Cornish, or Kernewek, is a Brittonic Celtic language — a sibling of Welsh and Breton ra…

Cornish, or Kernewek, is a Brittonic Celtic language — a sibling of Welsh and Breton rather than the Goidelic branch that includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. It was the everyday language of Cornwall for centuries, peaking at around 39,000 speakers in the 13th century before being steadily pushed west by English. By 1777 the last reputed native speaker, a fishwife named Dolly Pentreath, had died, and the last person with any traditional knowledge of it passed in 1891. Revival began in 1904 when Henry Jenner published his Handbook of the Cornish Language, and today around 3,000 people speak it, with over 4,000 pupils learning it in schools. UNESCO reclassified it from extinct to critically endangered in 2010, and the Cornish people were granted official minority status in the UK in 2014; putting them on equal footing with the Irish, Scots and Welsh.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​