The ancient Cornish language has been declared dehwelans dhyworth an marow – back from the dead – amid a rise in popularity thanks to Covid-19 and a critically acclaimed psych-pop star.
There has been a significant rise in the number of people learning Cornish since the pandemic lockdown forced classes online, according to the volunteer network An Rosweyth.
“We have people in America, we have people in Australia, Mexico, Spain, Turkey,” said Emma Jenkin, its support officer, who said her last online lesson had “a couple of people in Cornwall – but mostly people are dotted all over the place”.
Jenkin added there had been a “huge influx” of people wanting to learn Cornish during the pandemic and the interest has kept growing – not just from those overseas who mostly have Cornish heritage, she said.
Younger people are taking up lessons as a result of its recent revival in popular culture. The singer-songwriter Gwenno’s second album, Le Kov, was written and performed entirely in Cornish, and its follow-up, Tresor, was nominated for the Mercury prize. The comedian Edward Rowe, better known as Kernow King, has also helped popularise the language.
The sudden popularity is quite the turnaround for a language that was described as “extinct” by Unesco’s world atlas of languages little over a decade ago. The UN’s heritage agency now classifies Cornish – Kernewek – as “endangered”, having been reclassified as “critically endangered” in 2010.
Only 563 people described said that Cornish was their main language in the most recent census, covering England and Wales. However, experts say this is likely to be a significant underestimate because it relates to the number of people who speak it as a first language when, in reality, most Cornish speakers use English in everyday life.
Cornwall council estimates that between 2,000 and 5,000 people can speak basic Cornish, and that number is on the rise.
A report by Language magazine last year claimed more than 4,000 people were learning Cornish across the county. According to evidence given to a parliamentary committee, more than 2,000 people were learning the language using the app Memrise while a further 200 were taking formal adult education classes.
Whereas once these classes were the preserve of retirees and amateur enthusiasts, said Jenkin, they are now becoming popular with a younger generation.
More than two dozen primary schools, representing more than 9,000 pupils, have started learning the language as part of the Go Cornish scheme.
That has created its own problem: there are not enough Cornish teachers to meet the demand. Jenkin said: “There’s only one school support officer for the whole of Cornwall – and she only works part-time – so they [Go Cornish] have a waiting list because they can’t do any more than what they are doing”.
Denzil Monk, the chief executive of the independent production company Bosena, said artists such as Gwenno and films such as Bait and Enys Men by the Bafta-winning director Mark Jenkin were part of a renaissance in Cornwall’s cultural scene.
“When I was growing up [Cornish] was seen as a historical thing and there was just a small number of people learning it,” Monk said. “But it’s become something that’s easy to get into and accepted as something that’s fun and an important part of our cultural life”.
The revival has not come about as a result of increased funding from central government, though the Cornish people were formally recognised as a national minority in law in 2014.
But recognition alone is “not enough to support a minority language from going into decline”, Cornwall council said in a submission to MPs last year, describing the language as “a British cultural asset which is at risk”.
Monk, who is leading an effort to foster more Cornish-language films, said he had never considered the language extinct – “maybe deeply asleep” – but that its recent revival in popular culture reflected what was happening on the ground.
More people are using bits of basic Cornish – such as dydh da for hello, or meur ras for thank you – in everyday life, he said. The language with roots stretching back thousands of years is now seen as “interesting, culturally relevant and contemporary, rather than something of the past”.
Useful Cornish words
Good morning – Myttin da
Good afternoon – Dohajydh da
Thank you – Meur ras
Please – Mar pleg
More cake – Moy tesen
How’s it going? – Fatla genes?
Very good – Pur dha
Evil/awful – Euthyk
I would like to – My a vynnsa
How’re you doing my beauties? – Fatla genowgh hwi ow thekteryow?
• This article was amended on 19 June 2024. An earlier version said that “557 people described themselves as fluent Cornish speakers in the most recent UK census”. In fact this census, which covered England and Wales only, said that 563 people had described Cornish as their main language. Also, it was not the Cornish language that was formally recognised as a national minority in law in 2014, but the Cornish people.
