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From: valenz@bnl.UUCP (Greg Valenzuela)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.celts
Subject: Re: Cornish
Message-ID: <852@bnl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Jan-85 13:28:21 EST
Article-I.D.: bnl.852
Posted: Tue Jan 15 13:28:21 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Jan-85 01:38:29 EST
References: <767@reed.UUCP> <23@spar.UUCP>
Organization: SUNY at StonyBrook
Lines: 18


  When I was in Britain this summer, I heard that the last native speaker of
Cornish had died. If this is true, then the only surviving Cornish speakers
would be University professors, on whom the responsibility falls for preserving
the language. If this is not depressing enough, several people I talked to 
estimated that of all the Celtic languages, only Welsh had the chance of 
surviving well into the future. The reason for this is that Wales is more
economically self-sufficient than, say Ireland or Scotland. Apparently more
and more young people are leaving the poorer regions of Ireland and Scotland,
where they might have spoken Gaelic, for the cities, where the common language
is English.
  Anyway, at least we can count on these languages being preserved in folk 
music recordings, a good excuse for building up my collection of Celtic music.

                                       Greg Valenzuela

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