Ms. Gunn mentioned the 3 variant spelling systems for Cornish, and this re- minded me of some questions about this I'd been meaning to ask (regrettably in English - Ir. Gaelic is my 1st project, and Welsh will have to come a little later): 1) what do the names of the "dialects" mean? With my very sparse Cornish language books (I cannot tell which of the 3 any of them are, either), I translated them as "Legacy Cornish", "New [or Modern] Cornish" and "Common Cornish". I have already forgotten which was which. Could anyone clarify this? 2) which of the 3 is most used? Is any one of them gaining ground over the others? 3) is there any attempt to reconcile the differences and "get on with it" as it were? 4) which is the most authentic (i.e. matches historical, known Cornish written material)? 5) is interest growing or shrinking? Is the Cornish public view of the language getting more positive, or do people in general see it as more "Celtic Twilight" nonsense? 6) is Cornish nationalism growing or shrinking? Is it connected with the language as in other Celtic nations? 7) is the difference between the 3 "dialects" purely spelling, spelling and pronunciation, s. p. and grammar, etc.? If there are grammatical differences this would help explain (to me anyway) why the 3 have not fused yet. 8) is the separation of the 3 generally considered harmful to the progress of Cornish? *I* would think it is, but I am not interested in MY opinion, since I already know it. >;) 9) is there any attempt to "update" Cornish the way Irish has been modernized (mostly by translitterating English technical terms to Irish spellings.) I personally have very mixed feelings about this effort (in case anyone cares: Irish and other "minority languages of Europe" or whatever the PC term is now, DO need to be technically competent languages, but it would seem better to me to either use native morphemes to form these new words, or borrow them more strictly preserving their original spelling and pronunciation, so it is clear that they ARE loanwords; the importation and "Gaelicization" of English and Latinate terminology would seem to me something like a disease or parasitic infection...bits of a foreign tongue masquerading as Gaelic.) And a Manx question, if anyone would happen to know: Has a better (i.e. more Gaelic-based, less false-phonetic and rather muddled) spelling system been proposed for Manx yet? Is this likely to happen if it hasn't yet? Thanks for any replies. Perhaps someone can make a FAQ for this sort of stuff. -- Testes saxi solidi! ********************** Podex opacus gravedinosus est! Stanton McCandlish, SysOp: Noise in the Void Data Center BBS IndraNet: 369:1/1 FidoNet: 1:301/2 Internet: anton@hydra.unm.edu Snail: 8020 Central SE #405, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108 USA Data phone: +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400 v32bis, N-8-1) Vox phone: +1-505-247-3402 (bps rate varies, depends on if you woke me up...:)