35 Facts About The Cornish

The Cornish language was granted official recognition under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2002, and in 2014 the Cornish people were recognised and afforded protection by the UK Government under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

The Cornish have been described as "a special case" in England, with an "ethnic rather than regional identity".

Genealogy and family history were considered to be the chief criteria for 'being' The Cornish, particularly among those who possessed such ties, while being born in Cornwall was held to be important.

All participants categorised themselves as The Cornish and identified The Cornish as their primary ethnic group orientation.

Traditionally, the Cornish are thought to have been descended from the Iron Age Celts, making them distinct from the English, many of whom are descended from the Anglo-Saxons who colonised Great Britain from their homelands in northern Europe and drove the Celts to Britain's western and northern fringes.

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The Cornish were frequently embattled with the West Saxons, who used their Germanic word walha meaning "stranger" or "foreigner", to describe their opponents, later specifying them as the Westwalas or Cornwalas .

However, the Duchy of Cornwall gradually lost its political autonomy from England, a state which became increasingly centralised in London, and by the early-Tudor period the Cornish had begun to see themselves as "a conquered people whose culture, liberties, and prosperity had been downgraded by the English".

Many Cornish landed gentry chose mottos in the Cornish language for their coat of arms, highlighting its socially high status.

The Cornish soldiers were used as scouts and spies during the war, for their language was not understood by English Parliamentarians.

The first effective revival of Cornish began in 1904 when Henry Jenner, a Celtic language enthusiast, published his book Handbook of the Cornish Language.

The Cornish's orthography, Unified Cornish, was based on Cornish as it was spoken in the 18th century, although his pupil Robert Morton Nance later steered the revival more towards the Middle Cornish that had been used in the 16th century, before the language became influenced by English.

Since devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, enthusiasts for Cornish culture have pressed for the Cornish language to be taught formally in Cornish schools, while Cornish nationalists have demanded greater political autonomy for Cornwall, for example that it be constituted as the United Kingdom's fifth consistuent country with its own Cornish Assembly.

The Cornish people are concentrated in Cornwall, but after the Age of Discovery in the early modern period were involved in the British colonisation of the Americas and other transcontinental and transatlantic migrations.

The Cornish settlement impacted upon social, cultural and religious life throughout the history of South Australia.

The Cornish identity was embraced strongly in the Yorke Peninsula, but in the more outlying mining towns of Kapunda and Burra, where The Cornish miners constituted a sizeable community.

Additional waves of The Cornish migrants followed the California Gold Rush of the mid-19th century; in the 1890s it was estimated that in California's Grass Valley, over 60 per cent of the population was The Cornish.

Survival of a distinct The Cornish culture has been attributed to Cornwall's geographic isolation.

Contemporaneously, the underlying notion of The Cornish culture is that it is distinct from the culture of England, despite its anglicisation, and that it is instead part of a Celtic tradition.

The Cornish language is derived from the Brythonic branch of the Insular Celtic languages.

The demise of the Cornish language is attributed to English cultural influence, particularly the political and religious dominance of the English Reformation and the Act of Uniformity 1549 which outlawed all church services within the Kingdom of England that were not in English.

The exact date of the death of using the Cornish language is unclear and disputed, but popularly it is claimed that the last monolingual Cornish speaker was Dolly Pentreath, a Mousehole resident who died in 1777.

Revival of Cornish began in 1904 when Henry Jenner, a Celtic language enthusiast, published his book Handbook of the Cornish Language.

The Cornish based his work on Cornish as it was spoken in the 18th century, although his pupil Robert Morton Nance, with his orthography, Unified Cornish, later steered the revival more towards the Middle Cornish that had been used in the 16th century, before the language became more heavily influenced by English.

The Cornish is a restored and living modern language, but most of its speakers are enthusiasts, persons who have learned the language through private study.

The Cornish speakers are geographically dispersed, meaning there is no part of Cornwall where it is spoken as a community language.

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The Cornish's "historical construct" characterised the ancient Britons as heroes, which later helped Celtic revivalists to redefine Cornishness as an identity closely related to ancient heroic Celtic folklore.

Anciently, the religion of the Cornish Britons was Celtic polytheism, a pagan, animistic faith, assumed to be led by Druids in full or in part.

The Cornish cuisine is a regional variety of British cuisine, strongly rooted in a tradition of using local produce, which is used to create relatively simple dishes.

The Cornish wrestling is a regional, folk style of grappling or martial arts.

The waves around the Cornish coastline are created by low pressure systems from the Atlantic Ocean which unleash powerful swells eastwards creating multiple, excellent surfing conditions in some parts of the coast of Cornwall.

The Cornish politics are marked by a long tradition of Liberalism.

The Cornish miners were effectively exempt from the jurisdiction of the law courts at Westminster, except "in such cases as should affect land, life or limb".

Popularisation of Cornish nationalism is attributed to a Celtic cultural revival in Cornwall which itself began with a renewed interest in the Cornish language in the 1920s.

The revival of the Cornish language encouraged a parallel revival of Celtic traditions, which by the 1970s had spurred on Cornish nationalism.

The United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community in 1973 prompted claims that the Cornish should be granted their own devolved national assembly—the Cornish Assembly—comparable to that of the National Assembly for Wales.