Modern (=Revived=KK) Cornish revisited (yet again!)

Just as the leopard can be relied on to be spotty, there's something almost reassuring in seeing Myngow Vras trotting out his tired old Big Fibs once more. In a recent post to Cornish Orthography (#3183) about Nicholas Williams' Towards Authentic Cornish, our lemur-loving laddie had the following to say:

The sections of the book relating to ... Wella Brown's standard [sic!] Grammar of Modern (i.e. Revived) Cornish, provide helpful notes ... Williams, unlike Edwards, is not attempting to improve the range and accuracy of Revived Cornish, but rather to undermine the whole enterprise, presenting every little 'error' and misuse as proof that Revived Cornish, at least when clothed in the Kernewek Kemmyn orthography, is mistaken. Which amounts to saying that almost the entire corpus of contempory Cornish is worthless.

One must conclude therefore that the entire enterprise is little more than a c300 pp 'poison pen' letter. Williams has almost nothing new to say on the subject of Cornish phonology and orthography, and has simply set out to rubbish Ken George, Kesva an Taves Kernewek and by implication most of those currently active in the Cornish Language Revival ...

Now, let's just look at the 'semantic drift' in that excerpt, with all of the following quotes referring to the same thing, namely Kernewek Kemyn:

• Modern (i.e. Revived) Cornish
• Revived Cornish
• Revived Cornish, at least when clothed in the Kernewek Kemmyn [sic] orthography
• almost the entire corpus of contemporary Cornish
• most of those currently active in the Cornish Language Revival

Thus, KK = Modern Cornish = Revived Cornish = most of the Language Revival etc. etc. etc.

This method of argument is quite reminiscent of that old school trick of proving that black=white by incrementally changing the meaning of the each of the two words until they meet in the middle somewhere. Or should we call it the 'Chinese Whispers' form of argument perhaps? Is it possible that the poor chap doesn't realise his arguments are as full of holes as a piece of gruyère cheese? I don't know for sure, but if his logical powers are as flawed as his linguistic ones, it is just about possible. Consider the following lovely items of orthography from one with such forcefully expressed opinions on matters orthographical:

• unwarrented
• denegrates
• ad nausiam
• repetedly
• fouth [i.e. 4th]
• monothong [evidently a skimpy item of swim-wear rather than a linguistic matter]
• contempory

And even thought he can't spell his own first tongue properly, he expects us to take his linguistical pronouncements seriously? Still, it might help explain why he was attracted in the first place to the orthographically challenged form of pseudo-Cornish that George and his acolytes have been peddling for the last couple of decades:

just as 'misery loves company', so evidently do bad spellers!