SingleMalt's story reminds of what my Grandmother told me about her Grandparents.
She said that they would switch to another language when they didn't want the Grand-kids to understand what they were talking about.
My Grandmother's Grandparents were Cornish miners, from Tywardreath. If you've seen Doc Martin you've seen a village not unlike it.
In the 1860s due to the failure of the local mines they moved to Ardrishaig (near Lochgilphead) then later in the 1860s to Ballygrant (Islay) then to Dalton-in-Furness in Northwest England. Finally around 1880, still following mining jobs, they moved to West Virginia, where my Grandmother was born, in 1896.
The question is, what language were they speaking? Was it
1) Cornish? They were born and raised in a fishing village in Cornwall in the 1830s when Cornish was still being spoken especially by fisher folk.
2) Welsh? It's possible that they worked for years beside Welsh miners in Cornwall and/or Scotland and/or England and picked up a smattering of Welsh.
3) Gaelic? I don't know if Lochgilphead was still Gaelic-speaking in the 1860s but Islay surely was. My G-G-Grandparents might have picked up a smattering during their years there. One of their kids was born in Ardrishaig, one in Ballygrant.
Last edited by OC Richard; 27th August 19 at 07:12 PM.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
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