Listeners tuning in to the BBC’s latest podcast offering on Friday may find themselves saying dydh da to a language that is enjoying something of a resurgence. The new programme called Learn Cornish will be fronted by the Radio 1 host Danni Diston and includes guests such as the Bafta-winning director Mark Jenkin.
Diston, who is from north Cornwall, said that she initially did not know any Cornish “other than small words that I’ve learned growing up and mainly dialect … [but] the idea would be to learn alongside other people”. She will be joined by co-presenter Sarah Buck, a fluent Kernewek speaker, throughout the weekly episodes that are designed to introduce basic phrases in the Cornish language.
BBC launches new Cornish-language podcast
Diston credits her student days in Cardiff as being “influential” in discovering the “Celtic connection” between Kernewek and Cymraeg, the Welsh language, through similar terms such as hireth (hiraeth in Cymraeg) that evoke an emotion difficult to encapsulate within a single English word. She said: “It doesn’t exist in the English language. It can’t be translated – and I think that’s really beautiful because you do feel a sense of belonging when you’re from these Celtic places. It feels like a completely different cultural experience … [and] I think it’s really cool how the language also feeds into that.”
The podcast launch takes place in the aftermath of Kernewek gaining enhanced protected status on a par with other languages such as Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Under the European charter for regional or minority languages, the awarding of part III status means that the government must actively promote Kernewek in sectors such as education and the media.
Currently, public service broadcasting in Kernewek is limited to weekly news bulletins on BBC Radio Cornwall, which will be producing the Learn Cornish podcast from its studios in Truro. In May last year, the Cornish Language Forum discussed “pressing the case for BBC Kernow”, in reference to the creation of a separate division akin to BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Alba.
Graphics for the new BBC Sounds podcast, Learn Cornish. Photograph: BBC
Steph Marshall, head of the BBC’s West and South West region, said that “we’ve got a long way to go” before there are “enough Cornish speakers to be able to justify that”, but is “hoping this podcast is the start of it”. She described it as “a sort of poetry to Cornwall”.
Last month, Cornwall celebrated St Piran’s Day amid a sense of cultural revival, with film-makers often among “the main people at the moment … promoting the language” according to Marshall. The groundings of a Cornish national cinema, pioneered by works including Jenkin’s Bait and Rose of Nevada, have also emerged alongside singers such as Gwenno Saunders. At the annual Lorient festival – the world’s largest celebration of Celtic cultures – in Brittany, Cornwall will be honoured as this year’s “featured nation”.
Marshall said: “We felt we had to sort of do something about making sure the Cornish language became a bit more prominent. It’s important for Radio Cornwall and the BBC to be seen to be promoting that sense of place and that pride in place.”
Beyond the studio, Learn Cornish will see Diston venture out to meet surfers in the peninsula as well as one of the first primary schools to advance the use of Kernewek among pupils.
Diston said: “I think people forget that Cornwall feels like its own family and its own community. So if you can actually speak the language as well, just a little bit like throwing in a dydh da (hello) or meur ras (thank you) it just makes you a bit closer. I’ve felt closer to Cornwall since doing it.”