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610 results for “DevGen_”
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@Ellis Dat is slechts de buitenkant, 'fatsoen.' Alle #NSC -politici zijn opportunisten, vanuit het #CDA overgelopen toen die partij op sterven na dood was. Kijk naar welke partijen een aantal van hen nu weer overstappen. Kijk naar wat ze gesloopt hebben, bijvoorbeeld #EppoBruins. En maak me vooral niet aan de gang over #Omtzigt, die deze zogenaamde fatsoenlijke bestuurspartij heeft opgericht, om binnen no time met #Wilders in zee te gaan. Dus oneens. Ze deugen voor geen meter, geen van allen.
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Pajra, Nureba, Granate, Hakusei, Tatenashi, Chachatora, Kotetsu, Kuromaru, Aosa, and Dengen at Anthrocon 2024.
More photos from this event: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kakurady/albums/72177720318777717
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We zitten gevangen. Niet in de zorg zelf, maar in hoe we erover praten. In formulieren, functietitels en regels die ooit bedoeld waren om te ordenen, maar inmiddels muren zijn geworden. Muren tussen mensen, tussen liefde en beleid, tussen leven en administratie.
Deze woorden deugen niet meer. Ze passen niet bij de werkelijkheid. #mantelzorg #zorg #kantelen
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Get ready for the epic showdown! "Singham Again" hits Amazon Prime Video on Dec 27. Bajirao is back, and this time, it’s personal!
Read the full article right here: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/singham-again-ott-release-date-revealed-when-can-you-stream-ajay-devgn-s-latest-cop-epic
#SinghamAgain #AjayDevgn #RohitShetty #AmazonPrime #OTTRelease #BollywoodAction #DeepikaPadukone #KareenaKapoor #AkshayKumar #RanveerSingh
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Get ready for the epic showdown! "Singham Again" hits Amazon Prime Video on Dec 27. Bajirao is back, and this time, it’s personal!
Read the full article right here: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/singham-again-ott-release-date-revealed-when-can-you-stream-ajay-devgn-s-latest-cop-epic
#SinghamAgain #AjayDevgn #RohitShetty #AmazonPrime #OTTRelease #BollywoodAction #DeepikaPadukone #KareenaKapoor #AkshayKumar #RanveerSingh
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Tag 3: Kroměříž – Nový Jičín
90km, 300hmHeute war der Tag der historischen Stadtplätze. Zuerst beim Frühstück von der Terrasse des Hotels noch einmal ein Blick auf den Hauptplatz von Kroměříž, er gefällt uns auch am zweiten Tag noch und endlich wieder nicht in sengender Sonne zu braten lässt uns den Ausblick noch ein paar Minuten länger geniessen. Den zweiten Platz gab es dann in Lipník nad Bečvou: nicht ganz so prominent, nicht ganz so geschniegelt, aber deshalb umso reizvoller, eine richtige Filmkulisse, geeignet für historische Schinken von Mantel und Degen bis 20. Jahrhundert. Den dritten Stadtplatz gab es dann in Hranice na Moravě zum Kaffee und den letzten haben wir jetzt in Nový Jičín. Alle genannten Städte haben gemeinsam, […]
Gudrun in #TschechienUndPolenAugust2024 #Urlaub
More: https://le-chat-a-velo.at/2024/08/tag-3-kromeriz-novy-jicin/
#Bečva #Česko #Eurovelo4 #Haná #Hranice #HraniceNaMoravě #Intec #Kremsier #Kroměříž #LipníkNadBečvou #MährischSchlesischeRegion #March #MitteleuropaRoute #Morava #Moravskoslezský #Neutitschein #NovýJičín #OlmützerRegion #Olomoucký #Reiserad #Tschechien #ZlinerRegion #Zlínský
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Tag 3: Kroměříž – Nový Jičín
90km, 300hmHeute war der Tag der historischen Stadtplätze. Zuerst beim Frühstück von der Terrasse des Hotels noch einmal ein Blick auf den Hauptplatz von Kroměříž, er gefällt uns auch am zweiten Tag noch und endlich wieder nicht in sengender Sonne zu braten lässt uns den Ausblick noch ein paar Minuten länger geniessen. Den zweiten Platz gab es dann in Lipník nad Bečvou: nicht ganz so prominent, nicht ganz so geschniegelt, aber deshalb umso reizvoller, eine richtige Filmkulisse, geeignet für historische Schinken von Mantel und Degen bis 20. Jahrhundert. Den dritten Stadtplatz gab es dann in Hranice na Moravě zum Kaffee und den letzten haben wir jetzt in Nový Jičín. Alle genannten Städte haben gemeinsam, […]
Gudrun in #TschechienUndPolenAugust2024 #Urlaub
More: https://le-chat-a-velo.at/2024/08/tag-3-kromeriz-novy-jicin/
#Bečva #Česko #Eurovelo4 #Haná #Hranice #HraniceNaMoravě #Intec #Kremsier #Kroměříž #LipníkNadBečvou #MährischSchlesischeRegion #March #MitteleuropaRoute #Morava #Moravskoslezský #Neutitschein #NovýJičín #OlmützerRegion #Olomoucký #Reiserad #Tschechien #ZlinerRegion #Zlínský
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Every year I go through the #Bitcoin conference video and put together my own "truth remix". I can't wait for this year. It should be even better.. Here's the last two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz3AtuT2Yj0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBL757gZuKQ
#bitcoin2024 #btc #convention #funny #humor #remix #crypto #cryptoReality #ponzi #eth #laugh #comedy #idiocracy #fintech #suckers #degen #wagmi #wngmi #btc #bch #watch
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Every year I go through the #Bitcoin conference video and put together my own "truth remix". I can't wait for this year. It should be even better.. Here's the last two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz3AtuT2Yj0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBL757gZuKQ
#bitcoin2024 #btc #convention #funny #humor #remix #crypto #cryptoReality #ponzi #eth #laugh #comedy #idiocracy #fintech #suckers #degen #wagmi #wngmi #btc #bch #watch
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Every year I go through the #Bitcoin conference video and put together my own "truth remix". I can't wait for this year. It should be even better.. Here's the last two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz3AtuT2Yj0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBL757gZuKQ
#bitcoin2024 #btc #convention #funny #humor #remix #crypto #cryptoReality #ponzi #eth #laugh #comedy #idiocracy #fintech #suckers #degen #wagmi #wngmi #btc #bch #watch
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Every year I go through the #Bitcoin conference video and put together my own "truth remix". I can't wait for this year. It should be even better.. Here's the last two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz3AtuT2Yj0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBL757gZuKQ
#bitcoin2024 #btc #convention #funny #humor #remix #crypto #cryptoReality #ponzi #eth #laugh #comedy #idiocracy #fintech #suckers #degen #wagmi #wngmi #btc #bch #watch
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Fussball: Österreichs Frauen-Nationalteam hat in der Qualifikation für die UEFA Euro 2025 in die Erfolgsspur zurückgefunden, das direkte EM-Ticket wegen des Island-Erfolgs gegen Deutschland (3:0) im Parallelspiel aber verpasst. Die Elf von Teamchefin Irene Fuhrmann setzte sich am Freitag in Altach gegen Polen mit 3:1 (1:0) durch. Die Treffer erzielten Celina Degen (37.), Eileen (…) https://sport.orf.at/stories/3128817/
#_Sport #_FußballEM #_EM #_ÖFB #_Deutschland #_Euro #_Island #_Polen #_UEFA
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Echt. #CarolaSchouten in #zapp over #armoede: 'Je hoeft je er niet voor te schamen. Het kan iedereen overkomen'. Carola, het overkomt niemand, het wordt mensen aangedaan. Door #welbewust #politiek #beleid. Als je dat niet snapt (je bent intelligent genoeg) dan kan ik alleen maar zeggen: kijk kritisch naar je ideologie. Je politieke opvattingen. Die deugen niet.
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Thirty Years of Psychological Wisdom Research: What We Know About the Correlates of an Ancient Concept https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17456916221114096
"wisdom entails being flexible in one’s thinking, the tendency and willingness to take on different ideas and perspectives, and an orientation toward exploration, psychological growth, and personal fulfillment"
"age by itself does not automatically guarantee wisdom"
#OpenAccess #DevPsy #Psy via Rolf Degen -
Opening up an NPC creation series with a character I should have made ages ago – one with glasses. If you don’t know me, I’m basically finger-blind. Without glasses or contacts I am unable to count how many fingers you would be holding up if you are more than a couple feet away from me. And yet, I never have played a character or NPC with glasses. I actively avoided it.
After reading Deven Rue’s recent post about embracing characters with vision impairment or blindness I decided that needed to change.
Heading over to DM Heroes, I hit the random button until it turned up a character with glasses. Then, it was about creating a character with an interesting background who was not a quest giver. Because as Rue says, “Make us non-quest related. Just people in your world. Living. Existing.”
Meet Orne Willowrush
Created using DM Heroes one of my favorite NPC art toolsFirst up is a Simple Index Card Version of an NPC. These are designed so with just a few words you can know who an NPC is from a basic description of appearance, to some basic motivations. In Willowrush’s case he’s a former soldier who once fought for the realm, but now works as a cooper. In my deep belief that everyone in your D&D world should have a hobby he is a fisher. He is not skilled in fishing though. He just enjoys doing the calmness of fishing with his friends. He can get dreamy about his past, but also doesn’t like to talk about it. Orne recently lost his beaver – Tryn. He’s just newly bonded with an otter – Orla.
Orne’s best friend is a librarian named Incirion Vadu, a goblin. You can often find them at the river together, ignoring work. Incirion knows Mending, and will often have an extra pair of glasses for Orne.
Orne Willowrush
Dexterity, Strength +1Stout Halfling, Conscript Fighter (3)Constitution, Charisma -1Cooper | Woodworking Tools, Fisher’s ToolsPadded Armor, Common Clothes, Glasses, OtterWinestar, Lemplet PlaceStaff, adzeWants to relive past gloriesModest lifestyle, and will buy you a glass of wineDaydreamer, Reticent, Recently lost his beaver companionPhoto by David Frazer on Pexels.comIf you want him built as a fully playable character I’ve added him to my DnDBeyond Community Characters campaign. Orne on Beyond is a Scout rather than a Conscript, so as to not introduce new rules.
Winestar, Lemplet Place
Built using the Medieval Fantasy City GeneratorWinestar is a neighborhood built along the rolling ridge of the Lemplet River. It’s a mix of farmsteads with a few crafts to support their needs. Most of the good produced enter the walled part of the city via barge or float. The Spring, across the river, is up on a cliffside, and is generally more wealthy than Winestar, especially those parts that are next to the castle walls. Within Winestar you will, of course, find many small vintners, with most of the homes at least having a passing hobby of wine creation. In general, Winestar produces luxury goods whereas Northroad is sustenance farming.
Lemplet Place is a city of about 4,300 people.
