User:ResYwDhymmDybriChoklet/Cornish Mutations

Cornish is a Celtic Language
The Cornish Language is spoken in Cornwall which is part of a long, narrow peninsula in the South-West of Britain. 160km (100 miles) south, on the other side of the Channel, is Brittany, a long, narrow peninsula in North-West France. The language of Brittany is Breton, which is closely related to Cornish. North-East of Cornwall, there is another peninsula called Wales where Welsh is spoken. Welsh is closely related to Cornish but not as much as Breton is. These three languages are classified as Celtic languages along with the Gaelic languages of Scots Gaelic, Irish and Manx. The Gaelic languages are not so closely related to Cornish.

Mutations
One of many similarities between these six languages is initial consonant mutations that occur under certain conditions. The bad news is that this is particularly complicated in Cornish, which has five different types of mutation. After particular words, the following word sometimes changes. For example, pur (very) causes a soft mutation, so da (good) becomes pur dha (very good).

The most common mutation occurs after the article an (the). This also causes a soft mutation in the following word but only after feminine nouns denoting single objects or people (singular) or masculine nouns denoting more than one person (plural persons). For example an+pasti = an pasti (the pasty) but an+tesenn = an desenn (the cake).

Mutation Table
I have tried to include examples wherever I could.

Spellings may vary in other versions of Cornish. In such cases K often appears as C, KW as QU or QW and HW as WH.

Exceptions
After the articles unn and an, some words mutate differently than in the rules given above.

These words include dydh (day) which becomes unn jydh (one day), and dor (earth) which becomes an nor (The Earth). Other mutations occur as normal so that we can have dew dhydh (two days).

I have also noticed that Gorsedh (Gorseth) becomes An Orsedh (The Gorseth) instead of An Worsedh. This, I believe, is because Gorsedh is a loan-word from Welsh (Gorsedd).

Words cannot start with HL, HR or HN. Therefore a Spirant Mutation of K does not occur before L, R or N. Likewise, a Mixed Mutation of G after 'th does not occur before the letters L, R and N. My apologies for the error that previously existed on this page.

In Soft Mutations, an adjective starting with T, K or P does not mutate after a noun ending with S or TH.

Proper Nouns
Mutations occur in Proper Nouns under the conditions listed above as long as they are Celtic. For example, the Cornish name Morwenna sometimes appears as Vorwenna but English names like Benjamin do not appear as Venjamin.

One very common error is for proper nouns not to be mutated when they should be. For example, Dynnargh dhe Gernow (Welcome to Cornwall) might appear as Dynnargh dhe Kernow. In the latter one, the Soft Mutation has failed to turn K into G. May be it is because people do not want to change the spelling of a word like Kernow that can even be recognised by tourists. My idea, which is completely unofficial, is to compromise by rendering our sample phrase as: Dynnargh dhe gKernow, putting the mutated g in front of the capital K. That way people would still continue to recognise the word and, at the same time, Cornish speakers would not be so confused about the lack of mutation.

Note: Failure to mutate might not actually be an error in some orthographies.

--ResYwDhymmDybriChoklet (talk) 22:15, 14 September 2009 (UTC)