Cornwall’s unpronounceable language is as strange, wondrous, and profoundly weird as the country itself
By Mark Orwoll
CORNWALL, AN ISOLATED PENINSULA at England’s southwest corner, is a peculiar place, by any measure. And when I say peculiar, I’m using the official British definition: “somewhere that makes Florida look normal.”
Remote, feisty, and gorgeous, its history rings with cutthroats, smugglers, shipwreckers, and pirates—kinda like the Orwoll in-laws at the annual family Christmas party, except with better personal hygiene. And you can’t understand a bloody word anyone says in Cornwall—also kinda like the Orwoll in-laws on Christmas Eve after Uncle Woody spikes the eggnog.
The United Kingdom has recognized the Cornish as a national minority, distinct from the neighboring English, a distinction that England has effectively resisted for centuries, give or take a royal beheading or two.
One of the six historic Celtic Nations—along with Brittany, Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ireland—Cornwall long resisted what the British government called a “cordial relationship” and what Cornwall called “you people can bugger off now.”
The region was so fiercely independent that a nationalist movement sprang up in the 1970s. A group calling itself the Cornish National Liberation Army was deemed potentially violent by law enforcement, but in the end, limited its revolutionary actions to the equivalent of writing withering letters to The Times in ALL CAPS.
How Do You Say ‘Aarrgghh, Aarrgghh!’ in Cornish?
And then, of course, there is the accent, which I encountered for the first time as a hippie hitchhiker in 1976, a sentence that should tell you everything you need to know about my youthful judgment.
One of the most popular songs in England that summer was “The Combine Harvester,” by the musical powerhouse The Wurzels. The song boldly ripped off a 1971 American hit, “Brand New Key (The Roller Skate Song)” by Melanie, in what musicians call “homage” and lawyers might call “copyright infringement.”
The lyrics were magnificently inane. A farmer has a brand-new tractor, or “combine harvester” (which is British for “really big tractor”), and wants to give the keys to a would-be marriage partner, because apparently, in Cornwall, agricultural equipment is romantic. The only thing that makes this song noteworthy is the singer’s industrial-strength West Country accent, what Americans call a “pirate” accent, a “what did he say?” accent, or a “did he just order fish?” accent.
Especially in those days, before globalization began to homogenize England’s linguistic landscape, a Cornishman’s words were about as intelligible to an outsider like me as Moms Mabley doing five minutes at the Comedy Cellar. The Cornish routinely dropped their h’s (“They must be ’ere somewhere…”), hardened their r’s, and chopped off the letter t at the ends of syllables in a harsh glottal stop.
That way of speaking—and “The Combine Harvester,” which played constantly that summer like an auditory stalker—could be heard everywhere in Cornwall. The farther west you traveled, the more you heard both the Cornish burr and the song.
English Was Late to the Cornish Party
None of this should surprise you when you learn that the English language didn’t fully penetrate Cornwall’s population until the mid-1700s, which in British terms is basically last Thursday. Sadly, few Cornish people still speak the old Brythonic patois, which has more in common with Welsh than with Irish or Scots Gaelic, and which sounds to the untrained ear like someone gargling gravel. By the mid-1800s, the Cornish language was, by any practical definition, defunct. But a cultural revival at the turn of the 20th century kept it from becoming completely extinct, sort of like how people keep trying to bring back vinyl records.
Even when speaking what they claim is English, though, the Cornish sometimes use expressions heard nowhere else in Britain, except possibly in fever dreams:
’Ark at ’ee. (Translation: “Listen to him,” assuming you can figure out what he’s saying.)
’Ee’s gone up north. (Translation: “He’s traveled outside Cornwall,” which could mean London or possibly dead.)
Wass marr widdy? (Translation: “Are you all right?” or maybe “Would you like some widgets?”)
Dreckly. (Translation: “Directly, soon, eventually, maybe, when I get around to it, don’t hold your breath.”)
As recently as the millennium—which sounds impressively historic until you realize that was only 26 years ago—the Cornish language was already more passé than avocado-colored refrigerators and shag carpet. But today you can learn Cornish at schools in Lostwithiel, Portscatho, and other unpronounceable towns. Much like Cornish itself, these names will leave you with a sprained tongue and possibly a workers’ compensation claim.
While you’re there, learning useful phrases like Argh dhillas (chest of drawers—because you use that one constantly), Dydh aval lowen (Happy Apple Day—essential for all your apple-celebrating needs), and Trongornvil (rhinoceros), you can also tour the splendid countryside and charming settlements.
Would You Like To Stay in Mousehole?
The cutest little village anywhere is in Cornwall. It’s called Mousehole, but the locals pronounce it MAU-zul. Well, of course they do. Why would they pronounce it the way it’s spelled? That would make sense, and sense is apparently highly suspect in Cornwall.
The small, tidy commercial center is set so close to the shoreline that I wouldn’t be surprised if waves lapped at the shopfront doorways at high tide and babies learned to swim before they could walk, or possibly before they were born. The tiny houses and stores are built of rough-hewn granite and what appears to be brightly painted rubble, as if someone had created an entire village out of the broken bits from a quarry. Cafés and boutiques and galleries are crammed into the commercial buildings, and flowers fill the postage-stamp gardens of the residences on the adjoining lanes, some wide enough for two people to pass at the same time.
I wanted to put the entire village in my pocket and take it home with me, although this would probably violate several U.K. statutes and upset the residents.
Leaving Mousehole, I flagged down a driver in hopes of getting a lift, because hitchhiking was something people did in 1976 without immediately being featured on a true-crime TV show.
A dusty and dented car—what the British call a “saloon” and Americans call a “sedan,” because we can’t agree on anything—pulled over almost immediately. The driver opened the passenger door from inside, and I could hear “The Combine Harvester” playing on the radio.
The middle-aged man, dressed like a farmer or someone who’d accidentally slept in a hayloft, smiled and gave me a nod.
“Whar be to?” he asked.
Happy Apple Day, everyone.
Adapted from Just One Little Hitch (Pleasant Villain Press, 2024), by Mark Orwoll.
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