Chapter I · —SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION

§ 1. On the Pronunciation in general.

In simple Cornish words of more than one syllable the stress accent is generally, though not universally, on the last but one. [54] The vowel of this syllable has usually its plain, clear long or short sound. The vowels of the unaccented syllables are usually obscure in the case of two of the broad vowels (a, o), and short in the case of the thin vowels (e, i, y) and of u, unless they are combinations of two vowels, in which case they are always long; but e in a final unaccented syllable is also generally obscure. The obscure vowel is the sound of u in the English word until, or o in London, and there is very little, if any, difference in sound between the obscure a, e, o, and u. When this sound occurs, as it occasionally does, on an accented syllable, or anywhere where it might be mistaken for a plain sound, it is written, according to the spelling of this book, ă, ŏ, or ŭ.

In words of one syllable ending in a consonant the vowel is generally to be taken as short, unless it is marked long (â, ê, î, ô, û, ŷ), or is a combination of two vowels. In monosyllables ending in a vowel, that vowel usually has its long sound, but as Cornish is largely accented in ordinary conversation by sentences (as is the case in Gaelic, and to a considerable extent in English), many monosyllables are slurred over with no accent (as enclitics or proclitics, according to whether they follow or precede the word on which they depend), and with more or less of the obscure vowel. The modern Cornish intonation of English is probably a very fair guide to the intonation of Cornish. [55]

The consonants, especially f, v, dh, th, are rather more lightly sounded than in English. Any peculiarities of sound will be given under each consonant.

During the period in which the existing remains of Cornish literature were written, that is, between the twelfth and the middle of the eighteenth century, the spelling was very unsettled. There were at least six different systems, if no more.

1. That of the Cotton Vocabulary.

2. That of the Ordinalia, with a sub-variety in that of the Poem of the Passion.

3. That of the St. Meriasek.

4. That of Jordan’s Creation.

5. That of Boson, Keigwin, and other seventeenth and eighteenth century writers.

6. That of Lhuyd.

Not only did different writers differ from one another, but various ways of representing the same sound were used by the same writer. The earlier spelling shows a certain amount of Welsh, old English, and old French affinities; the latest is evidently modelled on modern English, which does not suit it very well, and the transition from one to the other is not very abrupt. It is the object of the present book to represent the probable pronunciation of Modern Cornish by a system fairly consistent in itself, but not too startlingly divergent from those adopted by previous writers (or from that of Breton, where coincidence occurs), and not too much encumbered with diacritical signs. It is to some extent a following of Dr. Edward Lhuyd, whose system, though rather clumsy and unnecessarily puzzling in places, was on the whole very good and of great value.

§ 2. The Vowels.

Simple: a, â, e, ê, i, î, o, ô, ŏ, u, û, ŭ, y, ŷ.

Compound: aw, ei, ey, ew, oi, oy, ou, ow.

a. Simple vowels.

1. a, short, as a in man. Before l and r it is generally sounded as o in not.

2. â, long, the lengthened sound of a short, not as the English broad a in father, or long a in mane, but as a broad a is commonly sounded in Cornish English. Thus bâ would have something between the sound of the English word bare (of course without the r trilled at all) in the mouth of a correct speaker, and the actual sound of the bleat of a sheep. [56]

In some words, and especially before a liquid followed by a consonant, a tends to be sounded as aw or short o. Thus âls, cliff, gwander, weakness, wartha, upper, are sounded awls, gwonder, wortha or worra, and brâs, great, is sounded brawz.

In unaccented syllables a represents nearly the sound of u in until, or, as a final, the English sound of a at the end of proper names, such as Vienna, Maria, etc., which is more or less the final e of German, meine, deine, etc., or perhaps the e of the French words le, de, me, etc.

3. e, short, as e in men, pen, etc.

4. ê, long, as ai in main, ay in say. [57]

5. i, short, as i in in, pin, etc.

6. î, long, as ee in seen, etc.

7. o, short, as o in on.

8. ô, long, as aw in dawn, not as o in bone.

9. ŏ, obscure, as o in London, ton, etc.

10. u, short, as u in full.

11. û, long, as oo in fool.

12. ǔ, obscure, as u in until.

13. ŷ, long, as i in mine.

14. y, short, as y in carry, marry, etc. This is used chiefly as an unaccented final in a word of more than one syllable.

In the case of the letter y, there is a variation of sound in such monosyllables as nŷ, whŷ, jŷ, hŷ under certain circumstances. In this system of spelling the circumflex is omitted when these words are enclitic.

b. Compound vowels.

Of these, aw, ai, ei, ay, ey, ou, are only repetitions of the simple vowels ô, û, and ŷ. The other four have sounds not otherwise represented.

1. aw has the same sound as ô. It is very rarely used.