- Blackbridge – known for the eponymous bridge, the downtown of Lemplet Place
- Tidewater Place – the slums, used to flood with high tide
- Castle Lemplet – originally built as a exterior castle, the city has grown around it
- Trollrock – the northern block surrounds a huge rock hill with a cave inside, no trolls though
- Northroad – sustenance farming
- Winestar – grapevines, orchards
- The Spring – for the wealthy that moved out of the city
How will you use Orne Willowrush in your campaign?
https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2021/04/08/orne-willowrush-an-npc-for-your-adventuring-needs/
#character #CharacterBuilds #characterDescription #DnD #DnD5 #DnD5e #DnDBeyond #DungeonsAndDragons #NPC
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Using word-maps for quick reference during your games
You don’t have to be a map maker to make adequate maps for gaming. A map can be as simple as showing the relative relationship between distance and location of the important elements. Even putting a few words on a page can be a map.
Take the word map of the Six Kingdoms. It shows the relative locations and rough distances between the various kingdoms, their major cities and the other lands that interact in the World of the Everflow.
Word maps can also represent a homestead, village or neighborhoods of a city.
Any player can take a quick glance and know what each location is and what they connect to within the compound. More thorough descriptions in a blog post and in the character’s notes, but these quick notecards reminds us of Spinebloom Farms at the table.
Fort Ooshar is a bridge-town that turned into a fortress when Sheljar fell to the Necromancer. This quick sketch lays out the neighborhoods of the bridge-town, the gates, the fields and the nearby hills.
Yes, a better mapmaker would be better. My favorites are Deven Rue and Dyson Logos. I support both via Patreon and use their works in my games.
But sometimes I want something that is unique to my world. That leaves me with my lack of art. I then build a word map.
Keys to making a quick word map.
- Decide on the central space
- Build outward using relative distance to represent a unit of time
- Include evocative names, especially when in tight focus
- If building a dungeon, point crawl or town having connective tissue — this can be a road, river, or other path
- Leave yourself space to build details and add discoveries
Doing this as a player
Old school D&D involved at least one player making highly detailed maps. But a word map may be all that’s necessary to prevent your party from getting lost. Using a room-and-halls word map by the player helps represent how the characters think.
In essence you are channeling the concept of ‘turn left after the big red barn, go over Herringbone Bridge, take the third path’ into a simplistic drawing.
These are quick, simple and can be done on a 3-by-5 card or as a sketch in something as simple as Paint, Slides, Canva or even in a Spreadsheet (the Six Kingdoms started as a spreadsheet).
One of the special powers of the word map is that they’re quick. You don’t need to search for anything. It’s a sketch that can be done in a few seconds.
Whether as a player or a DM this tool can help you understand your fantasy world better than without a map at all.
#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #fantasy #FortOoshar #gaming #maps #PlayingDD #RolePlaying #RPG #SpinebloomFarms #TTRPG #wordMaps #WorldOfTheEverflow #writing -
Hörspiel des Jahres 2025 – Verleihung in Leipzig
Am Freitag, den 20. März 2026, um 19:00 Uhr wird im Richard-Wagner-Saal der Kongresshalle am Zoo Leipzig (Pfaffendorfer Straße 31, 04105 Leipzig) das von der Deutschen Akademie der Darstellenden Künste (DADK) vergebene „Hörspiel des Jahres“ 2025 – „Auch wenn es dunkel ist. Berichte vom 7. Oktober“ von Sharon Otoo und Dirk Laucke – vorgestellt und geehrt.
Das Hörspiel wird in voller Länge präsentiert. Anschließend sprechen die beiden Preisträger Sharon Otoo und Dirk Laucke gemeinsam mit der Dramaturgin Juliane Schmidt (RBB) sowie den Juroren Laila Stieler und Sebastian Krumbiegel. Die Moderation übernimmt Ingrid Wenzel. Der Eintritt ist frei.
Auch wenn es dunkel ist. Berichte vom 7. Oktober
von Sharon On und Dirk Laucke
Regie: Sharon On und Dirk Laucke
Regieassistenz: Dirk Leyers
Mit Berichten von: Sivan, Hamid Abu Arar, Asaf, Ofek und Raz Liwny, Nivi Ochana,
Adi Miara, Amit Soussana, Eli Sharabi, Yowel Sharvit, eines Sprechers von ZAKA,
Sethuli Nissanka, Ricarda Louk, Natalia Casarotti-Kalfa
Sprecher*innen: Sarah Maria Sander, Ariel Nil Levy, Raschid Daniel Sidgi, Tomer Lev Tov.
Kolja Podkowik, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Richard Barenberg, Jaron Löwenberg, Natascha
Manthe, Natalie Piu Mukherjee, Lilou Smart, Elisabeth Degen, Şiir Eloğlu, Philipp Jacob, Levi
Wessel
Ton: Peter Avar und Katrin Witt
Dramaturgie & Redaktion: Juliane Schmidt
Bei Recherche und Übersetzung halfen: Jaron Löwenberg, Tomer Lev-Tov, Shani Arnheim, Hila
Bitterman
Produktion: Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb) 2025
Länge: 62 Min.Die Begründung der Jury
Es sind die Details. Die kleinen Momente.
Ich muss pinkeln, sagt Sivan zu ihrem Bruder am Telefon. Geh nicht pinkeln, antwortet er. Ganze viermal schafft Fatma das Glaubensbekenntnis, erinnert sich Hamid. Beim fünften Mal stirbt seine Frau neben ihm auf dem Beifahrersitz. Yowel zieht Mor ihren Pullover an, damit er nicht friert. Obwohl er längst kalt ist, längst tot. Obwohl sie weiß, dass er tot ist, will sie nicht, dass er friert. Das Bewusstsein ist nicht dafür geschaffen, die Realität des Todes anzunehmen. Nicht so. Nach und nach vielleicht. Irgendwann. Vielleicht auch nie. Für Yowel wird Mor immer lebendig sein. Ihr Liebster, gerade einen Monat lang ihr Mann. Erschossen.Ein Hörspiel kann Tote nicht wieder lebendig werden lassen. Oder doch? In der Fantasie? Sharon On und Dirk Laucke lassen Zeugen des 7. Oktober 2023 berichten über das, was ihnen widerfahren ist. An diesem Tag überfällt die Terrormiliz Hamas vom Gazastreifen aus Israel. Ihr Ziel sind israelische Wohnorte, Städte und Kibbuzim, und das Supernova-Musikfestival. Die Zeugen berichten sachlich, fast karg. Sie schildern Abläufe, Vorgänge. Sivan bleibt im Schutzraum und pinkelt auf einen Kissenbezug, damit sich der Urin nicht überall verteilt. Hamid gräbt eine Grube für Baby Elias, damit es nicht von den Kugeln der Hamas getroffen wird, die über sie hinwegzischen. Yowel drückt ein letztes Mal Mors Hand.
Klug ausgewählt und zusammengestellt sind diese Berichte. In fünf Kapiteln erleben wir diesen Tag aus verschiedenen Perspektiven. Da sind die Bewohner der Kibbuzim, die Besucher des Supernova-Festivals, der arabischer Landwirt, eine Pflegekraft aus Sri Lanka, Polizeibeamte und ein Sprecher der ZAKA, einer ehrenamtlichen Organisation zur Identifizierung von Katastrophenopfern. Die Wucht ihrer Erzählungen steigert sich ins nahezu Unerträgliche.
I‘ve come back from hell. I returned to tell my story, sagt Eli, dessen Familie ermordet wird und der
über ein Jahr und vier Monate in Geiselhaft ist. Mir erschienen diese 55 Tage Geiselhaft wie eine Ewigkeit, sagt Amit, die gekidnappt und von den Entführern vergewaltigt wird. Wir enden bei Natalia, der Köchin, die ihren Sohn verliert: Ich hatte die Wahl, ob ich den Rest meines Lebens im Bett bleibe oder losgehe. Sie legt auf. Als DJane. In Gedenken an ihren Sohn spielt sie am Schluss des Hörspiels sein Lied „Like a Wildflower“. Das ist kein Trost und auch keine billige Hoffnung, aber ein kraftvoller Moment, mit dem uns die Autoren aus diesem Stück entlassen.Was muss es für eine Arbeit gewesen sein, die Interviews mit den Betroffenen zu führen, sich deren Berichte anzuhören? Auszuwählen? Sich den schlimmen Situationen immer wieder auszusetzen, sich nicht darin zu verlieren und dennoch einen mitfühlenden Blick zu behalten? Sie geben den Opfern, den Misshandelten, Vergewaltigten, Traumatisierten, Verletzten, Toten ihre Stimme und ihre Würde zurück.
Vielen Dank dafür. Vielen Dank auch Juliane Schmidt, der Redakteurin. Für ihre dramaturgische Leistung. Und für ihren Mut.
Sobald von israelischen Opfern die Rede ist, wird heute in deutschen Medien geradezu reflexhaft auch an die Toten in Gaza erinnert. Als müsse man abwiegeln, einen Ausgleich suchen. Das Hörspiel tut dies nicht. Und das ist wohltuend. Denn so einfach ist es nicht. Was am 7. Oktober 2023 passiert ist, ist nicht einfach nur Krieg. Es gibt Wörter, aber sie bleiben unscharf. Grausam, barbarisch, unmenschlich … Bleiben Wörter. Angesichts dessen. Straße und jubeln. Ein Mann spuckt auf sie. Warum tun Menschen das?
Da lässt es sich leicht aus unserer Entfernung von Zweistaatenlösung reden. Sie werden nicht gehen und wir auch nicht, sagt Natalia. Aber wie soll ein Zusammenleben funktionieren? Verzeihen und vergeben? Wie genau soll das denn möglich sein? Nichts beschönigen, Fragen aufwerfen, nicht sofort eine Antwort parat haben. Genau hinschauen. Nicht anklagen und interpretieren. Einfach zeigen. Das ist so viel. Das ist das Hörspiel des Jahres.
Laila Stieler, Sebastian Krumbiegel
Zum Inhalt: Am frühen Morgen des 7. Oktober 2023 überfiel die Terrormiliz Hamas den Süden Israels. Ihr Ziel waren jüdische Wohnorte, Städte und Kibbuzim und das Supernova-Musikfestival. Die Hamas beschoss das Gebiet mit Raketen, feuerte auf die Gäste des Festivals, drang in Wohnhäuser und Militärstützpunkte ein, folterte, vergewaltigte und tötete – ihr Ziel waren Juden und Jüdinnen und Israelis gleich welcher Zugehörigkeit. 1200 Menschen starben, 240 Menschen wurden als Geiseln in den Gazastreifen verschleppt. In fünf Kapiteln erzählen Menschen von dem, was sie an diesem Tag erlebt haben, was sie mitansehen mussten, was ihnen selbst geschah oder ihren Angehörigen. Sie erzählen davon, wie sie nach diesen Erfahrungen von Gewalt, Verlust und Trauer weiterleben.
