Category: Language & Communication
There have been seven Celtic languages—not all at once, of course—and indeed it is possible that there may have been more; but seven are known to have existed. One other may have been a Celtic speech, or it may have been something pre-Celtic, but of it we know too little to ju...
The following is a list, in order of date, of the known remains of Cornish from the earliest times to the end of the eighteenth century. There may be others of very early date,...
1. CHAPTER I—THE STORY OF THE CORNISH LANGUAGEThere have been seven Celtic languages—not all at once, of course—and indeed it is possible that there may have been more; but seven are known to have existed. One other may hav...
20. CHAPTER XVI—NOTE ON THE INTERPRETATION OF CORNISH NAMESOne of the practical interests in the study of Cornish is in the interpretation of place-names. As quite ninety per cent. of the place-names of Cornwall are Celtic, and as a ver...
18. CHAPTER XIV—THE CONSTRUCTION OF SENTENCES, IDIOMS, ETC.§ 1. In later Cornish there was a strong tendency to assimilate the order of words and the construction of sentences to those of English, but nevertheless certain idioms persist...
11. CHAPTER VII—THE PRONOUNSThere are four forms of the Personal pronouns. These forms are used under various circumstances, but they are mostly reducible to a single letter with or without its vowel for e...
19. CHAPTER XV—PROSODYThe prosody of the Celtic languages is often very elaborate, but the more modern tendency has generally been in the direction of assimilating it to the prosody of English, or, i...
8. CHAPTER IV—THE NOUNNouns are either primitive or derived. Primitive nouns have no special terminations to distinguish them from other words. Derived nouns, chiefly abstract, are formed from adject...
13. CHAPTER IX—THE AUXILIARY VERBSThe verb _to be_ in Cornish, as in other Aryan languages, is made up of more than one verb. In Cornish it may be divided in two parts. The first of these consists of two tenses,...
4. CHAPTER I—SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATIONIn simple Cornish words of more than one syllable the stress accent is generally, though not universally, on the last but one. {54} The vowel of this syllable has usually its pl...
12. CHAPTER VIII—THE VERB IN GENERAL§ 1. The nucleus of a Cornish verb is its root. This is used without any variation or addition for the third person singular of the present tense, and for the second person sing...
5. Chapter II.), when it is more strongly sounded. Then, and when it occursin the middle of a word, it represents in a lighter form the guttural _c’h_ of Breton, the _ch_ of German, Welsh, and Gaelic, or the guttural _gh_ of older English. At the end o...
14. CHAPTER X—PARADIGM OF A REGULAR VERBThe following is a complete paradigm of a regular verb, showing the various forms. Most tenses have at least two forms, the simple verb, whether in the inflected or impersonal c...
3. PART II—THE GRAMMAR OF THE CORNISH LANGUAGE1. The Ancient period is only represented by the Cottonian Vocabulary, which, though a MS. of the twelfth century, is probably a copy of a much earlier one, by perhaps a few glo...
6. CHAPTER II—THE INITIAL MUTATIONSIn all the Celtic languages there are certain partly grammatical and partly phonetic changes of the first letters of words, which are called by various names, the most convenien...
15. CHAPTER XI—THE IRREGULAR VERBSOf these, _môs_ and _dôn_ are each made up of two different verbs. The irregularities of _dôs_, _drŷ_, and _rŷ_ are due to contractions, and those of _gŏdhvas_ chiefly to its be...
17. CHAPTER XIII—SWEAR-WORDS AND EXPLETIVESCornish is a disappointing language in respect of swearwords, for it is by no means rich in those “ornaments to conversation.” Except for a few very distressing expressions, now...
16. CHAPTER XII—PREPOSITIONS, CONJUNCTIONS, ADVERBS§ 1. Prepositions are of two kinds, simple and compound. Simple prepositions govern various states of the initial. Compound prepositions, when, as is generally the case, they ar...
9. CHAPTER V—THE ADJECTIVEAdjectives are primitive or derived. Primitive adjectives have no specially characteristic terminations. Derived adjectives are mostly formed by adding _ek_ to a noun or verb, w...
10. CHAPTER VI—THE NUMERALSThe later lists of ordinal numbers usually have _vas_ for the termination, but the practice of the older MSS., the analogy of Welsh and Breton, and the very definite sound of th...
7. CHAPTER III—THE ARTICLE§ 1. The definite article _the_ is _an_, for all numbers and genders. When the noun that follows is _feminine_ and _singular_, or _masculine_ and _plural_, its initial, if mutab...