2. ai, ay, ei, ey, have nearly the same sound as ŷ, rather more diphthongalised.

3. eu, ew have the sound of ew in the English word dew, the usual English long u. This sound is also represented in Cornish by y consonant followed by u, as in the word yu, is, which has exactly the sound of the English personal pronoun you.

4. oi, oy have the sound of oy in boy.

5. Ow has two sounds—(1) as an unaccented final, as o in bone. This is also its sound when it occurs without any consonant, in the possessive pronoun ow, my, and the participle particle ow; (2) in other cases it sounds as ou in you, and rarely as ow in now.

6. Ou has the same sound as û, and as the second sound of ow. It is the regular symbol for that sound in Breton, and very commonly in the Cornish dramas, where, as in Breton, u commonly represented, approximately, the French u, which later became î or ew.

General Remarks on the Vowels.

In the Middle Cornish manuscripts the vowels are represented in various ways, and there is a special uncertainty about unaccented and obscure vowels.

Vowels were sometimes lengthened by doubling, or by adding a y, and rarely, until Jordan’s Creation, by adding a mute e after the closing consonant; but often quantity was not indicated at all.

Long î (ee in see) was more often than not represented by y, but, as in Welsh, y not infrequently represented the obscure vowel (u in until), and often a sound which later became a short e, but in unaccented syllables was, as is not unusually the case in English, more of the nature of the obscure vowel, or perhaps something between that and a short i. Indeed all unaccented vowels tend to become obscure, very much as they do in English, and hence are variously expressed.

The u of the earlier MSS. probably once represented approximately the French u or the German u, the u of Devon and East Cornwall English, or the ao of Scottish Gaelic, not exactly the same sounds, but very near to each other. As in Greek and Welsh, this sound approached nearer and nearer to î (ee in seen), until in Cornish it ceased to be recognised as having any u sound in it at all. In Welsh it is still written as u, and in carefully spoken Welsh is quite distinguishable from î. In Breton the sound is still approximately that of the French u. In some words in Cornish this sound became ew (as in the English word few) and rarely û (oo in moon), but generally it became î (English ee). [59a]

What was once the sound of the French and Breton eu or the German o, was represented in the MSS. by u, eu, ue. Later this became ê (ay in may). Thus, dueth or duth, “came,” became dêth; luen, leun, “full,” became lên; due, “comes,” became dê; mur, meur, “great,” became mêr. This change is found occasionally as early as the Poem of the Passion. The rhythm shows that ue and eu form only one syllable. In the case of lues (=luas), many, which later became lîas (or leeas), the rhythm shows that the u and e did not form a single vowel. Occasionally, as in the second person plural of certain tenses, eu of the early MSS. became ew, which it was probably intended to represent, but was often confused with ou (=û or oo). [59b]

The sound of ô or aw, as it certainly became in later Cornish, was represented by e, o, oy, a, oa, ao, au, aw. The tendency to pronounce a as aw or short o before l, n, r, doubled or followed by a consonant, and sometimes single, is very marked in the spelling of late Cornish, and in the present pronunciation of place-names. There is no evidence of its age in Cornish; but it is very common in English and Irish, though unknown in standard Welsh or Breton.

There seems no doubt, by the same evidence, that a long y of older Cornish often became i, as in the English word mine. Vulgarly, as with the English long i, it sometimes even became oy. Boson writes choy for chy, house, but Lhuyd writes it tshẏi or tshei, which last is its usual modern sound in place-names. Nŷ, we, whŷ, you, jŷ, they, and hŷ, she, are written nei, huei, dzhei, hei, by Lhuyd, and Jenkins of Alverton, using the earlier form of the third person plural, written y in the Dramas, spells it eye. Yet there are cases where the older pronunciation is retained, and probably this was always the case when the words were enclitic. Prof. Loth has pointed out a similar change in the Quiberon sub-dialect of Vannetais Breton, and that in some of the same words.

In the unscientific spelling of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that is to say, in the system of every one except Lhuyd, and occasionally of Gwavas and Tonkin when they followed Lhuyd, the English values of the period were often given to the letters; but the following were vowel symbols in general use:—

For â of the present system a, aa Lhuyd â.

,, a ,, a, u, e, o ,, a.

,, ê ,, ea ,, ê.

,, e ,, e, i ,, e.

,, î ,, ee ,, î, ŷ.

,, i ,, i ,, i.

,, ô, aw ,, oa, o, aw, au, ao Lhuyd writes an inverted a or ô.

,, o ,, o Lhuyd o.

,, ŏ, ŭ, ă ,, o, u, a, e ,, ẏ.

,, ŭ, ou ,, u, oo, ou ,, ụ, û.

,, ow ,, ô, ow, ou, au ,, oụ, o, ô.

,, u ,, u, oo ,, u.

