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Well, Latin was a living language well into the 1960s, and is the process of being revived at certain (admittedly minority) seminaries and monastic establishments. I know two men who heard all their graduate coursework lectures and wrote their dissertations in Latin, and both are still themselves teaching (one at Georgia State Univesity and one at the University of Tennessee). It certianly wasn't classical Latin, but it was a recognizable descendent thereof. --MichaelTinkler |
This atricle is written in an extremely biased tone. Can you please state scholarly sources that prove that Dolly was not the last native speaker of Cornish? -- AV
Firstly, a number of children I know personally are native speakers, i.e. they have been taught Cornish from birth, and speak it principally. Secondly, the Dolly Pentreath story is actually incorrectly stated in most sources: the belief was that she was the last native monoglot speaker; she actually spoke a little English so she is disqualified on that count; the last native monoglot Cornish speaker was Chesten Marchant who died in 1676. William Bodinar, who died in 1789 also spoke Cornish but not as a native. Cornish was effectively extinct from about 1750 to 1904 when Henry Jenner published A Handbook for Cornish, although the language was still spoken in part by many inhabitants. Furthermore, the Daveys, pere et fils were also fluent Cornish speakers (although it is not known whether they were native speakers) and the son did not die until 1891.
Here is some primary source evidence for you from Bodinar, written in July 1786, in both English and Cornish:
"My age is 65. I am a poor fisherman. I learnt Cornish when I was a boy. I have been to sea with my father and 5 other men in the boat, and have not heard one word of English spoke in the boat for a week together. I never saw a Cornish book. I learnt Cornish going to sea with old men. There is not more than 4 or 5 in our town can talk Cornish now, old people 80 years old. Cornish is all forgot with young people."
This kind of buries the Pentreath myth for me if Bodinar is to be believed, and I see no reason why this should be questioned.
As for bias, well, yes, I admit that the Cornish language is a subject which is dear to my heart. sjc
The point is, any language without native speakers may be called 'dead' with equal justification, be it Latin, Hebrew or Cornish (until the recent revival attempts which produced a small number of native speakers of the "new" Cornish). The article refers to the accurate description of the state of Cornish as a "myth" which is to be debunked. --AV
No, the article deals with the Cornish language and touches on the Doll Pentreath myth; the story is, as the article indicates, based upon conjecture. The fact remains that Cornish as a language was not actively in use for a hundred years or so.
How do we know that Ms Pentreath was the last native speaker? Hearsay and at best tertiary sources, many of which are controverted by a number of primary sources. Just because a few encyclopedias and other tertiary sources are apathetic enough to recycle a piece of conjecture, does this mean that we have to treat it as gospel?
Let us therefore bury this one for all time. This is the evidence:
Dolly Pentreath (who more accurately is called Dorothy Jeffery due to her marriage) was a fish-wife of Mousehole who was a bit of a character, and who I think we will accept died on 27th December 1777. There is plenty of primary source evidence for this. She was reputed to have been 102 years old. This is uncheckable since her birth is anterior to any extant records.
There is no direct evidence that she spoke Cornish as a native; moreover she also spoke a considerable amount of English. There is the uncomfortable Bodinar letter (op.cit), which definitely contradicts the fact that she was the last Cornish speaker. Some sources, in fact, indicate that she spoke very little Cornish at all. There is also the tombstone at Zennor church to John Davey: 'the last to possess any traditional considerable knowledge of the Cornish Language'; the claims for Davey may be inflated yet nevertheless he was known to have some knowledge of the language as a native speaker, as did his father. There was no definitive 'last speaker'; just a larger than life local character who has been mythologised. sjc