Nicholas (Nicholas Jonathan Anselm)
Williams
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This article discusses the complexities of plurals and duals in the Cornish language. Parts of the body are often referred to by dual forms - predennow, buttocks; dywron, breasts; gwelvow or gwessyow, lips; and so on - and the article goes on to reveal the wider complexities of plurals in Cornish, including those instances where the familiar plural -yon eventually gives way to -s. Here the author cites examples such as aweylers (evangelists) and poscadors (fishermen). And as he observes, detailed knowledge of such subtleties not only enhances our understanding of the historic language but serves to assist the efforts of those reviving Cornish today.
This article discusses the complexities of plurals and duals in the Cornish language. Parts of the body are often referred to by dual forms - predennow, buttocks; dywron, breasts; gwelvow or gwessyow, lips; and so on - and the article goes on to reveal the wider complexities of plurals in Cornish, including those instances where the familiar plural -yon eventually gives way to -s. Here the author cites examples such as aweylers (evangelists) and poscadors (fishermen). And as he observes, detailed knowledge of such subtleties not only enhances our understanding of the historic language but serves to assist the efforts of those reviving Cornish today.
Like the other Celtic languages, Cornish distinguishes an imperfect, or past habitual, tense from a simple past or preterite tense. This distinction in the Celtic languages is sometimes a cause of difficulty for English-speaking learners, because English has only one past tense. Learners sometimes use the less correct tense. The problem is compounded in the case of Cornish by the absence of native speakers and also by the relatively limited amount of traditional Cornish that survives. It is possible nonetheless by reading the extant corpus of Cornish literature to establish the preferred usage in the language of the two tenses, imperfect and preterite; and thus to decide when and where either of the two tenses is to be used in the revived language. By far the commonest person in all verbs in all texts in Cornish is the third person singular. In the texts the third person singular of the imperfect in most verbs ends in -e/-a or -y. The preterite, on the other hand, in most cases ends in either -as or -ys/-is.
Like the other Celtic languages, Cornish distinguishes an imperfect, or past habitual, tense from a simple past or preterite tense. This distinction in the Celtic languages is sometimes a cause of difficulty for English-speaking learners, because English has only one past tense. Learners sometimes use the less correct tense. The problem is compounded in the case of Cornish by the absence of native speakers and also by the relatively limited amount of traditional Cornish that survives. It is possible nonetheless by reading the extant corpus of Cornish literature to establish the preferred usage in the language of the two tenses, imperfect and preterite; and thus to decide when and where either of the two tenses is to be used in the revived language. By far the commonest person in all verbs in all texts in Cornish is the third person singular. In the texts the third person singular of the imperfect in most verbs ends in -e/-a or -y. The preterite, on the other hand, in most cases ends in either -as or -ys/-is.