(Kritik hier)Das Hörspiel des Monats / des Jahres ist eine Initiative, die gemeinsam mit ARD, DLR, ORF und SRF dieser Kunstform ein eigenes Forum gibt und reihum in Kooperation mit den Sendern seit 1977 durchgeführt wird. Eine von der Deutschen Akademie der Darstellenden Künste eingesetzte Jury wählt Monat für Monat aus den Ursendungen die nach ihrer Meinung beste Produktion. Aus 12 „Hörspielen des Monats“ wählt dieselbe Jury das „Hörspiel des Jahres“. Das Preisträgerstück war Hörspiel des Monats November 2025.
#DirkLaucke #HörspielDesJahres #HörspielDesMonats #RBB #ShaonOn -
Hörspiel des Jahres 2025 – Verleihung in Leipzig
Am Freitag, den 20. März 2026, um 19:00 Uhr wird im Richard-Wagner-Saal der Kongresshalle am Zoo Leipzig (Pfaffendorfer Straße 31, 04105 Leipzig) das von der Deutschen Akademie der Darstellenden Künste (DADK) vergebene „Hörspiel des Jahres“ 2025 – „Auch wenn es dunkel ist. Berichte vom 7. Oktober“ von Sharon Otoo und Dirk Laucke – vorgestellt und geehrt.
Das Hörspiel wird in voller Länge präsentiert. Anschließend sprechen die beiden Preisträger Sharon Otoo und Dirk Laucke gemeinsam mit der Dramaturgin Juliane Schmidt (RBB) sowie den Juroren Laila Stieler und Sebastian Krumbiegel. Die Moderation übernimmt Ingrid Wenzel. Der Eintritt ist frei.
Auch wenn es dunkel ist. Berichte vom 7. Oktober
von Sharon On und Dirk Laucke
Regie: Sharon On und Dirk Laucke
Regieassistenz: Dirk Leyers
Mit Berichten von: Sivan, Hamid Abu Arar, Asaf, Ofek und Raz Liwny, Nivi Ochana,
Adi Miara, Amit Soussana, Eli Sharabi, Yowel Sharvit, eines Sprechers von ZAKA,
Sethuli Nissanka, Ricarda Louk, Natalia Casarotti-Kalfa
Sprecher*innen: Sarah Maria Sander, Ariel Nil Levy, Raschid Daniel Sidgi, Tomer Lev Tov.
Kolja Podkowik, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Richard Barenberg, Jaron Löwenberg, Natascha
Manthe, Natalie Piu Mukherjee, Lilou Smart, Elisabeth Degen, Şiir Eloğlu, Philipp Jacob, Levi
Wessel
Ton: Peter Avar und Katrin Witt
Dramaturgie & Redaktion: Juliane Schmidt
Bei Recherche und Übersetzung halfen: Jaron Löwenberg, Tomer Lev-Tov, Shani Arnheim, Hila
Bitterman
Produktion: Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb) 2025
Länge: 62 Min.Die Begründung der Jury
Es sind die Details. Die kleinen Momente.
Ich muss pinkeln, sagt Sivan zu ihrem Bruder am Telefon. Geh nicht pinkeln, antwortet er. Ganze viermal schafft Fatma das Glaubensbekenntnis, erinnert sich Hamid. Beim fünften Mal stirbt seine Frau neben ihm auf dem Beifahrersitz. Yowel zieht Mor ihren Pullover an, damit er nicht friert. Obwohl er längst kalt ist, längst tot. Obwohl sie weiß, dass er tot ist, will sie nicht, dass er friert. Das Bewusstsein ist nicht dafür geschaffen, die Realität des Todes anzunehmen. Nicht so. Nach und nach vielleicht. Irgendwann. Vielleicht auch nie. Für Yowel wird Mor immer lebendig sein. Ihr Liebster, gerade einen Monat lang ihr Mann. Erschossen.Ein Hörspiel kann Tote nicht wieder lebendig werden lassen. Oder doch? In der Fantasie? Sharon On und Dirk Laucke lassen Zeugen des 7. Oktober 2023 berichten über das, was ihnen widerfahren ist. An diesem Tag überfällt die Terrormiliz Hamas vom Gazastreifen aus Israel. Ihr Ziel sind israelische Wohnorte, Städte und Kibbuzim, und das Supernova-Musikfestival. Die Zeugen berichten sachlich, fast karg. Sie schildern Abläufe, Vorgänge. Sivan bleibt im Schutzraum und pinkelt auf einen Kissenbezug, damit sich der Urin nicht überall verteilt. Hamid gräbt eine Grube für Baby Elias, damit es nicht von den Kugeln der Hamas getroffen wird, die über sie hinwegzischen. Yowel drückt ein letztes Mal Mors Hand.
Klug ausgewählt und zusammengestellt sind diese Berichte. In fünf Kapiteln erleben wir diesen Tag aus verschiedenen Perspektiven. Da sind die Bewohner der Kibbuzim, die Besucher des Supernova-Festivals, der arabischer Landwirt, eine Pflegekraft aus Sri Lanka, Polizeibeamte und ein Sprecher der ZAKA, einer ehrenamtlichen Organisation zur Identifizierung von Katastrophenopfern. Die Wucht ihrer Erzählungen steigert sich ins nahezu Unerträgliche.
I‘ve come back from hell. I returned to tell my story, sagt Eli, dessen Familie ermordet wird und der
über ein Jahr und vier Monate in Geiselhaft ist. Mir erschienen diese 55 Tage Geiselhaft wie eine Ewigkeit, sagt Amit, die gekidnappt und von den Entführern vergewaltigt wird. Wir enden bei Natalia, der Köchin, die ihren Sohn verliert: Ich hatte die Wahl, ob ich den Rest meines Lebens im Bett bleibe oder losgehe. Sie legt auf. Als DJane. In Gedenken an ihren Sohn spielt sie am Schluss des Hörspiels sein Lied „Like a Wildflower“. Das ist kein Trost und auch keine billige Hoffnung, aber ein kraftvoller Moment, mit dem uns die Autoren aus diesem Stück entlassen.Was muss es für eine Arbeit gewesen sein, die Interviews mit den Betroffenen zu führen, sich deren Berichte anzuhören? Auszuwählen? Sich den schlimmen Situationen immer wieder auszusetzen, sich nicht darin zu verlieren und dennoch einen mitfühlenden Blick zu behalten? Sie geben den Opfern, den Misshandelten, Vergewaltigten, Traumatisierten, Verletzten, Toten ihre Stimme und ihre Würde zurück.
Vielen Dank dafür. Vielen Dank auch Juliane Schmidt, der Redakteurin. Für ihre dramaturgische Leistung. Und für ihren Mut.
Sobald von israelischen Opfern die Rede ist, wird heute in deutschen Medien geradezu reflexhaft auch an die Toten in Gaza erinnert. Als müsse man abwiegeln, einen Ausgleich suchen. Das Hörspiel tut dies nicht. Und das ist wohltuend. Denn so einfach ist es nicht. Was am 7. Oktober 2023 passiert ist, ist nicht einfach nur Krieg. Es gibt Wörter, aber sie bleiben unscharf. Grausam, barbarisch, unmenschlich … Bleiben Wörter. Angesichts dessen. Straße und jubeln. Ein Mann spuckt auf sie. Warum tun Menschen das?
Da lässt es sich leicht aus unserer Entfernung von Zweistaatenlösung reden. Sie werden nicht gehen und wir auch nicht, sagt Natalia. Aber wie soll ein Zusammenleben funktionieren? Verzeihen und vergeben? Wie genau soll das denn möglich sein? Nichts beschönigen, Fragen aufwerfen, nicht sofort eine Antwort parat haben. Genau hinschauen. Nicht anklagen und interpretieren. Einfach zeigen. Das ist so viel. Das ist das Hörspiel des Jahres.
Laila Stieler, Sebastian Krumbiegel
Zum Inhalt: Am frühen Morgen des 7. Oktober 2023 überfiel die Terrormiliz Hamas den Süden Israels. Ihr Ziel waren jüdische Wohnorte, Städte und Kibbuzim und das Supernova-Musikfestival. Die Hamas beschoss das Gebiet mit Raketen, feuerte auf die Gäste des Festivals, drang in Wohnhäuser und Militärstützpunkte ein, folterte, vergewaltigte und tötete – ihr Ziel waren Juden und Jüdinnen und Israelis gleich welcher Zugehörigkeit. 1200 Menschen starben, 240 Menschen wurden als Geiseln in den Gazastreifen verschleppt. In fünf Kapiteln erzählen Menschen von dem, was sie an diesem Tag erlebt haben, was sie mitansehen mussten, was ihnen selbst geschah oder ihren Angehörigen. Sie erzählen davon, wie sie nach diesen Erfahrungen von Gewalt, Verlust und Trauer weiterleben.
(Kritik hier)Das Hörspiel des Monats / des Jahres ist eine Initiative, die gemeinsam mit ARD, DLR, ORF und SRF dieser Kunstform ein eigenes Forum gibt und reihum in Kooperation mit den Sendern seit 1977 durchgeführt wird. Eine von der Deutschen Akademie der Darstellenden Künste eingesetzte Jury wählt Monat für Monat aus den Ursendungen die nach ihrer Meinung beste Produktion. Aus 12 „Hörspielen des Monats“ wählt dieselbe Jury das „Hörspiel des Jahres“. Das Preisträgerstück war Hörspiel des Monats November 2025.
#DirkLaucke #HörspielDesJahres #HörspielDesMonats #RBB #ShaonOn -
Gift guide for nerds like me
Maybe you know some people like me — nerds, happily embracing their hobbies that were once considered abnormal but are now mainstream enough they sell out arenas.
Most who read this blog are here for the dungeons and the dragons. Communal storytelling with dice and friends is what unites us. You probably already have the core elements of the games you love, but your family still wants to get you things over the holidays that stretch from late November to early January. Pass them this guide.
- Almost all links are direct to the supplier or to Bookshop.org. When you can, shop locally and/or directly.
Our hobbies and communities grow with support.
For the experienced roleplaying game fanatic
First off, expand their Appendix N. The Tolkien-esque stories that founded fantasy RPGs are well known. There’s so much more available now.
The Hunger and The Dusk volumes 1 and 2 (Bookshop links) tell tales of romance between orcs and humans fighting aliens in a world that’s dying. G Willow Wilson wrote other stories as well, many which fit a fantasy motif, but none apply directly to D&D like The Hunger and The Dusk.
Lev Grossman’s works like The Magicians and Bright Sword take familiar tales (Narnia & King Arthur) and twist them up. Also on my TBR pile are Children of Blood & Bone, The Fifth Season and Brigands & Breadknives.
Expand their 5e games outside of Wizards of the Coast. Your RPG nerd friends already buy themselves the official D&D products they want. But you can help them incorporate wider tales.
