Cornish Language Council

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The Cornish Language Council (CLC; Cornish: Cussel an Tavas Kernuak) is an organisation promoting the revival of the Cornish language. The CLC encourages research into the Cornish of all periods but supports the teaching and dissemination of modern (or Late) rather than medieval (or Middle) Cornish. The CLC sees itself as continuing the work of those who attempted to save the language in its last days in the 1700s.

The choice to use Late Cornish reflects the desire, shared by Henry Jenner and others who began the revival of the language in the early 1900s, to pick up the language where it left off. However, in the 1920s this project had been abandoned and the leaders of the Revival decided to base Cornish on the religious literature of the 1300s, 1400s and early 1500s instead. During the 1980s some Cornish speakers revisited the aims of some of the early revivalists, encouraged by an increase[citation needed] of knowledge of the later phase of Cornish as well as by the fact that this is also the only period of Cornish that possesses a record of how it was pronounced (namely the transcriptions of Edward Lhuyd).

The CLC also argues that Late Cornish is most desirable basis for revival as it represents the historic forms of Cornish in the period when Cornwall was beginning to industrialise and a modern Cornwall was being born. Cornish as used by the CLC aims to follow the latest historical spellings and pronunciation, unlike Jenner's spellings which followed his own adaptations.

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