,, ew, yu, eu ,, ew, yu, yw ,, iụ, yụ, eụ.

,, ŷ, ei, ay ,, y, ei, ay ,, ei, y, ẏ.

,, y ,, y, i, e ,, y, i.

A final e mute was often used to lengthen a vowel, as in English. Many names of places and persons retain this e mute at the present day, and when the preceding vowel is a, educated persons generally give it the sound of the English long a in mane, but that is a change analogous to the modern vulgarism of pronouncing clerk as clurk instead of clark. The proper sound of the Cornish â is still heard in such words in the mouths of the peasantry. Compare such a name as Polglaze in the two pronunciations.

§ 3. The Consonants.

Simple: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, y, z.

Compound: bm, ch, dh, dn, gw, gh, ng, qw, sh, th, wh, zh, gwl, gwr, qwr, wl, wr.

a. Simple consonants.

1. b has the same sound as in English.

2. c is always hard, being used only before a, o, u. The same sound before e, i, y is represented by k.

3. d before a, o, u is usually hard, as in English, but, as in Gaelic, before e, i, y it has a sound approaching to j, or like di in soldier. In the MSS. a soft g was often written for d in such cases. It is a common change in many languages. Cf. the Italian oggi, to-day, for the Latin hodie.

4. f has the same sound as in English. In the MSS. it is often confused with v. As a final it is very lightly sounded.

5. g is always hard, as in get, go. The soft g, as in gin, is here represented by j, but in the MSS. g was often used for it.

6. h has two degrees of sound. As an initial it is rather more lightly sounded than in English, except when it is a mutation of c (see Chapter II.), when it is more strongly sounded. Then, and when it occurs in the middle of a word, it represents in a lighter form the guttural c’h of Breton, the ch of German, Welsh, and Gaelic, or the guttural gh of older English. At the end of a word this is to be written gh. It is a smooth guttural, as in Scottish Gaelic, without the rasping sound which it has in colloquial Welsh or in German.

7. j is sounded as in English. It generally represents what was once written s. Lhuyd writes dzh for this sound, and the MSS. often represent it by g.

8. k is generally only used before e, i, y, or as a final. It has the same sound as in English. It often happens in grammatical inflections that a broad root vowel is changed to a thin one. In such cases if the preceding letter is a c it must be changed to k.

9. l has the ordinary English sound. Sometimes a double l of earlier Cornish was written lh (telhar, place, for teller). This may perhaps represent the aspirated ll of Welsh, or (as in Portuguese) the l mouillé (as li in valiant).

10. m has usually the same sound as in English. When it follows a short vowel in an accented syllable or a monosyllable, it has a peculiar sound as though a b were prefixed to it, or as though the speaker had a slight cold in the head. This b was frequently written in the later MSS., and in the mouths of less educated persons the b supplanted the m altogether. Thus lemmyn, now, became successively lebman and lebban. The vanishing of the m altogether did not occur in monosyllables, and it is undesirable to imitate it in other words. In the system of spelling adopted in this book, the b will be written in cases where it was habitually written in later Cornish, but even when it is not written it is always to be sounded in the case of short vowels in accented syllables or monosyllables.

11. n is usually sounded as in English. When it follows a short vowel in an accented syllable or in a monosyllable, a d sound (analogous to the b sound with m) precedes it. This d is often written in the later MSS., and will be used in this book in cases where it is regularly found in later Cornish, but it is to be pronounced even where it is not written. In words of more than one syllable [63] the d often supplanted the n (e.g. henna, that, became successively hedna and hedda), and monosyllables were sometimes made into dissyllables by it (e.g. pen, pedn, pedden); but both of these are vulgarisms not to be imitated.

12. p is sounded as in English.

13. q is sounded as in English, and is always followed by w. It is generally used in an initial mutation (see Chapter II.) of gw, but occurs occasionally, followed by w, as a radical sound.

14. r has the same sound as in correct English, that is to say, it is very slightly heard when followed by a consonant or at the end of a word, unless the next word begins with a vowel, but, as in English, it often influences the preceding vowel. Its full sound is trilled, not guttural.

15. s is the most puzzling of the consonants. It had probably four or five different values in the MSS., and might represent s, z, sh, zh, j according to circumstances. As an initial, or before c, k, f, l, m, n, p, q, r, t, w, it was generally s, as in so; as a final, and before b, d, g, j, v, it was normally z or as s in rose. But between two vowels in the same word, or coming after another consonant and followed by a vowel, or as a final followed by a word beginning with a vowel and closely connected grammatically with its predecessor, it had commonly the sound of j, so much so that g soft was often substituted for it, and there are cases where even an initial s must have meant sh or zh. Thus we find cowsesow, speeches, written cowgegyow, carensa, love, carenga (for carenja), and in place-names, though we find Nanskeval, Nanspean, Nanswidn when the epithet begins with a consonant, when it begins with a vowel we find Nanjizel (=Nans isal, the lower valley). Sometimes in late Cornish the definite j sound so completely superseded the s or z, that it or its equivalent, g soft or dzh, was always written for it, and in such cases it is written j in the present system of spelling, but in other cases the best rules will be to pronounce s

1. As an initial; before c, k, f, l, m, n, p, q, r, t, w; or when doubled, as s in so.

2. As a final, except when the next word, grammatically connected, begins with a vowel; or before b, d, g, j, v, as z or s in rose.

