WEBVTT

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Good evening, I’m Elizabeth and I live in Cornwall

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I’m Cornish and I speak the Cornish language. I’m a Cornish speaker.

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My mother was learning Cornish at evening classes

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and she came home and taught me and my brother to speak the language.

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Then my father learnt it too.

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And we all spoke the language together at home

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when we were eating together and so on, ‘pass me the salt’ etc.

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And we went to lots of events together, like Cornish Language Weekends

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These events were for people who wanted to learn Cornish

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and I remember going there with my brother

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and playing with all the other children who were learning Cornish.

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There was a large group of us in those days,

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and all those children have now grown up, like me

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and some of them are having children of their own now

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so that’s the next generation of people learning Cornish as children

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from their childhood. So that’s very good.

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The language did die out, about two hundred years ago,

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but after a hundred years of nobody speaking it as a community language

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people began to revive it

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and over the last century more and more people have learnt it.

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well, I wanted to return to Cornwall and do something, I didn’t know what

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but I was in the right place at the right time

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and in 2002 Cornish was recognised as an official language

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under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages,

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and for the first time ever

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there was funding, some money for the language.

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And because of that there were some new jobs, to do things with the language,

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and I was the second person to get a job developing the language.

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So I was a language officer.

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But now, well, I live in Truro, here.

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I don’t work with the language any more

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I don’t earn my living from it, but I still do things like this. (2.46)

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Tonight I am leading a Yeth an Werin (conversation group) with some people who are learning Cornish

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and some who are more fluent.

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Sometimes there are lots of us, other times there aren’t so many,

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but people come every fortnight to chat together.

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So I lead this.

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And also I present a radio programme, ‘The News’ on BBC Radio Cornwall,

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It’s the only programme in Cornish on an official radio station.

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There’s another programme but that’s only available online.

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Besides that, well, I work at Truro Cathedral

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and I have a cat. My cat is called Ted.

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And I have a partner called Ross.

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So yeah, that’s all from me, I think. I can’t remember, I can’t think of what else to say.

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So yeah, that’s all. Goodbye!