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It’s all about the rhotic ‘r’ – that’s what makes the Cornish accent uniquely Cornish – but it’s slowly dying out.

Yes, the accent us Cornish hold so dear is changing. Some would say for the worst.

Dr Lucy Ellis, a linguistics expert (with a noticeable Cornish accent), has told Cornwall Live that the rhotic ‘r’ is slowly dying out as Cornwall changes with the generations and social migration.

Basically it means that with more and more people moving into Cornwall over the years those characteristics which make the Cornish accent have been diluted.

If, like me, you’re not a socio-linguist then you’ll want to know what the rhotic ‘r’ is.

It’s the ‘r’ sound after a vowel, as in “car”, so the Cornish will traditionally extend and roll the letter. And it’s disappearing.

Dr Ellis, an honorary research fellow at the University of Exeter’s College of Humanities, said: “Rhoticity is the critical factor of the Cornish accent. It’s also a critical part of American-English and Caribbean English.”

Does that suggest that Cornish led to the American way of speaking?

“Not necessarily but there is a theory that the Pilgrim Fathers may have started the American accent. They would have had a strong rhotic accent.”

She said the rolling rhotic ‘r’ is disappearing from some parts of Cornwall.

“Saying it’s dying out is emotive and very sad, but yes it is slowly disappearing.”

She said it is strongest in the working class Cornish accent and, as a result, is still strong in the Redruth and Camborne area.

(Image: Geoff Hichens)

Dr Ellis added: “You’d expect it to be really strong somewhere like Sennen, where I’m from, but it isn’t because there are now a high proportion of second homes.”

She explained that where people with Cornish-English accents live in close proximity to Standard-English accents the accent migrates to a more standard accent.

Basically, it’s about fitting in socially with our surroundings.

In some ways it’s a form of social improvement.

She said: “If you go to a job interview, you’re more likely to say, ‘I drove here in my car’ rather than ‘I drove here in my carrr'. We don’t even realise we’re doing it.

“The features of Cornish-English are definitely receding. It makes me sad where people are completely non-rhotic but it is happening across the country. That ‘r’ sound has been dropping out of language since Shakespearean times.”

So if you want to save the Cornish language start accentuating those ‘r’s.

However, there is still plenty of hope for the Cornish accent’s future.

“The rhotic ‘r’ may be disappearing but the Cornish vowel sound is still there to be heard in path and bath across the generations,” she said.

That’s path and bath as in paaath and baaath rather than parth and barth.

(Image: Greg Martin)

Dr Ellis added: “Indigenous people always want to signal their difference, so the growth of people learning Cornish has helped the accent.”

She also points to “language missionaries” like herself for ensuring the accent survives and points out that an accent is a living thing and thus can’t die … just change.

The accent

Typically, the accent is more divergent from Standard-English the further west through Cornwall you travel. The speech of the various parishes being different from others was described by John T Tregellas and Thomas Q Couch towards the end of the 19th century.

Tregellas wrote of the differences and Couch suggested the parliamentary constituency boundary between the east and west constituencies, from Crantock to Veryan, as roughly the border between eastern and western dialects.

The Celtic language is thought to have largely died out before the Norman Conquest of 1066. However, it survived much later in the westernmost areas of Cornwall, where there were still speakers as late as the 18th century.

For this reason, there are important differences between the English-Cornish accent and other West Country accents.

The Cornish language itself, which was still the most common language west of the River Tamar until the 14th century, played a huge part in the sound of the accent.

Due to geographical, political and physical borders, the Cornish accent was, and still is, noticeably different between the east and west of the county / Duchy.