Most nurseries teach children to share toys and play nicely in the sandpit. At the first Cornish language crèche, opening tomorrow, toddlers will learn to share their tegennow and play nicely in the polltewas.
They will sing in Cornish, and learn their numbers, calendar and basic phrases in the language — whose last native speaker is thought to have died more than 200 years ago.
The Movyans Skolyow Meythrin (Nursery Schools Movement) is part of a revival of the language, with roadsigns in the county in Cornish and English, and the news in Cornish on the local BBC website.
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It is thought that 300 people speak Cornish fluently and that thousands can hold a conversation in the language. Cornish shares about two thirds of its vocabulary with Welsh, and even more with Breton.
The movement argues that learning Cornish provides a sense of community, history and culture. Children of adults attending Cornish language courses at Cornwall College, near Camborne, will, from tomorrow, be taught on Saturday mornings at the crèche.
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Rhisiart Tal-e-bot, a teacher from Wales who will run the nursery, said: “Traditionally the language was seen as for academics or people with beards and the community of bards. Now there’s more of a cultural connection. There was an independent study into the language in 2000 and one of the recommendations was teaching it to pre-school children for it to flourish.”
He disputed that Cornish had ever totally died out, saying that the grandparents of a student of his had spoken Cornish at home. Cornish is still used in local dialect, such as crowst for lunch, and mazed for mad. Emilie Champliaud, 30, from France, a founder of the movement, is sending her daughter to the crèche. She wants to set up Cornish nursery schools across the county. “This is a pilot to see how many families are interested,” she said. “The Saturday session is to give children an interest in the language and accustom them to it. The real aim is to bring up the children bilingual.
Sonya Anjari moved back to her native Cornwall from London last year. She said: “When I was growing up, Cornish was seen as a bit insular. Now it’s part of a movement, and is easy to make it part of everyday life.”
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Cornish was officially recognised as a language by the Government in 2002, under the European charter for regional or minority languages.
The creche is paid for by the college and from the publicly funded Cornish Language Partnership. Parents are charged a nominal sum to pay for books and materials to create worksheets in Cornish. One of the Cornish parents involved in the movement speaks only in the language to his daughters at home.
Other locals in Redruth and Camborne were not so smitten, although plenty of black and white Cornish flags were flown from cars and in houses.
When asked if he spoke Cornish, Derek Collins, 71, a retired fish and chip shop manager walking his dog, said: “No way. I think it’s something for the younger generation, the oldies have never bothered. Personally I think it’s a waste of time, I don’t think it will go anywhere, but I haven’t got anything against it. People now think differently - but we never had the time when we were young.”
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Bill Bannister, 56, an estate agent, said: “In my day you did Latin, English and French. I wouldn’t like to see Cornish lost, but if you said to me should I learn Cornish or German, I would say German as it’s a language you would use. Cornish isn’t vitally important but should be kept alive.”