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The Cornish dialect (also known as Cornish English, Anglo-Cornish or Cornu-English) is a dialect of English spoken in Cornwall by Cornish people. Dialectal English spoken in Cornwall is to some extent influenced by Cornish language grammar, and often includes words derived from the Cornish language. The Cornish language is a Celtic language of the Brythonic branch, as are the Welsh language and Breton language languages. In addition to the distinctive words and grammar, there are a variety of accents found within Cornwall from the north coast to that of the south coast and from east to west Cornwall. Typically, the accent is more divergent from Standard British English the further west through Cornwall one travels. The speech of the various parishes being to some extent different from the others was described by John T. Tregellas and Thomas Quiller Couch towards the end of the 19th century. Tregellas wrote of the differences as he understood them and Couch suggested the parliamentary constituency boundary between the East and West constituencies, from Crantock to Veryan, as roughly the border between eastern and western dialects. To this day, the towns of Bodmin and Lostwithiel as well as Bodmin Moor are considered the boundary.
The further spread of the English language in Cornwall was slowed by the change to Norman French as the main language of administration after the Norman Conquest. In addition, continued communication with Brittany, where the closely related Breton language was spoken, tended to favour the continued use of the Cornish language.
But from around the 13th to 14th centuries the use of English for administration was revived, and a vernacular Middle English literary tradition developed. These were probable reasons for the increased use of the English language in Cornwall. In the Tudor period, various circumstances, including the imposition of an English language prayer book in 1549, and the lack of a Cornish translation of any part of the Bible, led to a language shift from Cornish to English.
The language shift to English occurred much later in Cornwall than in other areas: in most of Devon and beyond, the Celtic language had probably died out before the Norman Conquest. However the Celtic language survived much later in the westernmost areas of Cornwall, where there were still speakers as late as the 18th century. For this reason, there are important differences between the Anglo-Cornish dialect and other West Country dialects.
Cornish was the most widely spoken language west of the River Tamar until around the mid-14th century, when Middle English began to be adopted as a common language of the Cornish people. As late as 1542 Andrew Boorde, an English traveller, physician and writer, wrote that in Cornwall were two languages, "Cornysshe" and "Englysshe", but that "there may be many men and women" in Cornwall who could not understand English". Since the Norman language was the mother tongue of most of the English aristocracy, Cornish was used as a lingua franca, particularly in the far west of Cornwall.Tanner, Marcus (2006), The Last of the Celts, Yale University Press, ; p. 225 Many Cornish landed gentry chose mottos in the Cornish language for their coats of arms, highlighting its high social status.Tanner, Marcus (2006), The Last of the Celts, Yale University Press, ; p. 226 The Carminow family used the motto "Cala rag whethlow", for example.Pascoe, W. H. (1979) A Cornish Armory. Padstow: Lodenek Press; p. 27 However, in 1549 and following the English Reformation, King Edward VI of England commanded that the Book of Common Prayer, an Anglican liturgical text in the English language, should be introduced to all churches in his kingdom, meaning that Latin and Celtic customs and services should be discontinued. The Prayer Book Rebellion was a militant revolt in Cornwall and parts of neighbouring Devon against the Act of Uniformity 1549, which outlawed all languages from church services apart from English,Pittock, Murray (1999), Celtic Identity and the British Image, Manchester University Press, ; p. 122 and is cited as a testament to the affection and loyalty the Cornish people held for the Cornish language. In the rebellion, separate risings occurred simultaneously at Bodmin in Cornwall, and Sampford Courtenay in Devon—which would converge at Exeter, laying siege to the region's largest Protestant city.Zagorín, Pérez (1982), Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1660: provincial rebellion; revolutionary civil wars, 1560–1660, Cambridge University Press, ; p. 26 However, the rebellion was suppressed, due largely to the aid of foreign mercenaries, in a series of battles in which "hundreds were killed",Magnaghi, Russell M. (2008), Cornish in Michigan , East Lansing: MSU Press, ; pp. 2–3 effectively ending Cornish as the common language of the Cornish people. The Anglicanism of the Reformation served as a vehicle for Anglicisation in Cornwall; Protestantism had a lasting cultural effect upon the Cornish by way of linking Cornwall more closely with England, while lessening political and linguistic ties with the Breton people of Brittany.Tanner, Marcus (2006), The Last of the Celts'', Yale University Press, ; p. 230
The English Civil War, a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Roundhead and Cavalier, polarised the populations of England and Wales. However, Cornwall in the English Civil War was a staunchly Royalist enclave, an "important focus of support for the Royalist cause".Price, Glanville (2000), Languages in Britain and Ireland, Wiley-Blackwell, ; p. 113 Cornish soldiers were used as scouts and spies during the war, for their language was not understood by English Parliamentarians. Following the war there was a further shift to the English language by the Cornish people, which encouraged an influx of English people to Cornwall. By the mid-17th century the use of Cornish had retreated far enough west to prompt concern and investigation by antiquarians, such as William Scawen who had been an officer during the Civil War. As the Cornish language diminished, the people of Cornwall underwent a process of English enculturation and assimilation,Hechter, Michael (1999), Internal Colonialism: the Celtic fringe in British national development (2nd ed.), Transaction, ; p. 64 becoming "absorbed into the mainstream of English life".