- Labyrinth Worldbook from Kobold Press as part of Tales of the Valiant a 5e system.
- Game Master’s Guide from Kobold Press is one of the best collections of advice and subsystems (so I’ve heard). I don’t have either of these yet.
- Worlds To-Go: The Elysians and Crafting Heritages, Cultures and More: Worldbuilding from Homebrew & Hacking both feature sections by me! These focus on A5e as the base rules, but work well in your D&D game, of course.
- Making Enemies from Keith Amman is his latest guide to better monsters for fantasy games. As usual Keith focuses on expanding stat blocks into tactics, but in Making Enemies he gets into how to build those stat blocks for several systems.
Try other games! Talk to your friend and see what they already have or where their interests lie. There are a lot of other popular RPGs out right now. While Daggerheart and Draw Steel are supported by some of my mutuals on Mastodon. The one that intrigues me the most is the forthcoming Plotweaver system. It is the engine behind the Cosmere RPG and supports political stories beyond what D&D does.
Twilight:2000‘s update is a fun read of the classic post-nuclear exchange apocalypse game that helped me consider the Army. Song of the River Prince is a more cozy fantasy. With light mechanics and tales quite different from the high fantasy of D&D.
You can always get your geek new dice (Artisan Dice are my dream) or support a mapmaker (Deven Rue or Dyson Logos are two I enjoy) in their name. Or order a custom map. Someday the World of the Everflow, Telse and The Ferments will get custom maps. My favorite dice box maker is Elderwood Academy. A gift card to Hero Forge works too.
There are other options, but those are some of my favorites.
For the newbie
While the Tales of the Valiant Starter Set is below $15, get it. Or, stick to the WotC products because your nibblings or friends’ kids don’t want the off brand stuff. I grew up with the Odyssey video game system and Gobots. I get it — sometimes finances mean support how you can.
But when the price isn’t significantly different get;
- Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club if they are into Stranger things.
- Heroes of the Borderlands Starter Set for those that aren’t. Both of those are designed to welcome new people to D&D.
The battle boards from Beedle & Grim’s look great for a not-quite newbie or someone who consistently plays the same class. I’m currently running an Artificer, and Rogues are my second most played class.
And for those who want to be a newbie DM, Return to the Lazy Dungeon Master is the best collection of simple advice to focus on the players, their characters and empowering their story options.
Those shopping in the Renton area should support Shane’s Cards & Games, Wizard Keep Games and Mox Boarding House.
For flavor dorks
My preferred geeky coffee is Found Familiar. My current favorite is Fae Magic. My preferred geeky tea is Friday Afternoon Tea. It helps that they’re local-ish too. A friend recently tried Many Worlds Tavern. I’m looking forward to a flavor report.
For coffees in the South Sound area, I recommend Campfire, Bluebeard, and Boon Boona. I swing by Macadons and Common Ground for sweets.
Beer people should head to The Brewmaster’s Taproom. My go to wine shop is All Things Wine and when in Walla Walla I support Tempus (we’re in the club), Sleight of Hand (also in SoDo), Balboa and Echolands. If you ever tour the dub-dub send me a message. It’s a fun town for those that love flavor experiences.
For finer liquors I enjoyed a taste of The Dalmore recently and would love more. It was a rare scotch that my non-peaty-preferring wife would enjoy with its softer, luxurious mouth feel.
Straightaway cocktails are the best packaged cocktails for people who want smaller servings on hand.
For soccer fans in the Puget Sound
If your soccer friend doesn’t read Sounder at Heart they must. It’s another place I write. There’s a special on annual support right now at 20% off.
Reign tickets are cheaper than Sounders tickets and you’ll be supporting the best women in the world. For the Sounders fans that don’t have tickets get the two-pack. Avoid getting Men’s World Cup tickets at the current pricing unless your budget is quite a bit bigger than mine.
Not from the local area? 1996 Designs makes excellent large brick people of your favorite American soccer teams.
For being prepared without being a Prepper
Working around emergency and crisis managers is reminding me of a few ways to be prepared.
Have a plan when the emergency happens. Know your neighbors and the organizations that will help when disasters happen, because they will happen. A communications system that involves receiving alerts from multiple sources is vital — that should include a radio, as well as your local alerts system and free services on social media. Have backup power, even light solar for portable devices is helpful. You need at least three days of food and water, but if your budget of money and space allows a week or two that’s better.
SHARE AND HELP OTHERS as part of your plan.
- Portable Emergency Weather Alert Crank Radio – ER50
- 65W Power Bank w/ 15W Solar Panel by Grid Doctor
- Costco emergency food kits
- Support active NGOs with a history of success that empower locals — Team Rubicon and World Central Kitchen for example.
I also keep an Amazon list for my family that lives well away. People can also decide to support the website.
None of the above products or services pay me except Sounder at Heart, the website I founded and ran from 2008 to 2019 and rejoined in 2022, Factal (and those linked resources are free to the general public) and the two supplements mentioned in line paid me a one-time commission.
#coffee #dnd #flavor #giftGuide #giftIdeas #reign #renton #sounders #wine
-
Gift guide for nerds like me
Maybe you know some people like me — nerds, happily embracing their hobbies that were once considered abnormal but are now mainstream enough they sell out arenas.
Most who read this blog are here for the dungeons and the dragons. Communal storytelling with dice and friends is what unites us. You probably already have the core elements of the games you love, but your family still wants to get you things over the holidays that stretch from late November to early January. Pass them this guide.
- Almost all links are direct to the supplier or to Bookshop.org. When you can, shop locally and/or directly.
Our hobbies and communities grow with support.
For the experienced roleplaying game fanatic
First off, expand their Appendix N. The Tolkien-esque stories that founded fantasy RPGs are well known. There’s so much more available now.
The Hunger and The Dusk volumes 1 and 2 (Bookshop links) tell tales of romance between orcs and humans fighting aliens in a world that’s dying. G Willow Wilson wrote other stories as well, many which fit a fantasy motif, but none apply directly to D&D like The Hunger and The Dusk.
Lev Grossman’s works like The Magicians and Bright Sword take familiar tales (Narnia & King Arthur) and twist them up. Also on my TBR pile are Children of Blood & Bone, The Fifth Season and Brigands & Breadknives.
Expand their 5e games outside of Wizards of the Coast. Your RPG nerd friends already buy themselves the official D&D products they want. But you can help them incorporate wider tales.
- Labyrinth Worldbook from Kobold Press as part of Tales of the Valiant a 5e system.
- Game Master’s Guide from Kobold Press is one of the best collections of advice and subsystems (so I’ve heard). I don’t have either of these yet.
- Worlds To-Go: The Elysians and Crafting Heritages, Cultures and More: Worldbuilding from Homebrew & Hacking both feature sections by me! These focus on A5e as the base rules, but work well in your D&D game, of course.
- Making Enemies from Keith Amman is his latest guide to better monsters for fantasy games. As usual Keith focuses on expanding stat blocks into tactics, but in Making Enemies he gets into how to build those stat blocks for several systems.
Try other games! Talk to your friend and see what they already have or where their interests lie. There are a lot of other popular RPGs out right now. While Daggerheart and Draw Steel are supported by some of my mutuals on Mastodon. The one that intrigues me the most is the forthcoming Plotweaver system. It is the engine behind the Cosmere RPG and supports political stories beyond what D&D does.
Twilight:2000‘s update is a fun read of the classic post-nuclear exchange apocalypse game that helped me consider the Army. Song of the River Prince is a more cozy fantasy. With light mechanics and tales quite different from the high fantasy of D&D.
You can always get your geek new dice (Artisan Dice are my dream) or support a mapmaker (Deven Rue or Dyson Logos are two I enjoy) in their name. Or order a custom map. Someday the World of the Everflow, Telse and The Ferments will get custom maps. My favorite dice box maker is Elderwood Academy. A gift card to Hero Forge works too.
There are other options, but those are some of my favorites.
For the newbie
While the Tales of the Valiant Starter Set is below $15, get it. Or, stick to the WotC products because your nibblings or friends’ kids don’t want the off brand stuff. I grew up with the Odyssey video game system and Gobots. I get it — sometimes finances mean support how you can.
But when the price isn’t significantly different get;
- Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club if they are into Stranger things.
- Heroes of the Borderlands Starter Set for those that aren’t. Both of those are designed to welcome new people to D&D.
The battle boards from Beedle & Grim’s look great for a not-quite newbie or someone who consistently plays the same class. I’m currently running an Artificer, and Rogues are my second most played class.
And for those who want to be a newbie DM, Return to the Lazy Dungeon Master is the best collection of simple advice to focus on the players, their characters and empowering their story options.
Those shopping in the Renton area should support Shane’s Cards & Games, Wizard Keep Games and Mox Boarding House.
For flavor dorks
My preferred geeky coffee is Found Familiar. My current favorite is Fae Magic. My preferred geeky tea is Friday Afternoon Tea. It helps that they’re local-ish too. A friend recently tried Many Worlds Tavern. I’m looking forward to a flavor report.
For coffees in the South Sound area, I recommend Campfire, Bluebeard, and Boon Boona. I swing by Macadons and Common Ground for sweets.
Beer people should head to The Brewmaster’s Taproom. My go to wine shop is All Things Wine and when in Walla Walla I support Tempus (we’re in the club), Sleight of Hand (also in SoDo), Balboa and Echolands. If you ever tour the dub-dub send me a message. It’s a fun town for those that love flavor experiences.
For finer liquors I enjoyed a taste of The Dalmore recently and would love more. It was a rare scotch that my non-peaty-preferring wife would enjoy with its softer, luxurious mouth feel.
Straightaway cocktails are the best packaged cocktails for people who want smaller servings on hand.
For soccer fans in the Puget Sound
If your soccer friend doesn’t read Sounder at Heart they must. It’s another place I write. There’s a special on annual support right now at 20% off.
Reign tickets are cheaper than Sounders tickets and you’ll be supporting the best women in the world. For the Sounders fans that don’t have tickets get the two-pack. Avoid getting Men’s World Cup tickets at the current pricing unless your budget is quite a bit bigger than mine.
Not from the local area? 1996 Designs makes excellent large brick people of your favorite American soccer teams.
For being prepared without being a Prepper
Working around emergency and crisis managers is reminding me of a few ways to be prepared.
Have a plan when the emergency happens. Know your neighbors and the organizations that will help when disasters happen, because they will happen. A communications system that involves receiving alerts from multiple sources is vital — that should include a radio, as well as your local alerts system and free services on social media. Have backup power, even light solar for portable devices is helpful. You need at least three days of food and water, but if your budget of money and space allows a week or two that’s better.
SHARE AND HELP OTHERS as part of your plan.
- Portable Emergency Weather Alert Crank Radio – ER50
- 65W Power Bank w/ 15W Solar Panel by Grid Doctor
- Costco emergency food kits
- Support active NGOs with a history of success that empower locals — Team Rubicon and World Central Kitchen for example.
