Cornish Language - Culture

Culture

See also: Cornish literature

The Celtic Congress and Celtic League are groups that advocate cooperation amongst the Celtic Nations in order to protect and promote Celtic languages and cultures, thus working in the interests of the Cornish language.

There have been many films, some televised, made entirely, or significantly, in the language. Many businesses use Cornish names.

According to the sociologist Kenneth MacKinnon, Jenner wrote "There has never been a time when there has been no person in Cornwall without a knowledge of the Cornish language."

Traditional Cornish is still visible in the place-names of Cornwall, as well as in Cornish surnames, and knowledge of the language helps the understanding of these ancient meanings. Many Cornish names are adopted for children, pets, houses and boats.

There is now an increasing amount of Cornish literature, in which poetry is the most important genre, particularly in oral form or as song or as traditional Cornish chants historically performed in marketplaces during religious holidays and public festivals and gatherings.

There are regular periodicals solely in the language such as the monthly An Gannas, An Gowsva, and An Garrick. BBC Radio Cornwall has a regular news broadcast in Cornish, and sometimes has other programmes and features for learners and enthusiasts. Local newspapers such as the Western Morning News regularly have articles in Cornish, and newspapers such as The Packet, The West Briton and The Cornishman also support the movement. There is now also an online radio service in Cornish called Radyo an Gernewegva. It publishes a half an hour podcast per week, based on a magazine format. It includes music in Cornish as well as interviews and features.

The language has financial sponsorship from many sources, including the Millennium Commission. A number of language organisations exist in Cornwall including (in alphabetical order) Agan Tavas (Our Language), the Cornish sub-group of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, Gorseth Kernow, Kesva an Taves Kernewek (the Cornish Language Board), Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek (the Cornish Language Fellowship), and Teere ha Tavas (Land and Language). One organisation, Dalleth (now defunct), promoted the language to pre-school children. There are many popular ceremonies, some ancient, some modern, which use the language or are entirely in the language.

Read more about this topic:  Cornish Language

Famous quotes containing the word culture:

    “The anorexic prefigures this culture in rather a poetic fashion by trying to keep it at bay. He refuses lack. He says: I lack nothing, therefore I shall not eat. With the overweight person, it is the opposite: he refuses fullness, repletion. He says, I lack everything, so I will eat anything at all. The anorexic staves off lack by emptiness, the overweight person staves off fullness by excess. Both are homeopathic final solutions, solutions by extermination.”
    —Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

    “In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “I am writing to resist the view that Europe and civilization are going to Hell. If I am being “crucified for an idea”Mthat is, the coherent idea around which my muddles accumulated—it is probably the idea that European culture ought to survive, that the best qualities of it ought to survive along with whatever cultures, in whatever universality. Against the propaganda of terror and the propaganda of luxury, have you a nice simple answer?”
    —Ezra Pound (1885–1972)