• Learning Cornish
• Cornish notes for beginners
• Sections 1 and 2

Cornish notes for beginners by Neil Kennedy

1.1 Nuts and Bolts

Here are some basic link words that you will need for your first sentences:

We do not usually use a word for a. We do not say: ‘a book’, ‘a house’ etc.; We just say ‘book’ lever, ‘house’ chy. To say ‘a certain’ or ‘a particular’ something, or to emphasize the thing we are talking about, we use edn e.g. edn venen.

an: the. Occasionally shortened to a. There is no strict rule about when to use a except that you must use an before a vowel. An can also mean ‘of the’.

ha: and ha may become hag before a vowel (a,e,i,o,u,y) but this is often ignored in Late Cornish.

han: and the (i.e. ha + an). You can write this with an apostrophe: ha'n.

dha or da: to. Dh is pronounced like the soft th of the. Da is a common variation but don't confuse it for the word for good which may be written da or daa.

[If you've learnt Unified or Kemmyn be aware that soft mutation is often ignored after dha/da.]

dhan: to the (i.e. dha + an). You can write this with an apostrophe: dha'n.

Look at these place-names :

This is a typical way of putting things together in Cornish. In these examples an can be translated in a variety of ways: of the, by the etc.

1.2 Adjectives after nouns

Cornish word order is different. The adjective (description) follows the noun (name of thing)… so we say: ‘house big’ - chy broaz and ‘dog white’ - ky gwidn rather than ‘big house’ & ‘white dog’. If there are two adjectives, as in ‘big, white house’ we put the important one next to the noun:chy gwidn broaz

Occasionally we may place one adjective before the noun and another after it - brave ober da (a good, hansome job) - but you don't need to worry about that until you've gone further with your Kernuak.

Sometimes we put adjectives in front of nouns: hugeth meneth arall – another huge mountain. Don't try it until you've heard it or seen it somewhere else.

1.3 Gender

In Cornish everything is feminine or masculine. The first letter of many feminine words changes when placed after an (the). This is known as soft mutation. Do not be alarmed! It is not necessary to learn the rules at this stage. Just be aware that these letter changes may occur.

There is no easy way to tell whether a word is masculine or feminine (unless it refers to a person). It's probably easier to tell with baby rabbits, but after a while you will start to remember which words are masculine and feminine and you will recognize patterns. Dictionaries use m or f to show gender.

2.1 Getting started: Handy social phrases

Greetings

Enquiries

Answers

O ve means I am.

Invitations

Choices

Requests

Hints

Toasts

Thanks

In letters:

Farewells

2.2 Names

There are several ways to answer, apart from just saying your name:

Beginners should concentrate on the first type of answer given above.

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