I also keep an Amazon list for my family that lives well away. People can also decide to support the website.
None of the above products or services pay me except Sounder at Heart, the website I founded and ran from 2008 to 2019 and rejoined in 2022, Factal (and those linked resources are free to the general public) and the two supplements mentioned in line paid me a one-time commission.
#coffee #dnd #flavor #giftGuide #giftIdeas #reign #renton #sounders #wine
-
Mumbai, Jan 20 (SocialNews.XYZ) Singer Shreya Ghoshal attended Coldplay's concert in Mumbai with her husband, Shiladitya Mukhopadhyaya and her over 70-year-old father Bishwajit Ghoshal. She also revealed that she got emotional during one of the songs played by the band.
Taking to Instagram, she posted an array of pictures and clips from the gig. In a couple of videos, she was seen singing along to Coldplay's tracks such as “A Sky Full of Stars”, “Fix You” and “Paradise”.
In the last clip, the “Zaalima” singer was seen walking towards the concert venue and her husband recorded the video.
In the clip, she is heard saying: "It's a lot of work to come to a concert. It's better to just be on the stage."
For the caption, she wrote: “Just pure love for @coldplay . Swipe till the last video to know everything! My second concert of the amazing Chris Martin and his band! And you turned your magic on for Mumbai and how!! It was a spectacular experience.”
She added: “Couldn’t stop my tears for Fix You! My 70+ year old dad @bishwajitghoshal loved the concert so much!!! Thank you for letting me and @shiladitya relive all our memories once again which have ruled our lives growing up. #coldplay #coldplayconcert #coldplayindia.”
For the unversed, Coldplay will perform in Mumbai on 18, 19, and 21 January this year. Meanwhile, the second leg of the Indian tour will take place in Ahmedabad on 25 and 26 January.
The band includes frontman Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, drummer and percussionist Will Champion, and manager Phil Harvey.
Earlier actress Mrunal Thakur joined the long list of attendees who grooved to the tunes of the rock band.
On the professional front, Mrunal Thakur will next be a part of the highly-anticipated sequel "Son of Sardaar 2". She will be sharing the screen with Ajay Devgn in her next. The second installment in the franchise is going to be released on 25th July 2025.
The sequel will be reaching the audience 13 years after the first film "Son of Sardaar", co-starring Ajay Devgn, and Sonakshi Sinha. Touted to be an action comedy, the movie has been directed by Vijay Kumar Arora.
Source: IANS
Facebook CommentsAbout Gopi
Gopi Adusumilli is a Programmer. He is the editor of SocialNews.XYZ and President of AGK Fire Inc.
He enjoys designing websites, developing mobile applications and publishing news articles on current events from various authenticated news sources.
When it comes to writing he likes to write about current world politics and Indian Movies. His future plans include developing SocialNews.XYZ into a News website that has no bias or judgment towards any.
He can be reached at [email protected]
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Turning Saffron into Slop – Treylya Safran yn Skomblans
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
Note: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to be synonymous with Generative AI (GenAI) and with Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, in common parlance. Unless explicitly stated, I use the terms interchangeably.
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow*, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
LOW-RESOURCES AND LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY
Simply adding a language to an AI model leads to a spike in poor-quality articles, drowning out quality writing by humans. AI has “industrialized the acts of destruction—which affect vulnerable languages most, since AI translations are typically far less reliable for them.”1 Wikipedia editors from varied languages evidence that machine translation tools have made it easier than ever before to create shoddy articles in minoritised languages, causing massive damage in minutes. AI leads to non-speakers producing much longer, truthier rubbish, Sámi computational linguistics expert Trond Trosterud notes: “the problem [is] that they are armed with Google Translate. Earlier they were armed only with dictionaries.”1
Kernewek, like all but 60 of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages, is designated “low-resource”, meaning it lacks sufficient data to train a machine.2 It is tempting, therefore, to assume that the solution is to provide more data. However, training an LLM requires petabytes of text, audio and video—manually categorised and in a machine-readable format—a vast trove that Kernewek simply does not have.3 Professor Will Lamb, Chair of Gaelic Ethnology and Linguistics at Edinburgh University, speaks of “millions of work hours devoted to just one aspect” of a working AI.4
Even if ChatGPT is trained on another language than English, the time and labour required may make it largely unviable. Current assessments of the performance of ChatGPT for different languages have shown that it performs worse in all tasks.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Furthermore, the amount of data and work is not the only barrier; at issue is the nature of the language itself. Microsoft has found that languages such as Breton—and thus Kernewek—cause a high rate of errors distinct from the size of their dataset, due to grammatical features, such as mutation, not present in well-sourced languages. As such, they remain poor without significant additional work.6 Essentially, simply adding more Kernewek may not help. Thus, engaging with AI is, for Kernewek, to tie ourselves to slop.
Noten: Skians Kreftus (SK) re dheuth ha bos kesstyr gans SK Dinythus (SKDin) ha gans Patronyow Yeth Bras (PYB), kepar ha ChatGPT, yn lavar kemmyn. Marnas bos menegys yn kler, my a us an termys yn keschanjyadow.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow*, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
ASNODHOW ISL HA TIPOLOGIETH YETHEL
Keworra yeth yn sempel orth patron SK a led orth spik yn erthyglow drog aga kwalita, ow peudhi skrif a gwalita gans tus. SK re wrug “diwysyansegi an aktys diswrians—hag a nas yethow goliadow an moyha, drefen bos treylyansow SK lieskweyth le lel yn tipek ragdha.”1 Golegydhyon Wikipedia a yethow divers a re dustuni re wrug medhelweyth-treylya y wul bos esya dell veu bythkweth kyns gwruthyl erthyglow pilyek yn yethow lyharivhes, ow kawsya damach kowrek yn mynysennow. SK a led orth digowsoryon owth askorra atal lieskweyth hirra ha gwirekka, konnyk yethonieth reknansek Sámi Trond Trosterud a not: “an kudyn [yw] aga bos ervys gans Google Translate. A-varra nyns ens ervys marnas gans gerlyvrow.”1
Kernewek, kepar hag oll marnas 60 a ogas lowr 7,000 yeth a’n bys, yw klassys avel “isel y asnodhow”, ow styrya nag eus dhodho kedhlow lowr dhe drenya jynn.2 Rakhenna, dynyek yw desevos bos an assoylyans profya moy a gedhlow. Byttegyns, res yw petavaytys a dekst, son ha gwydhyow—klassys dre leuv hag yn furvas redyadow gans jynn— dhe drenya PYB, tresorva efan nag eus dhe Gernewek yn sempel.3 Y kews Professor Will Lamb, Kaderyer Ethnologieth ha Yethonieth Wodhalek orth Pennskol Karedin, a “vilvilyow a ourys ober sakrys orth unn wedh hepken” a SK owth oberi.4
Hogen mars yw ChatGPT trenys war yeth a-der Sowsnek, an termyn hag ober yw res a styr y vos martesen anhewul dre vras. Arvreusyansow a-lemmyn a berformyans a ChatGPT rag yethow dyffrans re dhiskwedhas y perform gweth yn oberennow oll.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Pella, nyns yw an myns a gedhlow hag ober an unsel lett; a vern yw natur an yeth y honan. Microsoft re drovyas y kaws yethow kepar ha Bretonek—hag ytho Kernewek—kevradh ughel a wallow diblans a vraster aga sett kedhlow, drefen nasyow gramasek, kepar ha treylyansow, nag usi kevys yn yethow ughel aga asnodhow. Yndella, i a bes orth bos drog heb meur a ober keworransel.6 Yn essensek, possybyl yw ny wra keworra moy a Gernewek yn sempel gweres. Yndelma, oberi gans SK yw, rag Kernewek, omgelmi orth skomblans.
CORNISH UNDER CAPITALISM
But surely we can improve things over time? It will take a lot of help from AI companies, but it will be worth it. Sadly, Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, has found that once a tech company has established basic capabilities for a language, they pat themselves on the back and move on.7
Big tech companies are just that: companies. They exist to make a profit. Unfortunately, a market dominated by big languages gives them no incentive to invest in improvements for small ones.
All of the speech technology, smart homes and voice interaction systems used today are the products of commercial research. To put it bluntly, they exist to either make money from your data, to sell you more goods and services, or to influence your thinking. None of this AI exists for the public good. […] Unless there is a strong enough economic argument, don’t expect big companies to rush into producing Welsh, Gaelic or Cornish speech systems.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, University of Kent
Should they decide that a Kernewek AI is a viable profit-making enterprise, our situation may even be worse than abandonment. As Dr. Fintan Mallory remarks, the dominant means of profit for privately-funded AI enterprises is to convert their tools into surveillance devices.9 As Kernewek is currently one of the UK’s only languages which is not currently easily surveillable, this poses a huge risk to Kernewek activism and the fight for self-determination in a state that seeks to criminalise dissent.
While we’re on the subject of Kernewek and its position under capitalism, let’s consider the human cost. I lost my 13-year career in language to AI as soon as English output became viable enough to excuse not paying a human. In the unlikely instance that we achieve an AI that can produce quality Kernewek, why would anyone bother paying speakers? The idea of AI sucking all the life out of my heritage language when we are struggling to survive as-is is appalling.
Simply put, profit is antithetical to people. While AI is the new favourite toy of profit, it will be antithetical to people. And a language is its people.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Combinations of characters on a screen mean nothing without agency and intention.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
While language is not unique to humans, it is one of the chief parts of being human. It cannot be reduced to mere data, but is a highly social process.11 We all know how synthetic customer support via robot sounds or how AI fails to pick up nuance. As Dr. Mallory comments, “Language [is] something more like the soul of a community. You can’t store this in a machine. You can’t solve a human problem like linguicide with a view of language that removes the human component.”12
AI cannot comprehend Kernewek or any other language. It is a stochastic parrot: predicting what word is likely to follow the previous one.13 It cannot understand us. It cannot intend anything. If it tells you it feels delighted to help you, it is lying. I want our community to grow, but one hundred ‘Cornish-speaking’ computers do not add to it. One human does—bringing ideas and hopes and fears and foibles—and I do not think the Kernewek ‘speaking’ computers will add even one human to our community.
Worse, if it does, there is evidence from Microsoft to suggest that the use of GenAI on language tasks, even once a week, impairs cognitive ability to learn, leading to decreased engagement with the topic, overreliance on the technology and hobbled skills in independent problem-solving.14 By using AI tools to ‘teach’ a learner Kernewek, we may in fact be impairing their ability to learn the language at all without this crutch. We will make regurgitators in place of speakers.
Perlin also emphasises the human element, saying that when we hold community central to our languages, as we do, the stochastic parrot can feel like a violation.15 At the moment, I can tell when someone is using AI ‘Kernewek’ to me. The idea that one day I will not know when an outsider—someone I would welcome if they took up a book or a class—is puppeting my ancestors’ jaws and speaking through them is ghoulish. It has the instant sting of colonialism, of appropriation when one could appreciate, of parroting when one could join our chorus.
