I’m halfway through Lesson 10. I’ve not hit too much confusion, but:
@7:10 we are asked to say I’ve got something I want to say. When I first heard this I instinctively felt “my a vynn leverel” would not be right. When I heard “a vynnav vy leverel”, it sounded right. But this got me wondering, how the grammar works here. I’ve a feeling it might be a little bit complicated for a reply here, if it is, I’ll wait until it comes up in KDL when I start it, or Klass an Hay when they restart.
@10:02 we are asked to say “I enjoy speaking Cornish” and the response is “My a omlowenha ow kewsel Kernewek.” Then @15:15 we are asked to say “But I enjoy speaking Cornish” and the response is “My a omlowenha kewsel Kernewek.” There is no “ow”. Is this just a mistake? Perhaps without the “ow” would be right if they were saying “But I am enjoying speaking Cornish” – “Mes, yth esov vy owth omlowenhe kewsel Kernewek.” – Sorry, that was probably gibberish.
Also, the vocabulary on the lesson page is wrong, it has:
So, in lesson 9 we have “I was trying to say that I need something.” : “Yth esen vy owth assaya leverel bos edhom dhymm a neppyth.” But in lesson 10 @27:30 Pol says “To say: I think that I need use My a breder yth yw res dhymm.” Since in all the introductions after this Pol says “I think I need…” I took this as one of the little errors and that “My a breder yth yw res dhymm.” is “I think I need.” Not much difference I grant you. But then @ 32:24 Pol says, “I’d like to say that I need to start.” I was sure that this would be “My a vynsa leverel bos edhom dhymm dalleth.” But it was “My a vynsa leverel yth yw res dhymm dalleth.” So is this another mistake, or can you use the two interchangeably? Or maybe there is another rule at play here.
is it about Cornish course? If so it might be wise to mention this in the title of the topic so that people would know with which language you need help because this part of the forum is for all other languages except Welsh and Spanish which have their own forum.
If Cornish is at stake then I tag @Courtenay who is, by my opinion, the most skilled here to help.
I’ve just listened — it’s “Yma genev neppyth a vynnav vy leverel.” Literally, “There is with me something [that] I want to say.” In a sentence structure like that you wouldn’t use “my a vynn” in the middle of the sentence, where it’s part of a relative clause. Unfortunately SSi doesn’t explain much about the way verbs work in Cornish, but you do have to learn them eventually.
I really don’t know which one is correct there, sorry. It’s possible that both are acceptable, but I’m not sure, so I can’t give an answer. Best to run that past a professional teacher!!
Literally “the chance for”, but do they use “an chons dhe” (“the chance to”) in the lesson? Again, possibly both are acceptable in spoken Cornish and they’ve just put the wrong one in the vocabulary. But I’m not sure about that either. Just like English, Cornish has a lot of prepositions and you can’t always predict which ones are correct in which circumstances!!
Glad you’re thinking of starting KDL, Steve. It’s been a huge help to me and I really should keep up with it — I’ve gone a bit slack at the moment now that we’re not doing exams this year…
Hi, I did the lessons of Level 1 again to prepare for Level 2, and I got confused, too, about this change from " bos edhom dhymm" to “Yth yw res dhymm” ( please forgive mistakes in spelling, the sentences are not in the vocabulary list)
Have you sorted it out, Steve, in your KDL course?
Another thing I noticed is a different pronouncation of “bia” . Until lesson 9 it was said like: bee a, in lesson 10 the vowel sounds like German ö or French -eux.
Is the first pronounciation incorrect ? And if, does this apply to “via”, too.
Thank you for any explanation.
Hi. In the end I took a break of a few months and then joined the Klass an Hay Cornish lessons, which are now being held once a week in Zoom rather than at the church hall in Heamoor. This class does use material from KDL, but uses the Holywgh an Lergh book rather more. In any event we have not covered that yet.
Somewhere on this forum I was told that the first form “bia” was for “I had” rather than “I have”. In the class we have been given a document that was produced by a former student entitled “Key Cornish Verbs” with instructions only to look at the first two pages so as not to scare ourselves. I did a search of the document and “bia” is indeed for “I had”. So you need to say “My re beu” as in the later lesson.
I’m not going to start SSiC Course 2 at the moment. I would not be able to manage that at the same time as Klass an Hay.
Because that’s an oddity of Cornish grammar — when you have a sentence with the subject first and then the verb, the verb is always in 3rd person singular form no matter who or what is doing the action. I haven’t yet learned all the permutations of “bos” (to be), but here it is with “gallos” (to be able). If you have the subject first (me, you, he/she, we, you (pl.), they), the verb is always “a yll” (third person singular):
my a yll (I can)
ty a yll (you can)
ev/hi a yll (he/she can)
ni a yll (we can)
hwi a yll (you (pl.) can)
i a yll (they can)
The conjugated forms that you’ll find in grammar books are used when you put the verb first — which is actually the more traditional way of doing it in Celtic languages — or when you put the sentence in the negative:
ny allav (I can’t)
ny yllydh (you can’t) [usually “ny yll’ta” in spoken Cornish, as it is in SSi]
ny yll (he/she can’t)
ny yllyn (we can’t)
ny yllowgh (you (pl.) can’t)
ny yllons (they can’t)
So “my re bia/beu” is the same deal — it’s a sentence starting with the subject, so the verb acts as if it’s third person singular even though the subject isn’t. SSi Cornish doesn’t get into most of the ways verbs behave in other places, but you do have to learn it eventually!!
Ah, that explains it. I was aware of all of the examples you have given, and also for example, of using My a red… instead of My a wra redya… i just hadn’t put two and two together, probably because I’ve only encountered that part of the verb Bos in SSiC. Many thanks for the explanation.
