A Living Language, Not a Museum Piece

Cornish — Kernewek — is a Brythonic Celtic language, a cousin of Welsh and Breton, and it has been spoken in the far south-west for well over a thousand years. It fell into steep decline after the sixteenth century, but it never quite disappeared. Today it is recognised as a minority language, taught in a growing number of schools, and seen on bilingual street signs from Penzance to Bude.

You do not need fluency to benefit from it. A handful of words will earn you a warmer smile in a bakery, help you read the landscape, and make sense of the names printed on the map. Cornish people are generally delighted rather than offended when a visitor has a go. Get a vowel slightly wrong and nobody will mind. Make the effort and you will be treated as a friend.

Greetings and Everyday Courtesies

Start here. These are the phrases you will use most, and most are short enough to say with confidence.

• Dydh da (deeth DAH) — good day. A safe, all-purpose greeting.
• Myttin da — good morning.
• Dohajydh da — good afternoon.
• Gorthugher da — good evening.
• Fatla genes? — how are you? Use it with one person you know reasonably well; Fatla genowgh? is the politer, plural form.
• Pur dha, meur ras — very well, thank you.
• Meur ras — thank you. Add dhis to say "thank you to you".
• Mar pleg — please.
• Dha weles — goodbye, literally "your seeing".
• Duw genes — a traditional farewell: "God be with you".
• Nos da — good night. Oll an gwella — all the best.

Two phrases have escaped into everyday English use: Kernow bys vyken, "Cornwall for ever", and onen hag oll, "one and all" — the motto you will see on everything from rugby flags to pub signs.

In the Shop, the Café and on the Coast

Ordering, thanking and asking are the three things visitors actually need, and Cornish handles all of them neatly. A hogen is a pasty, and asking for one by that name in a proper bakery is a small ritual worth performing. Bara is bread, pysk is fish, kig is meat, dowr is water and korev is beer. Py lies? asks how much or how many, and pyth yw hemma? asks what something is — useful in a craft shop or a museum.

Along the coast you will meet mor for sea, treth for beach and porth for a harbour or cove. And keep an ear out for the dialect word dreckly, from "directly". In Cornwall, dreckly can mean in a minute or in a month, and the tone of voice carries the meaning entirely.

Place Names: A Free Map of the Landscape

Cornish place names are not decoration; they are a description of the ground you are standing on. Learn a dozen elements and the map starts to read itself.

• Tre- — homestead, farm, settlement: Tregony, Trevose.
• Pol- — pool or inlet: Polperro, Polzeath.
• Pen- — head, top or end: Penzance, Pendennis.
• Lan- — church or holy enclosure: Lanhydrock, Lanivet.
• Nans- — valley. Ros- — moor, heath or headland.
• Carn- — rocky summit or cairn: Carn Brea.
• Tol- — hole: Tolvaddon, Tolgus. Men- — stone: Men-an-Tol.
• Bos- — dwelling: Boscastle. Wheal — mine working.

The Words Left Behind by Tin

Tin has shaped Cornwall for some three thousand years. Cornish tin was traded as far as the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age, and the industry grew powerful enough to win the county its own parliament, the Stannary, along with courts that governed miners rather than landlords. The vocabulary of that world survives in the landscape and the local dialect.

• Stannary — from the Latin stannum, tin. Its courts and customs once held real authority.
• Lode — the mineral vein the miners chased underground.
• Killas — the slate and clay rock that carried the lodes. Elvan — the hard quartz-porphyry that cut across them.
• Tutwork and tribute — two systems of payment. Under tribute, miners bid for a pitch of ground and were paid from what they raised.
• Bal maiden — a woman who dressed, sorted and broke ore at the surface. Count house — the mine office. Adit — a drainage tunnel.

Craft, Pronunciation and a Word at Parting

The skills that grew up around the mines and the coast are still practised: net and crab pot making, boat building for luggers and crabbers, hand-crimped pasties, saffron cake, and the careful stonework of engine houses that now stand roofless above the cliffs. Ask before you photograph a working craftsperson, and a question about the technique will usually start a long and enjoyable conversation.

On pronunciation, three pointers will carry you a long way. The letters dh sound like the "th" in "the", so dydh da has a soft, voiced th. The letters gh are soft and throaty. Stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable in longer words — Ker-NEH-wek — although plenty of everyday words break that rule, and Kernow is simply KER-now. Cornish has more than one accepted spelling system, so do not be alarmed by variation on signs and in books.

Learn one word, use it kindly, and you have done more than most visitors manage. Learn a dozen and you will find that a county which has spent centuries being misunderstood responds very warmly indeed to being spoken to in its own tongue.