Hawai’ian scholar Ha‘alilio Solomon agrees: “It is painful, because it reminds us of all the times that our culture and language has been appropriated. We have been fighting tooth and nail in an uphill climb for language revitalization.[…] People are going to think that this is an accurate representation of the Hawaiian language.”16
TRUST AND COMMUNITY FEELING
The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface.17
NBC NEWS
The explosion of insults for AI itself (clanker, tinskin, toaster), its output (slop, dross, brainrot) and its users (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—as well as others more clearly based on real-world slurs than I am comfortable to include—tells a tale of the general attitude of distrust and disgust towards the technology and its use on anglophone and other majority language internet.18 While the attitude among tech bros and corporates remains bombastic, for the general public AI is “becoming interchangeable with things that sort of suck.”19
Further, it’s not just majority languages with this negative view of AI as taint. A quick sampling of social media comments and likes regarding AI and Scottish Gaelic by Professor Lamb showed a split of 54% negative, 33% positive and 13% neutral. (Lamb, 2024) The sentiment of the top-rated negative comment was that AI is harmful and the second-highest that AI should be kept away from heritage languages.
What are we telling our descendants? That our language and culture isn’t worth the personal effort? That’s how I might read it, if I were them.20
Kernewek survey respondent
Kernewek paints an even starker picture, especially among younger and more technologically-savvy learners and speakers. A survey on Cornish Discord and Whatsapp found that 65% felt AI would be bad (11.5%) or very bad (53%) for the language. When asked what the community response should be to AI, 46% said we should prevent it and 27% avoid it, with only over-60s thinking that we should work with it.20
31% of respondents said using AI in Kernewek would cause them to feel estranged from the language, while 54% said that they would feel strongly estranged and 23% a little estranged from any organisation, resource or teacher using AI.
The response from those who gave their knowledge of AI as either “expert” or “good” was particularly damning. Everyone in this group responded that AI would be harmful for the language, that the use of AI would estrange them from a source strongly and that we should prevent the use of AI for Kernewek.
IDENTITY, AUTHENTICITY AND DIVERSITY
Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, writing for UNESCO, was not speaking specifically about minoritised languages when he asked this, but the question resonates even more strongly for us: “How much loss of identity is one willing to sacrifice for efficiency?”21
Identity is of paramount importance to Kernewek speakers. Ute Wimmer’s study Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish identified the language’s “function as a symbol of national identity” as the second highest motive (66%**) among speakers and learners, beaten only by Cornish culture (80%).22 This would seem cause for celebration, but when AI is added to the mix, it becomes a risk. Vincent Koc of Hyperlink states that AI can “inadvertently contribute to the dilution of language and cultural identity.”23
He also identifies that automating language learning or generation “may diminish the richness and authenticity that comes from human speakers who carry cultural histories in their speech.” Indeed, four studies by the University of Southern California have shown that using LLMs to assist writing “is linked to notable declines in linguistic diversity and may interfere with the societal and psychological insights language provides.”24
This is in English, one of the richest and largest languages in the world. Imagine the possible impact on a smaller language like Kernewek—with less documentation, less data, a tiny speakerbase and basically no money—and on its many language varieties and orthographies. Particular to the Kernewek context, Late speakers are already struggling to be seen as valid under the dominance of Middle. Do we think AI knows the difference? Thoughtlessly, it will either mix everything together, confusing everyone, or it will use Middle to overwhelm Late.
Generative AI-driven content creation, by favoring standardized languages, risks the disappearance of regional dialects.25
Barcelona supercomputing Center ….
Not only are varieties at risk; AI threatens to drown Kernewek as a whole. Perlin agrees that the linguistic flattening that occurred over centuries in English could manifest overnight in a minoritised language with AI at the helm—as it would be, being able to effortlessly outstrip human Kernewek. He raises concerns of LLMs freezing a language in place and even defining what it means to know the language, especially with low numbers of native speakers.26
Garbage translations multiply online like fake news. Native speakers of the languages in question are bypassed as being “too hard to find,” compared with automated methods of vetting that are completely disconnected from real-life communication. While larger and more powerful language communities may be able to hold the bots to account and even make strategic use of them, it is all too easy to imagine [a minority language] being overwhelmed.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Uncontrolled and in the hands of tech giants, synthetic Kernewek will outnumber and outmanoeuvre human Kernewek.
DATA SOVEREIGNTY AND COLONIALISM
Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of [an indigenous nation] to govern the collection, ownership, and application of its own data.27
Native Nations Institute
There are, however, indigenous cultures that are working on a more equitable relationship with AI. Tech without the giant requires resources, but it allows communities to retain data sovereignty over the cultural asset that is their language. Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, has created a list of principles for the creation, use and sharing of Māori data, prioritising the need to enhance control for current and future Māori.
They raise a key point that should be considered carefully by stewards of linguistic and cultural knowledge: “Data from us, and about us and our resources, are valuable assets. Once control of it is lost, it is difficult to regain.”28 Decisions must not be taken lightly or hastily; we can always say “yes” if we have previously said “no” to a particular dataset’s use, but can never say “no” if we have already said “yes”.
The AI field, like any other space, is occupied by people who are set in their ways and unintentionally have a very colonial perspective.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
This is vital in the context of the potential control of Kernewek data by powerful external corporations. Capitalist extractivism has long been a bane on societies in the imperial periphery and our Cornish society is no different, having faced centuries of its wealth and natural resources being stripped and sold by and large for the profit of those outside Cornwall.
The book Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy notes that current data relations can be seen as “a continuation of the processes and underlying belief systems of extraction, exploitation, accumulation and dispossession that have been visited on Indigenous populations through historical colonialism.”30 This extractive understanding of information is, they note, not disrupted but rather replicated by paying people for their data.
Ultimately, our language must not lie in outside hands governed by proprietary principles that do not allow us sufficient sovereignty over one of our most valuable natural resources: our language. We must have open data principles, not bow to corporate control. We must steer and steward the use of our data, rather than expose it to use against our interests and for the pockets of big tech.
Rather than approaching language preservation as a technical problem, I think indigenous communities need to be politically empowered, whether that be funding from governments or legal protections to use their languages.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Durham University
We must prioritise language-as-community and seek open, equitable and ethical use of our language, heritage and other cultural assets. We must avoid thinking of AI as the magic that it promises and invest in basic research, driven by our own community. Corporations will not save us and, indeed, may do us great harm.
NO CORNISH ON A DEAD PLANET
Global capitalism and governments […] are addicted to ‘free’ market ideology over the wellbeing of communities, people and the planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
Honestly, most takedowns of AI would have hit this point already. It’s one of the main arguments against Generative AI, but in case you’re not familiar with it, we will briefly look over the main points.
Water used in cooling AI data centers must be drinkable water. AI guzzles this water. The University of California has reported that “global water demand from AI could reach 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027. That exceeds 50 percent of the UK’s annual water use in 2023.”33 All this while the Global Commission on the Economics of Water has declared “a rapidly accelerating water crisis” to which Kernewek should not be contributing.34
We have become utterly dependent on private technologies manufactured and controlled by a handful of opaque companies [who] appear mostly indifferent to the social consequences of their activities and only invest minimally if obliged by government regulations to enhance their public image.35
Iker Erdocia, Dublin City University
AI requires vast quantities of hardware at the cost of mining rare earth minerals. These are difficult to extract and purify and come with heavy environmental and social costs. They are often extracted from mines in countries with poorer environmental and labour protections. Reset states that “communities living near these mines, often indigenous or minority groups, regularly face land degradation, water contamination and human rights abuses. Much of this can be directly linked to the AI hardware.”36 When the hardware inevitably cooks and is useless, it is then thrown out as e-waste into poor communities. The potential advancement of Kernewek must not come at the expense of our sister indigenous and minority communities.
Training an also AI requires huge amounts of energy, soon perhaps as much as a small country37 and has an enormous carbon footprint.38 What is clear is that—through water usage, extractive industry, energy consumption and carbon footprint—AI is bad news for the struggling environment of the planet we live on and there is no Cornish on a dead planet.
MAKING AI AN EX-PARROT
Rather than making minority languages more accessible, AI is now creating an ever expanding minefield for students and speakers of those languages to navigate.39
mit technology review
We have heard of the vast improbability of getting AI to be able to mimic Kernewek in light of the costs in data, work, time and technology. We have considered the likely choice of cold negligence or surveillance product and the importance of data sovereignty. We have read about the effects on the livelihoods of Cornish speakers, as well as the the catastrophic costs to the environment and indigenous peoples.
We have learned that linguistic flattening by AI impoverishes its subjects and how AI may decide for us how our language must operate. We have seen the inescapability of language as human and the risks of creating ‘learners’ who cannot learn and ‘speakers’ who cannot speak. We have seen the dangers to reputation and trust for any organisation who would shovel what is seen as ‘slop’.
We have heard why giving in to the juggernaut of AI would be a mistake for Kernewek and how our community does not support our laying down of the shield. Instead, we must fight. We must make Kernewek a space as free of slop as possible, we must educate botlickers into ethical and effective language learning and use, we must avoid second-hand thinking.
We must make our language a no AI zone, a network of reliable humans and their human creations, built on authenticity, community, effort and trust: a Kernewek for the people, of the people and by the people.
KERNEWEK YN-DANN GEVALAV
Mes yn sur y hyllyn ni gwellhe taklow dres termyn? Y fydh res meur a weres a gompanis SK, mes y talvia dhyn. Yn trist, Gabriel Nicholas, kesvroder hwithrans orth an Center for Democracy and Technology, re drovyas pan wrug kompani tek fondya gallosow selyek rag unn yeth, i a omgeslowenha yn ughel hag ena movya yn-rag.7
Kompanis tek bras yw yndella poran: kompanis. Ymons i ena rag gwaynya budh. Y’n gwettha prys, ny wra marghas rewlys gans yethow bras ri kentryn dhe gevarghewi yn gwellhe rag an re byghan.
Oll a’n deknegieth kows, chiow konnyk ha systemow ynterweythres lev usys hedhyw yw an askorrasow a hwithrans kenwerthel. Dhe vos sogh, yth yns i po rag dendyl arghans a’th kedhlow, po gwertha gwara ha gonisyow, po delenwel dha dybyansow. Nyns yw tra vyth a’n SK ma rag an les kemmyn. […] Mar nag eus argyans erbysek krev lowr, na wra gwaytya kompanis bras dhe fyski dhe askorra systemow kows Kembrek, Godhalek po Kernewek.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, pennskol kint
Ha mars ervirons bos SK Kernewek aventur a yll gwaynya budh, possybyl yw bos agan studh gweth ages dell via gans forsakyans. Dell lever Dr. Fintan Mallor, an fordh vrassa a waynya budh rag kompanis SK arghesys yn privedh yw kedreylya aga thoulys yn devisyow aspians.9 Drefen bos Kernewek onan a’n yethow boghes y’n RU nag yw aspiadow yn es y’n eur ma, hemm yw peryl kowrek rag gweythresieth Kernewek ha’gan strif a-barth omdhetermyans yn stat a vynn galweythegi dissent.
