I make no apologies for writing about the Cornish language for the second week running, as it has been Speak Cornish Week 2026, when people were encouraged to learn more about Cornwall’s national language and/or have a go at conversing in Kernewek. I was pleased to attend an event at the council offices in Truro organised by the unitary authority’s Fifth Nation Members’ Working Group, which I chair, to showcase Go Cornish!
This project is funded through Cornwall Council and delivered by Golden Tree Productions CIC and it takes the Cornish language into the classrooms of primary schools. Children from 10 schools took part in the event and performed songs, rhymes and stories in Kernewek. It was so positive to see how enthused they were with our distinct cultural identity, even singing along with gusto to a Cornish version of Cornwall My Home. But the present time the project is only getting into a proportion of educational settings, and one of our priorities must be about boosting the offer across all schools in Cornwall.
One graphic at the event summed it up for me. It was based around the wording “Tavas Koth – Levow Nowydh.” This means “old language, new voices,” which I thought was particularly apt. Let’s build on that!
It was also good to see the Truro event get some coverage to the east of the Tamar. It was described as “joyous” in a piece in the Manchester Guardian. The article acknowledged that much good work had been done on a shoestring and stated that “Kernewek is undoubtedly having a moment.”
The newspaper referred specifically to the new BBC podcast called “Learn Cornish, Dyski Kernewek,” hosted by the Radio 1 DJ Danni Diston, while the “Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin … often uses Kernewek in his movies” and that a mass written in Kernewek was recently premiered at Truro Cathedral.
This all links so well with the emerging Cornish Language Strategy for the next decade and there is much to build on but, to make significant further progress, we need greater investment from the UK Government and public bodies such as the BBC.
Whilst pondering progress with the Cornish language, I did note the reports that the BBC has just completed filming of a second series of the crime drama An t-Eilean (the Island), which is predominantly in Scottish Gaelic.
Just think about the step-change in respect for Cornish, if something like this was produced for mainstream television in our language.
Article published in the Cornish Guardian (1st July 2026) and West Briton newspapers (2nd July 2026)