Yeth Kernewek - Coming Soon To A Street Near You!

So, we are soon to have bi-lingual street signs in Cornwall! How marvellous! Of course, the town sings have been in Cornish and English for a long time, but street signs is a fairly big leap forward. They've had bi-lingual signs in wales for as long as I can remember and it has never really been much of a talking point, but here in Cornwall the resurgence in the native language has been somewhat slower and gentler - although The Cornish Language Partnership have said that the number of speakers had risen in the past 20 years, the  best estimates are that while several thousand people of the county's

500,000-strong population can read some Cornish (the basic kind learned in primary school for example), only about 300 are

believed to be fluent. Cornish is believed to have died out as a first language in 1777 although there were protests from those who spoke the language after it was branded "extinct" in February by

linguistic experts working on the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger,

compiled by United Nations group Unesco.

The

former Kerrier District Council, which was succeeded by Cornwall

Council, introduced the bi-lingual street signs policy, and the new unitary authority has decided to adopt it. As the CLP point out, there has been a rise in interest over the past decade or so, and the new signs are all part of a plan to celebrate the Cornish language. Councillor Graeme Hick said that the council had a legal obligation as a local authority to promote the language, and that steps such as this were an ideal way of doing it.

The

council said the changeover would would not cost anything extra because the signs

would be replaced gradually, as and when they were broken or damaged. But let's just suppose this is wishful thinking - for example, how many signs can we expect to see purposefully destroyed or vandalised by Cornish Nationalists wanting to push the change? Will the next step be to remove the English versions altogether and just have them in Cornish? And much more importantly, would that be a good thing or not? Answers on a cyber-postcard, please...