Ha ni ow tochya Kernewek ha’y savla yn-dann gevalav, gwren ni mires orth an kost denel. My a gellis ow soodh 13 bloodh yn yethow dhe SK kettooth ha dell veu eskorrans Sowsnek hewul lowr dhe askusya sevel orth tyli den. Y’n kas diwirhaval may kevyn SK hag a yll askorra Kernewek da, prag y hwrussa nebonan omankombra ow pe kowser? An tybyans a SK ow tenna oll an bewnans a’m taves ertach ha ni ow kwynnel dhe dreusvewa dell on yw skruthus.
Yn sempel, budh yw gorthenebel orth tus. Hedre vo SK an degen nowydh flamm a vudh, y fydh gorthenebel orth tus. Ha yeth yw hy thus.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Nyns eus styr dhe gesunyansow a lytherennow war skrin heb dewis ha heb mynnas.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Kyn nag yw yeth dibarow dhe dhensys, onan a’n rannow chif a vos denel yw. Ny yll bos lehes dhe gedhlow hepken, mes yth yw argerdh sosyel dres eghen.11 Ni oll a wor py mar synthesek y sen skoodhyans prener der SK po fatel yll SK fyllel orth konvedhes arliwyow. Dell gampol Dr. Mallory, “Yeth [yw] neppyth moy kepar hag enev a gemeneth. Ny yllir gwitha hemma yn jynn. Ny yllir assoylya kudyn denel kepar ha yethladhans gans gwel a yeth hag a remov an gerann denel.”12
Ny yll SK konvedhes Kernewek po taves vyth aral. Papynjay chonsus yw: y targan py ger yw gwirhaval wosa an huni kyns.13 Ny yll agan konvedhes. Ny yll mynnes tra vyth. Mar kwra derivas orthis y vos pes da dha weres, gow yw. My a vynn agan kemeneth dhe devi, mes ny wra kans jynn-amontya a yll ‘kewsel Kernewek’ keworra orti. Y hwra unn den—ow tri tybyansow ha govenegow hag ownow ha gwanderyow—ha ny dybav y hwra an jynnys-amontya kernwegorek keworra unn den hogen orth agan kemeneth.
Gwettha, mar kwra, yma dustuni a-dhyworth Microsoft hag a brof y hwra an devnydh a SKDin war oberennow yeth, unweyth an seythen hogen, aperya gallos godhvosel a dhyski, ow ledya orth omworrans lehes gans an desten, gorfydhyans y’n deknegieth ha sleyneth sprallys a assoylya kudynnow yn anserghek.14 Der usya toulys SK dhe ‘dhyski’ Kernewek, possybyl yw ni dhe shyndya gallos dyski an yeth vytholl heb an kroch ma. Ni a wra gul mimyoryon yn le Kernewegoryon.
Ynwedh Perlin a boslev an elven dhenel, ow leverel pan wren ni synsi kemeneth avel kres agan yethow, dell wren, an papynjay chonsus a yll bos klewys kepar ha defolyans.15 Y’n eur ma, my a aswon pan eus nebonan owth usya ‘Kernewek’ SK dhymm. An tybyans ny wrav vy unn jydh godhvos pan eus estren—nebonan a wrussen vy dynerghi mar pe lyver po klass ganses—ow popettya diwawen ow hengerens ha kewsel dresta yw bedhrosus. Yma dhe’n dra an wan dhistowgh a drevesigeth, a berghenegyans pan yllir gwerthveurhe, a bapynjaya pan yllir junya agan kesgan.
Unver yw skolheyk Hawai’i henwys Noah Ha‘alilio Solomon: “Ankensi yw, drefen ni dhe vos kofhes a’n prysyow oll re beu agan gonisogeth ha yeth perghenegys. Ni re beu owth omladh dre dhens hag ewines yn batel gales a-barth dasvewheans yeth.[…] Y hwra pobel krysi bos hemma representyans ewn a’n yeth a Hawai’i.”16
TREST HAG OMGLEWANS AN GEMENETH
Hir re beu an kil-lash gorthjynn ow kovryjyon mes lemmyn yma va ow terri an arenep dell hevel.17
NBC NEWS
Tardh an arvedhennow rag SK y honan (clanker, tinskin, toaster), y askorras (slop, dross, brainrot) ha’y usyoryon (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—keffrys hag erel selys moy yn kler war geryow kas gwir dell ov attes gans aga heworra—a re hwedhel a stons ollgemmyn a wogrys ha divlases war-tu hag an deknegieth ha’y devnydh war an kesrosweyth Sowsnek ha yethow bras erel.18 Kynth yw an stons yn-mysk gwesyon dek ha korforeth hwath gwresek, rag an boblek gemmyn y hwra SK “dos ha bos keschanjyadow gans taklow tamm kawgh.”19
Pella, nyns yw marnas yethow moyhariv gans an gwel negedhek ma a SK avel podrek. Sampel uskis a gampollow media sosyel ha meusi ow tochya SK ha Godhalek Alban gans Professor Lamb a dhiskwedhas fals a 54% negedhek, 33% posedhek ha 13% heptu. (Lamb, 2024) Sentiment an kampol negedhek an moyha talvesys o bos SK dregynnus hag an nessa y talvia dhyn lettya SK rag kestav gans tavosow ertach.
Pyth eson ni ow leverel orth agan diyskynysi? Ny dal agan yeth ha gonisogeth an strivyans personel? Hemm yw martesen fatel wrussen vy y redya, a pen vy i.20
Gorthebydh sondyans Kernewek
Kernewek a baynt aven moy serth, yn arbennik gans dyskoryon ha kowsoryon yowynka ha moy skentel gans tek. Sondyans war Discord ha Whatsapp Kernewek a drovyas bos 65% a grysis y fia SK drog (11.5%) po pur dhrog (53%) rag an yeth. Pan veu govynnys pyth a dal bos gorthyp an gemeneth orth SK, 46% a leveris y kodh y hedhi ha 27% y woheles, gans an dus moy ha 60 bloodh hepken ow tybi y kodh oberi ganso.20
31% a worthebydhyon an sondyans a leveris y hwrussa an devnydh a SK yn Kernewek aga fellhe a’n yeth, hag ynwedh 54% a leveris y fiens i pellhes yn krev ha 23% pellhes tamm a by kowethas, asnodh po dyskador pynag ow tevnydhya SK.
An gorthyp a’n re a leveris bos aga godhvos a SK po “konnyk” po “da” o dampnus yn arbennik. Pubonan y’n bagas ma a worthebis y fia SK dregynnus rag Kernewek, y hwrussa an devnydh a SK gans pennfenten aga fellhe a’n bennfenten na yn krev hag y kodh dhyn hedhi an devnydh a SK rag Kernewek.
HONANIETH, LELDER HA DIVERSETH
Nyns esa Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, ow skrifa a-barth UNESCO, ow kewsel yn komparek a-dro dhe yethow lyharivhes pan wrug ev y wovyn, mes an govyn a dhassen yn kreffa ragon: “Pygemmys koll a honanieth a vynnir sakrifia rag effeythuster?”21
Honanieth yw a’n moyha bri rag Kernewegoryon. Studhyans Ute Wimmer Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish a henow “gweythres [an yeth] avel arwodh a honanieth kenedhlek” avel an nessa ughella skila (66%**) yn-mysk kowsoryon ha dyskoryon, fethys gans gonisogeth Kernow (80%) hepken.22 Yth havalsa hemma bos acheson solempnyans, mes pan vo SK keworrys, y teu ha bos peryl. Vincent Koc a Hyperlink a lever y hyll SK “kevri dre wall orth an gwannheans a yeth ha honanieth wonisogethel”.23
Ev a aswon ynwedh y hallsa awtomategi dyski po dinythi yeth “lehe an rychedh ha lelder hag a dheu a gowsoryon dhenel neb a dheg istoriow gonisogethel y’ga hows”. Yn hwir, peswar studhyans gwrys gans Pennskol Kaliforni Soth re dhiskwedhas bos devnydhya PYB dhe weres gans skrifa “kelmys orth dyfygyansow nosedhek yn diverseth yethel hag y hyll mellya gans an konvedhes brysoniethel ha kowethasel yw proviys gans yeth.”24
Ha hemm yw yn Sowsnek, onan a’n yethow an ryccha ha brassa y’n bys. Dismyk an effeyth war yeth byghanna kepar ha Kernewek—gans le a dhogvennans, le a gedhlow, sel kowsoryon munys hag ogas hag arghans mann—ha war y lies orgraf hag eghen yeth. Yn arbennik yn gettesten Kernewek, seulabrys yma kowsoryon Diwedhes ow strivya dhe vos gwelys avel vas gans gwartheyvans Kres. A dybyn y hwor SK an dyffrans? Heb preder, y hwra po kemyska puptra warbarth, ow sowdheni pubonan, po devnydhya Kres dhe fetha Diwedhes.
An gwruthyl a dhalgh herdhys gans SK Dinythus, dre favera yethow savonegys, a argyl an vansyans a rannyethow ranndiryel.25
Kresen woramontyorieth Barcelona
Nyns yw eghennow hepken yn peryl; SK a wodros beudhi Kernewek yn tien. Akordys yw Perlin y hallsa an platheans yethel a hwarva dres kansbledhynnyow yn Sowsnek hwarvos dres nos yn yeth lyharivhes gans SK orth an fronnow—dell via, ow pos gallosek a bassya Kernewek denel heb assay. Ev a venek prederow yn kever PYB ow rewi yeth yn hy le ha hogen ow settya pyth yw an styr a wodhvos an yeth, yn arbennik gans niverow munys a gowsoryon deythyek.26
Treylyansow leun a atal a liesha warlinen kepar ha nowodhow fug. Kowsoryon deythyek a’n yethow ma yw passyes avel bos “re gales dhe drovya”, komparys orth fordhow awtomategys a surheans kwalita hag yw disjunys yn tien a geskomunyans y’n bys gwir. Kynth yw possybyl rag kemenethow yeth brassa ha moy gallosek synsi an bottys ma dhe akont ha’ga devnydhya yn stratejek hogen, re es yw dismygi [yeth lyhariv] ow pos reverthys.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Heb kontrol hag yn diwla an gewri deknegieth, Kernewek synthesek a wra gornivera ha gorthrabellhe Kernewek denel.
