The first term of Cornish lessons is now over and my vocabulary is expanding. I can make sense of Cornish, within the topics we’ve covered but constructing any kind of sentence of my own, let alone a grammatically correct one, is a different matter. This week was seasonal words, which was fun, even though I am not sure that I will need ‘reindeer’ or ‘shepherd’ much in everyday conversation, except perhaps at this time of year. Apart from populating a nativity play, in theory, I can now colour things, talk about the weather, go to the pub and describe my daily routine. I’ve learned a few Cornish place names, some animals and the words for some geographical features. If you’d asked me before I started how long it would take me to get to this stage, my estimate would have been somewhere between a year and never, so I guess that’s progress.

So what next? I have signed up for next term. In the break I am going to keep up the daily practice and try to consolidate the vocabulary that I am not so confident with. I am trying to learn the genders and plurals for all the nouns and there appears to be no logic to this. Often you add ‘ow’ to make a plural, except when you add ‘yow’, or ‘es’, or something else entirely. I am going to write more down, to check I am getting the idiosyncratic spelling correct. I may even try to sneak a few more words under my belt.

Anyway Nadelik Lowen – more Kernewek in the bledhen nowydh.