Saturday 23 May 2015

Learn Late Cornish Bit by Bit 83 (Telling the Time)

Telling the Time

This is one of the major uses of numbers. We have to use borrowed words for small units of time. There was nothing reliable between a heartbeat and an hour. Time pieces with minute hands were in short supply while Cornish was spoken as a first language! A bell in the local church may have rung out the hour and if the sun was bright enough to produce a shadow a sundial might have been of use.

tecken                                   a tick, a moment
second                                  a second
mynysen                               a minute
polj[1]                                    a pulse, a beat, a short moment, an instant
rag tecken                            momentarily, for a moment
dres polj                                temporarily
Gortow’ rag tecken!             Wait for a moment!

We have two words for hour, depending on whether we mean time by the clock (or by the bell) eur or duration our:

clogh                                     a bell
clock                                     a clock

eur[2](f)                                 hour (o’clock)
er glogh                                o’clock
pub eur                                 always

This gives us several ways of asking what the time is:

Pe eur ew?[3]                       What’s the time? What hour is it?
P’eur ew?                                         
Peth ew an eur?
Pandr’ew an eur?                          

our[4]                                     an hour (duration)
hanter our                             a half-hour
A’n our[5]                              See you later! (Of the hour!) See you dreckly!

More important in the past was the time for doing things, e.g.:

Pana bres ew?                                What’s the time?
Pres boos ew.                                 It’s meal-time. It’s time for food.
Pres gwely ew.                               It’s bed-time.
An pres ew teyr eur.                      It’s three o’clock. The time is three o’clock.
Teyr eur ew an pres.[6]                Three o’clock is the time.
An pres ew hanter dedh.              It’s midday. It’s noon. The time is midday.
Hanter dedh ew an pres.              Noon is the time.

You can of course just say:

Teyr eur ew.                         It’s three o’clock.
Hanter dedh ew.                  It’s midday.

pres kidnyow                       dinner time, lunch time (main meal)
pres li                                    breakfast (substantial)time/lunch time

Here are some other meals and activities you might want to put a time to:

con                                         supper, dinner (evening meal)
cona                                       to have supper
hansel                                   breakfast (light)
cosca [7]                                to sleep
difüna[8]                                to wake up
sevel[9] e’mann                    to get up
debry                                     to eat
gonis                                     to work
marhasna                             to go shopping[10]

You might want to discuss a habitual time for doing something. We can use a very Cornish idiom (belong to do something):

Pana bres ero’whei o longya dhe dhifüna?
                                                What time do you usually wake up?
                                                What time do you belong to wake up?
Thero’vy o longya dhe varhasna deg eur. 
                                                I usually go shopping at ten o’clock.
                                                I belong to go shopping at ten o’clock.
Ma va o longya dhe dhebry li seyth er glogh. 
                                                He usually eats breakfast at seven o’clock.
                                                He belongs to eat breakfast at seven o’clock.

Pres also appears in other idioms which do not always have time in the translation:
e’n gwella pres                    fortunately
e’n gwettha pres                 unfortunately
neb pres                               at any time, sometime
pub pres                               every time, always



[1] Middle Cornish pols
[2] RLC ear pronounced somewhere between <eer> and <air>
[3] Py eur yw? or P’eur yw? in Middle Cornish
[4] does not rhyme with English “hour” but with “mower”
[5]  Late Cornish Anowr!
[6]  Word order depends on what you want to stress; important thing first.
[7]  RLC pre SWF <cusca>
[8] RLC pronunciation <de-vinna>. Gendall’s spelling devina
[9] RLC pronunciation <zaval>
[10] can also be LC pernassa, MC prenassa, though this is a “made up” word based on perna/prena to buy

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