3. Between two vowels in the same word; after another consonant and followed by a vowel; or as a final followed by a grammatically connected word, such as an epithet, beginning with a vowel, as j.

For the last rule compare Mrs. Gamp’s pronunciation of English (in Martin Chuzzlewit). There seems to have been an inherent tendency to the j, sh, or zh sounds in every Cornish s, [64] but especially in those which represent a d or t of Welsh and Breton. The writer is aware that this is a very inadequate discussion of the question, but he does not wish to be unduly intricate, or to enter into a deep phonetic explanation. Those who would study the question more minutely are referred to an article by Prof. J. Loth in vol. xviii. of the Revue Celtique.

16. t before a, o, u is hard, as in English, but before e, i, y has a sound approaching to that of ch in church, or to ti in words ending in tion. Sometimes ch is written and fully pronounced where a t was formerly written. Thus chŷ, house, was formerly ty, and in the eighteenth century tî, thou, was pronounced and often written chee.

17. v is sounded as in English, but is often nearly inaudible at the end of a word, unless the next word begins with a vowel. Thus ev, he, is often written e in later MSS.

18. w, except in compound vowels, is always a consonant, and has the same sound as in English. For its sound before l and r see Compound consonants.

19. y consonant is sounded as y consonant in English, or as j in German. It is always consonant when it precedes a vowel, unless it is written ŷ, when it is a vowel, as in such words as crŷes, tŷak, etc.

20. z is only used as an initial, but it is seldom used at all. The sound is that of an English z.

b. Compound consonants.

1. bm, dn represent respectively the sound of m and n after a short vowel in an accented syllable or monosyllable (see m, n). There is no vowel sound between the two letters.

2. ch is always sounded as in church. It usually represents a former t, or else occurs in borrowed English words.

3. dh is sounded as th in thy, the, etc., the Welsh dd, the Old English and Icelandic ð, the Modern Greek δ. In the MSS. it is represented by th or . Lhuyd writes it δ. [65]

4. th (written by Lhuyd) is sounded as th in thin, thick, etc., the Welsh th, the Old English and Icelandic þ, the Greek θ. At the end of a syllable, especially after r, the sounds of dh and th are very light and tend to become inaudible, and are often represented by h, or omitted altogether. Thus, gwartha, porth, barth, lowarth, gordhya, gortheb, kerdh often appear as gwarha, gwarra, por, barh, lowar, lowarh, gorria, gorreb, kerr. Thus also, Porthgwartha (in St. Levan), is now written Porthgwarrah and pronounced nearly Pergworra.

5. gh is used at the end of words for the strong or guttural h. Lhuyd writes a Greek χ for this sound.

6. ng (written by Lhuyd with an inverted Irish g) has the sound of ng in singer, not as in finger or manger.

7. sh has the same sound as in English. It is only used in a few words of English derivation.

8. In wh the h is always sounded. This combination represents the Welsh chw. Lhuyd writes it hu.

9. zh has the broader sound of sh, or that of the French j.

10. In gwl, gwr, qwr, wl, wr there is a very light but quite audible sound of w before the l or r. So light is the w that it was often omitted in the MSS. Thus gwlasketh, kingdom, gwrîg, did, and the mutation wrîg were sometimes written glasketh, grîg, rîg. But this was incorrect.

* * * * *

There must have been among Cornish speakers a tendency to a somewhat blurred sound of certain letters, as though there were an obstruction of some sort in their vocal organs, not altogether unlike that attributed on the stage and in fiction, with some foundation in fact, to the Hebrew race. This is shown by the tendency to turn s and z into sh and zh, and to insert b before m, and d before n. In the English spoken in Cornwall at the present day this tendency has quite disappeared, and the pronunciation, though not always the same as the standard English, is remarkably crisp and clear. Readers are solemnly warned against attempting to base or support any theories of Jewish or even of Phœnician influence in Cornwall on the above coincidence.

These directions for pronunciation must needs be only approximate. The exact phonetics are not attainable. The pronunciation of Cornish place-names forms something of a guide to the old sounds, only one must be careful not to be misled by the modern tendency to pronounce words as they are spelt according to the English values of letters, and one must also remember that there is no settled system of place-name orthography.