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Politics

In 2002, Cornish language had gained new recognition because of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Conversely, along with government provision was the governmental basis of “New Public Management,” measuring quantifiable results as means of determining effectiveness. This put enormous pressure on finding a single orthography that could be used in unison. The revival of Cornish required extensive rebuilding. The Cornish orthographies that were reconstructed may be considered versions of Cornish because they are not traditional sociolinguistic variations. In the middle-to-late twentieth century, the debate over Cornish orthographies angered more people because several language groups received public funding. This caused other groups to sense favoritism as playing a role in the debate.

A governmental policymaking structure called New Public Management (NPM) has positively impacted the Cornish language by managing public life of the Cornish language and people. In 2007, the Cornish Language Partnership MAGA represents separate divisions of government and their purpose is to further enhance the Cornish Language Developmental Plan. MAGA established an “Ad-Hoc Group,” which resulted in three orthographies being presented. The relations for the Ad-Hoc Group were to obtain consensus among the three orthographies, and then develop a “single written form.” The end result was creating a new form of Cornish, which had to be natural for both new learners and skilled speakers.

Culture

People see the world in terms of culture, and because there are so many different cultures throughout the world, culture is molded by language. During the time of the 20th century, Cornish language had endured revival. Though estimations of the number of Cornish speakers vary, the speakers of Cornish today are thought to be around five hundred. Currently, Cornish is spoken by its speakers at home, outside the home, in the workplace, and at ritual ceremonies. Cornish is also being used in the arts. Revived Cornish is constructed on historical Cornish, so that the Cornish language develops. English language has had some effect in this development. Many people questioned the purpose of Cornishmen learning Cornish and what purpose it served. Regardless of having “no concrete purpose during the twentieth century,” the amount of Cornish speakers has gradually increased. It seems that there is a purpose for the revival of the Cornish language though, because it involves a unique perception of the world that reveals Cornish culture.

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. Cornish has had a significant and lasting impact on Cornwall's place names, as well as in Cornish surnames, and knowledge of the language helps the understanding of these ancient meanings. Cornish names are adopted for children, pets, houses and boats. There are periodicals solely in the language such as the monthly An Gannas, An Gowsva, and An Garrick. BBC Radio Cornwall has a news broadcast in Cornish, and sometimes has other programmes and features for learners and enthusiasts. Local newspapers such as the Western Morning Newshave articles in Cornish, and newspapers such as The Packet, The West Briton and The Cornishman have also been known to have Cornish features. The language has financial sponsorship from sources, including the Millennium Commission. A number of language organisations exist in Cornwall: Agan Tavas (Our Language), the Cornish sub-group of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, Gorsedh Kernow, Kesva an Taves Kernewek (the Cornish Language Board) and Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek (the Cornish Language Fellowship)].

Grammar

The grammar of Cornish shares with other Celtic languages a number of features which, while not unique, are unusual in an Indo-European context. The grammatical features most unfamiliar to English speakers of the language are the initial consonant mutations, the verb-subject word order, inflected prepositions, fronting of emphasised syntactic elements, and the use of two different forms for "to be". Cornish nouns belong to one of two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, but are not inflected for case. Cornish has a variety of different endings to indicate the plural, and some nouns have a third collective form. Verbs are conjugated, for tense and mood, which can be indicated either by inflection of the main verb, or by the use of auxiliary verbs. In Cornish vocabulary, a large number of the lexical items are language and culture specific. From mining, we have the Cornish word atal, which means 'mine waste'. We get the word beetia from the fishing industry, which means 'to mend fishing nets'. For different ‘pastry cakes’ in Cornish, we have foogan and hogan. Troyl is culture specific when referring to 'a traditional Cornish dance get-together,’ while Furry is a specific kind of ceremonial dance that takes place in Cornwall.

On the other hand, there are a number of Cornish words that have exact translation correspondence with their English counterparts. For example, Bara is continually translated into English as 'bread', and 'bread' is thus interpreted into Cornish as bara. Conversely, complete isomorphism among pairs of interpretation counterparts seems to be the exception instead of the rule. To illustrate, Cornish translates the English noun, 'book', as levar, but levar can actually be translated into English as 'book ' or 'volume 'because it can be considered one in a set of books. Nonetheless, this type of lexical anisomorphism is quite common in multilingual vocabulary. As in other Celtic languages, Cornish lacks a number of verbs that are commonly found in other languages. This includes modals and psych-verbs.