The main distinction between them consists in the Gaelic employing _k_
or the hard _c_ where the Welsh and Cornish would use _p_. Thus _pen_
is used in the latter, and _ken_ in the former. When the Irish adopted
the word _purpur_, purple, they changed it into _corcair_; and when
they took the low Latin _premter_ for presbyter into their language
they twisted it into _crumthir_. The Cornish was identical with old
Welsh, and the Breton was originally identical with the Cornish; but in
course of time some changes grew up differentiating the tongues, and
forming dialects derived from the same mother tongue, that is all.
In or about 1540 Dr. Moreman, vicar of Menheniot, in the east of the
county, was the first to teach the people the Creed, the Lord's Prayer,
and the Commandments in English.
Carew, however, in his _Survey of Cornwall_ in 1602 says, "Most of the
inhabitants can speak no word of Cornish, but few are ignorant of
English, and yet some so affect their own as to a stranger they will
not speak it, for if meeting them by chance you inquire the way, your
answer will be, '_Meeg nauidna cowzasawzneck_'--I can speak no
Saxonage."
Carew's _Survey_ was soon followed by that of Norden, who says that the
tongue was chiefly confined to Penwith and Kirrier, and yet "though the
husband and wife, parents and children, master and servants, do
naturally communicate in their native language, yet there is none of
them in a manner but is able to converse with a stranger in the English
tongue, unless it be some obscure people who seldom confer with the
better sort."
The Cornish was so well spoken in the parish of Feock till about the
year 1640 "that Mr. William Jackman, the then vicar, ... was forced for
divers years to administer the Sacrament to the communicants in the
Cornish tongue, because the aged people did not well understand the
English, as he himself often told me" (Hals).
So late as 1650 the Cornish language was currently spoken in the
parishes of Paul and S. Just; and in 1678 the rector of Landewednack
"preached a sermon to his parishioners in the Cornish language only."
It may seem paradoxical, but I contend that for intellectual culture it
is a great loss to the Cornish to have abandoned their native tongue.
To be bi-lingual is educative to the intellect in a very marked degree.
In their determination not to abandon their tongue, the Welsh show
great prudence. I have no hesitation in saying that a Welsh peasant is
much ahead, intellectually, of the English peasant of the same social
position, and I attribute this mainly to the fact of the greater
agility given to his brain in having to think and speak in two
languages. When he gives up one of these tongues he abandons mental
gymnastics as well as the exercise of the vocal organs in two different
modes of speech.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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