitors, they were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn and their heads displayed on pike-staffs on London Bridge. Just before his execution, An Gof is recorded to have said that he would have "a name perpetual and a fame permanent and immortal". In 1997, a statue depicting An Gof and Flamank was unveiled in St Keverne and a commemorative plaque was unveiled on the wall of Greenwich Park facing Blackheath common.
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Post by kemp on Aug 2, 2018 7:22:31 GMT -5
The Celtic languages preceded Romance and Germanic based languages in western Europe, and may have even originated in the most westerly parts of ‘Atlantic Europe’, the area that roughly corresponds to Great Britain, Ireland Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands and France, although most academia point to the Hallstatt culture that covered parts of central and western Europe as having the first Celtic speakers.
Of late I have been trying to understand some of the relationships between the surviving Celtic languages with an emphasis on learning some of the basic terms, more of a hobby than anything else.
To keep focused I have picked one of the languages for consideration. Cornish has had some revival of late, estimates on the number of speakers vary from one source to another, but fluent speakers number in the hundreds, and those with a basic understanding for simple conversations number in the several thousands.
Basic Cornish phrases
Reading up on the Cornish language has also meant that I have been able to look at some of the history of Cornwall and its people. Interestingly enough, even though it is in the southernmost part of the UK there was little Roman presence in the western most part of Great Britain's southwest peninsula.
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Post by deuce on Aug 2, 2018 10:31:11 GMT -5
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Post by kemp on Aug 3, 2018 6:01:28 GMT -5
Deuce, I had thought that the ‘pirate accent’ originated from the southern counties of England, and that second link you provided noted that during the Golden Age of Piracy, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, many pirates came from Robert Newton’s native region. ‘The famous Blackbeard himself was most likely born in Bristol, and most legendary pirates were supposedly born in either Bristol, Devon or Cornwall. Cornwall has a particularly strong tradition in seafaring and fishing, so perhaps most seafaring folk of that time would have come from that part of the world. Newton, therefore, possibly revived the genuine historical accent of pirates.’ Of course, and as the article notes, the accent Newton used in his role was an exaggerated version of his native accent. Thanks for the information.
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Post by kemp on Aug 4, 2018 10:17:07 GMT -5
Old Celtic Cross covered in lichens churchyard Tintagel North Cornwall.
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Post by kemp on Aug 5, 2018 5:03:06 GMT -5
Cornish is actually closer to Breton than to Welsh, although all three are Brythonic Celtic languages. Cornish divulged from Welsh in the late 7th century. ‘Old Cornish was used from about 800-1250 AD and traces of it also survive in some place names in eastern Cornwall.' Cornish ( Kernewek ) www.omniglot.com/writing/cornish.htmBrittonic speakers in the 6th century
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Post by kemp on Aug 5, 2018 5:06:34 GMT -5
The Cornish used between 1250 and 1550 is known as Middle or Medieval Cornish and quite a lot of literature from this period still survives, including religious plays, poems and sermons. ‘The opening verses of Origo Mundi, the first play of the Ordinalia (the magnum opus of medieval Cornish literature), written by an unknown monk in the late 14th century’ Literature in Late or Modern Cornish, the type of Cornish used between 1550 and the end of the 19th century, includes folk tales, poems, songs, and translations from the Bible.’
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Post by kemp on Aug 5, 2018 5:12:30 GMT -5
There is a bit of a contention on who was the last recorded native speaker of Cornish whose only spoken language was Cornish. The above link on Cornish ( Kernewek ) notes John Davey of Zennor who died in 1891 as a possibility. Other sources throw up a multitude of other names. 'Dolly Pentreath (died 1777), said to be the last native speaker of Cornish, in an engraved portrait published in 1781' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_languageen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_speaker_of_the_Cornish_languageOf course, Cornish never truly died out, albeit in limited usage by a handful of speakers until it was again revived in the early 20th century by the Cornish who wanted to preserve the linguistic element of their cultural heritage.
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Post by kemp on Aug 7, 2018 8:22:55 GMT -5
Various efforts have been made to develop and promote the use of the Cornish language, the Cornish Language Partnership, a public and voluntary sector partnership made up of Cornish language societies, cultural organisations and local government in Cornwall has been at the forefront in this respect. 'The Partnership is the chief regulator of the Standard Written Form of Cornish, an orthography that was published in 2008 with the intention of uniting the previous conflicting orthographies, and for use on road signs, in official documents, and in school examinations.' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_Language_Partnership
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Post by kemp on Aug 7, 2018 8:29:52 GMT -5
'The rebirth of Britain's 'lost' languages' www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180412-the-rebirth-of-britains-lost-languages'Cornish shares a Brythonic root with other Celtic languages, Welsh and Breton, once the language of Brittany. The county of Cornwall, the most south-westerly region of England, resisted anglicisation right up until the Reformation. The move to English as the language of the church was vehemently opposed by the Cornish, but their ‘Prayer Book Rebellion’ was crushed viciously, with around 4,000 Cornish killed. It was a hammer blow to the language: during the 17th Century, its use declined until there were only a few thousand speakers in the far west. ‘The language we all understand’ 'A revival of interest in the early 20th Century helped preserve the language, although it remained pretty niche. It still is – but over the last 20 years, there’s been another surge of support. In 2002, Cornish was recognised by the UK government under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and the council began funding bilingual signage. It was taken off Unesco’s ‘extinct’ languages list in 2010, and Cornish is now taught in some nurseries and primary schools.'
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Post by deuce on Aug 7, 2018 9:32:19 GMT -5
Cornish is actually closer to Breton than to Welsh, although all three are Brythonic Celtic languages. Cornish divulged from Welsh in the late 7th century. ‘Old Cornish was used from about 800-1250 AD and traces of it also survive in some place names in eastern Cornwall.' Cornish ( Kernewek ) www.omniglot.com/writing/cornish.htmBrittonic speakers in the 6th century The situation of Cornish lords taking and holding lands in Armorica and ruling on both sides of the Channel is somewhat analogous to the later Norman Conquest, just in reverse. While a fictional novel, Paxson's The White Raven has a large, fact-filled appendix which covers this very period in Cornish-Breton history. I have a bit of Breton-Norman blood myself.
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