There has been discussion over whether certain words found in North America have an origin in the Cornish language, mediated through Anglo-Cornish dialect. Legends of the Fall, a novella by American author Jim Harrison, detailing the lives of a Cornish American family in the early 20th century, contains several Cornish language terms. These were also included in the Academy Award–winning film of the same name starring Anthony Hopkins as Col. William Ludlow and Brad Pitt as Tristan Ludlow. Some words in American Cornu-English are almost identical to those in Anglo-Cornish:
| Waste |
| Mine |
| Washing pit for ore, churn |
| White spar stone |
| Black tourmaline |
| To dig exploratory pits |
| A small pit |
| Small cavity in a vein |
| Soft layer of material |
| Miner's wedge or spike |
| A derivative of 'You', a greeting or 'Hello' |
South Australian Aborigines, particularly the Nunga, are said to speak English with a Cornish accent because they were taught the English language by Cornish miners. Most large towns in South Australia had newspapers at least partially in Cornish dialect: for instance, the Northern Star published in Kapunda in the 1860s carried material in dialect.Stephen Adolphe Wurm; Peter Mühlhäusler & Darrell Tryon. Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996 At least 23 Cornish words have made their way into Australian English; these include the mining terms Fossicking]] and Gold nugget]].Bruce Moore Speaking our Language: the story of Australian English, Oxford University Press, 2009
Phonology, the lenition of f, s, th occurs in East Cornwall, as in the core West Country dialect area, but not in west Cornwall. The second person pronoun, you (and many other occurrences of the same vowel) is pronounced as in standard English in the west of Cornwall; but east of the Bodmin district, a 'sharpening' of the vowel occurs, which is a feature also found in Devon dialect. Plural nouns such as ha'pennies, pennies and ponies are pronounced in west Cornwall ending not in -eez but in -uz. The pronunciation of the number five varies from foive in the west to vive in the east, approaching the Devon pronunciation. This challenges the commonly held misconception that the dialect is uniform across the county.
Variations in vocabulary also occur: for example the dialect word for ant in East Cornwall is emmet which is of Old English etymology, whereas in West Cornwall the word muryan is used. This is a word from the Cornish language spelt in the revived language (in Standard Written Form dictionaries) as moryon. There is also this pair, meaning the weakest pig of a litter: nestle-bird (sometimes nestle-drish) in East Cornwall, and (piggy-)whidden in West Cornwall. Whidden may derive from Cornish byghan (small), or gwynn (white, Late Cornish gwydn). Further, there is pajerpaw vs a four-legged emmet in West and mid-Cornwall respectively. It may be noted that the Cornish word for the number four is peswar (Late Cornish pajar). For both of these Cornish language etymologies, sound changes within the Cornish language itself between the Middle Cornish and Late Cornish periods are in evidence.
When calling a horse to stop "wo" is used in most of east Cornwall and in the far west; however "ho" is used between a line from Crantock to St Austell and a line from Hayle to the Helford River; and "way" is used in the northeast.
There are also grammatical variations within Cornwall, such as the use of us for the standard English we and her for she in East Cornwall, a feature shared with western Devon dialect.These pronouns are not the only ones, of course. I be and its negative I bain't are more common close to the Devon border.
The variety of English in the Isles of Scilly is unlike that on the mainland as Bernard Walke observed in the 1930s. He found that Scillonians spoke English similar to "Elizabethan English without a suspicion of Cornish dialect".Walke, Bernard Twenty Years at St Hilary. Mount Hawke: Truran, 2002
There are also distinctive grammatical features:
Many of these are influenced by the substrate of the Cornish language. One example is the usage for months, May month, rather than just May for the fifth month of the year.
A. L. Rowse wrote in his autobiographical A Cornish Childhood about his experiences of a Received Pronunciation prestige variety of English (here referred to as the "King's English") being associated with well-educated people, and therefore Anglo-Cornish by implication with a lack of education:
'It does arise directly from the consideration of the struggle to get away from speaking Cornish dialect and to speak correct English, a struggle which I began thus early and pursued constantly with no regret, for was it not the key which unlocked the door to all that lay beyond—Oxford, the world of letters, the community of all who speak the King's English, from which I should otherwise have been infallibly barred? But the struggle made me very sensitive about language; I hated to be corrected; nothing is more humiliating: and it left me with a complex about Cornish dialect. The inhibition which I had imposed on myself left me, by the time I got to Oxford, incapable of speaking it; and for years, with the censor operating subconsciously ... '
Another project to record examples of Cornish dialect is being undertaken by Azook Community Interest Company. , it has received coverage in the local news.
Other English dialects heavily influenced by Celtic languages:
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