Thank you for your replies. That’s a bit odd, it goes contrary to what I have previously learned. Quoting something I’ve just found online with a search engine, “The Cornish Language in North America” by Benjamin Brunch (possibly dated 2004),
“Traditional Cornish can be further subdivided into Old (c.800-c.1200), Middle (c.1200-c.1625), and Late Cornish (c.1625-c.1800), on the basis of various changes in phonology, morphology, and syntax (see George 1993: 410, which gives slightly different dates)”
By traditional he means the language before the revival.
In Dan Prohaska’s audio course he said that there were two main varieties of revived Cornish, one being based on the mainly religious literature of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, and the other on the later variety spoken in Penwith and The Lizard, of the 17th and 18th centuries. In his audio course he usually uses the Cornish word for “ye”, whereas in the SSiC one it is usually the word for “thou”. Daniel Prohaska’s said two ways of saying the word for “thou”, both being different to the one in SSiC. There are other differences in pronunciation between the two audio courses.
On the website www.kernewegva.com there is a PDF file named “Specification_Final_Version.pdf”, but also named “An Outline of the Standard Written Form of Cornish”, which has a cornish language partnership MAGA logo on the first page, which also credits Mr Dan Ryan-Prohaska, which lists pronunciations with revived middle Cornish on the left, and revived late Cornish on the right. I’ve just looked at the pronunciations of two words in that document and it looks like Daniel Prohaska’s one is revived late Cornish, with the SSIC one being revived middle Cornish, except it a more English accent.
This all makes it seem as though more than one sort of Cornish is being revived. Actually I think I’ve answered my own question thanks to that .PDF file.
Lestyn, how mainstream or esoteric something does not influence me much when it comes to reviving a part of the past, so that’ll be fine either way (the appeal of something popular is probably the main attraction of English in Cornwall). I’m just interested in learning how people used to speak in Cornwall. 