SOVRANEDH KEDHLOW HA KOLONEGIETH
Sovranedh kedhlow teythyek yw an gwir gans [kenedhel teythyek] a woverna an kuntel, perghenogeth ha gweytha a’y hedhlow hy honan.27
Native Nations Institute
Byttegyns, yma gonisogethow teythyek hag usi owth oberi war geskowethyans moy ewnhynsek gans SK. Tek heb an kowr a res asnodhow, mes y as kemenethow gwitha sovranedh kedhlow war an gerthen wonisogethel hag yw aga yeth. Te Mana Raraunga, Rosweyth Sovranedh Kedhlow Māori, re wrug rol a bennrewlys rag an gwruthyl, devnydhya ha kevrenna a gedhlow Māori, ow ragwirhe an edhom a grefhe maystri rag Māori a-lemmyn hag a dheu.
I a venek poynt posek hag a dalvia bos konsidrys gans rach gans stywards a skians yethel ha gonisogethel: “Kedhlow ahanan, a-dro dhyn ha’gan asnodhow, yw kerthennow a bris. Pan vo maystri kellys, kales yw y dhaskemeres.”28 Ny dal gul erviransow yn skav po yn uskis; y hyllyn pupprys leverel “ea” mar kwrussyn leverel “na” kyns orth us sett kedhlow, mes ny yllyn nevra leverel “na” mar kwrussyn leverel “ea” seulabrys.
An desten SK, kepar ha pub le aral, yw leun a dus hag yw settys y’ga maneryow ha gans gwel pur drevesigel yn tidowl.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
Hemm yw pur bosek y’n gettesten a’n kontrol possybyl a gedhlow Kernewek gans korforethow gallosek a-ves. Estenegieth jatelydhek re beu molleth war gowethasow y’n amal emperourethek ha nyns yw kowethas Kernewek dyffrans, wosa enebi kansvledhynnyow a’y rychys hag asnodhow naturek ow pos destryppys ha gwerthys dre vras gans budh tus yn-mes a Gernow.
An lyver henwys Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy a verk lemmyn y hyllir gweles perthynyansow kedhlow avel “pesyans a’n argerdhow ha systemow-krysi isworwedhek a estennans, drogusyans, kuntellyans ha diberghenogeth re beu gwrys war boblansow Teythyek dres trevesigeth istorek.”30 An konvedhes estennek ma a gedhlow yw, dell verkons, hevelebys a-der goderrys gans tyli pobel rag aga hedhlow.
Wostiwedh, res yw ma na vo agan yeth gorrys yn diwla a-ves routys gans pennrewlys perghenogel na as dhyn sovranedh lowr a onan a’gan asnodhow naturel an moyha posek: agan yeth. Res yw dhyn kavos pennrewlys kedhlow ygor, a-der plegya orth kontrol korforethel. Res yw dhyn lewya ha gidya an devnydh a’gan kedhlow, a-der y usya erbynn agan lesow ha rag pocketys tek bras.
A-der drehedhes an arwithans a davosow avel kudyn teknegiethel, my a dyb bos res dhe gemenethow teythyek bos reythhes yn politek, po der arghasans a wovernansow po dre dhifresyansow laghel dhe dhevnydhya aga yethow.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Pennskol Durham
Res yw dhyn ragwirhe yeth-avel-kemeneth ha hwilas devnydh ygor, ewnhynsek hag ethegel a’gan kerthennow yeth, ertach ha gonisogethel. Res yw dhyn goheles tybi a SK avel an hus mayth ambos ha kevarghewi yn hwithrans selyek, lewys gans agan kemeneth. Ny wra korforethow agan selwel ha, hogen, i a yll agan shyndya.
NYNS EUS KERNEWEK WAR BLANET MAROW
Governansow ha kevalav ollvysel […] yw omres dhe ideologieth marghas ‘rydh’ moy es dell yns omres dhe sewena kemenethow, pobel ha’n planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
An brassa rann a vreusyansow a SK a wrussa meneges hemma seulabrys. Onan a’n argyansow brassa yw erbynn SK Dinythus, mes rag own bos ankoth dhis, ni a wra mires orth an chif boyntys.
Res yw bos evadow an dowr goyeynhe pub kresen kedhlow SK. Y kollenk an dowr ma. Pennskol Kaliforni re dherivas “y hallsa demond dowr ollvysel SK hedhes 4.2-6.6 bilvil metrow kubek erbynn 2027. Henn yw moy es 50 kansran a us dowr bledhynnyek an RU yn 2023.”33 Y kettermyn, an Desedhek Ollvysel Erbysieth Dowr a dheklaryas “barras dowr ow tardha yn uskis” ma na dal Kernewek kevri dhodho.34
Ni re dheuth ha bos yn hwir omres dhe deknegiethow privedh gwrys ha kontrolys gans dornas a gompanis diskler [hag] a hevel bos mygyl dre vras orth an sewyansow sosyel a’ga gwriansow ha kevri yn ispoyntel marnas mars yns i konstrinys gans rewlys an wovernans dhe wellhe aga imach poblek.35
Iker Erdocia, Pennskol Sita Dulyn
Yma edhom dhe SK a vynsow kowrek a galesweyth orth kost palas monyow tanow. Kales yw estenna ha purhe an re ma hag yma kostow kerghynedhel ha sosyel poos. Estennys yns i yn fenowgh a hwelyow yn powyow gans difresyansow lakka rag lavur ha’n kerghynnedh. Reset a lever “yn fenowgh y hwra kemenethow yw trigys yn ogas dhe’n hwelyow, yn fenowgh bagasow lyhariv po teythyek, enebi gwethheans an tir, defolyans an dowr hag abusyans gwiryow denel. Meur a hemma a yll bos kelmys yn tidro orth an galesweyth SK.”36 Pan yw an galesweyth kegys yn sertan hag euver, ena tewlys yw avel e-wast yn kemenethow boghosek. Res yw nyns yw an avonsyans possybyl a Gernewek orth kost agan kemenethow hwor lyhariv ha teythyek.
Ynwedh res yw myns hujes a nerth rag trenya SK, yn skon martesen an keth myns ha pow byghan37 hag yma ol troos karbon kowrek.38 Kler yw—der usadow dowr, diwysyans estennek, konsumyans nerth hag ol troos karbon—bos SK yeyn nowodhow rag kerghynnedh ow strivya a’n planet mayth on ni trigys warnodho ha nyns eus Kernewek war blanet marow.
GUL DHE SK BOS EKS-PAPYNJAY
A-der gul dhe yethow lyhariv bos moy hedhadow, lemmyn yma SK ow kwruthyl tardhek pupprys owth omlesa rag studhyoryon ha kowsoryon a’n yethow ma dhe wolya.39
mit technology review
Ni re glewas a’n anwirhevelepter efan a wul dhe SK gallos mimya Kernewek yn golow an kostys yn kedhlow, ober, termyn ha teknegieth. Ni re gonsidras lycklod an dewisynter dispresyans yeyn po askorras-aspia ha’n posekter a sovranedh kedhlow. Ni re redyas a-dro dhe’n effeythyow war vewnansow Kernewegoryon, keffrys ha’n kostys katastrofek rag an kerghynnedh ha poblow teythyek.
Ni re dhyskas y hwra platheans yethel gans SK boghosekhe y destennow ha fatel yll SK martesen ervira a’gan parth fatel godh dh’agan yeth oberi. Ni re welas an anwoheladewder a yeth avel denel ha’n peryllyow a wul ‘dyskoryon’ na yll dyski ha ‘kowsoryon’ na yll kewsel. Ni re welas an peryllyow orth bri ha fydhyans rag kowethasow a wrussa palas an pyth hag yw gwelys avel ‘skomblans’.
Ni re glewas prag y fia omblegya orth an jagganat a SK error rag Kernewek ha dell na vynn agan kemeneth skoodhya gorra an skoos a-dhyworthyn. Yn y le, res yw dhyn batalyas. Res yw dhyn gul dhe Gernewek bos spas mar rydh a skomblans dell yll bos, res yw adhyski orth botlapyoryon yn dyski ha devnydh yeth yn ethegel hag yn effeythus, res yw goheles tybi wortaswerth.
Res yw dhyn gul dh’agan yeth bos parth heb SK, rosweyth a dus fydhyadow ha’ga gwriansow denel, drehevys war lelder, kemeneth, assay ha trest: Kernewek hag yw a-barth an bobel, a’n bobel ha gans an bobel.
Niwlen Ster
Notennow
* A prime example is the laughably-unaffordable restaurant RenMor, which The Headland Hotel thinks is a version of “Re’n Mor”, which they believe means “by the sea” as in “next to the sea” but actually means “by the sea!” like saying “by Zeus!”. This is both hilarious and enraging.
** A figure perhaps lower than it should be if you consider that many of the “emotional motives” which were not counted in this category, such as “I’m Cornish, what better reason do you need?”, do also refer to identity.
FENTENNOW
1. Judah, J. (2025) How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral, MIT Technology Review.
2. Ackermann, A. (2023) When AI doesn’t speak your language, Coda.
3. Crichton, D. (2024) AI and the Death of Human Languages, Lux.
4. Lamb, W. (2024). Could Artificial Intelligence save Scottish Gaelic?, The University of Edinburgh.
5. Dencik, L. (/2025) AI Inequalities: Minority Languages, TUC Cymru.
6. Joshi, P., Santy, S., Budhiraja, A., Bali, K., & Microsoft Research, India. (2020). The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World. Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
7. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
8. McLoughlin, I. (2018) How to teach AI to speak Welsh (and other minority languages), The Conversation.
9. Mallory, F. (2025) RISE UP Panel Discussion & Q&A: What AI Can and Cannot Do for Minoritised Languages, YouTube.
10. Perlin, R. (2024) AI Won’t Protect Endangered Languages, The Dial.
11. RISE UP (2025) #4 RISE UP Event Summary: What AI Can and Cannot Do For Minoritised Languages, RISE UP.
12. Mallory, F. (2024) European Day of Languages: Will lesser spoken languages soon only be kept alive by AI technology? Durham University.
13. Bender, E., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Mitchell, M. (2021) On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
14. Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025) The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers. Microsoft.
15. Perlin, R. (op cit)
16. Judah, J. (op cit)
17. Abbruzzese, J., & Wile, R. (2025) Is an AI backlash brewing? What ‘clanker’ says about growing frustrations with emerging tech, NBC News.
18. Webster, K. (2025) Why Using ChatGPT at Work Could Hurt Your Reputation, Inc. Magazine.
19. Herrman, J. (2024) Is That AI? Or Does It Just Suck?, Intelligencer.
20. Wilson, L. (2025) Skians Kreftus ha Kernewek/Artificial Intelligence and Cornish
21. Paschalidis, A. I. (2025) AI and the great linguistic flattening, UNESCO.
22. Wimmer, U. (2010). Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish. Cornish Language Board, p. 113
23. Koc, V. (2025) Generative AI and Large Language Models in Language Preservation: Opportunities and Challenges, ResearchGate.
24. Sourati, Z., Karimi-Malekabadi, F., & Ozcan, M. (2025) The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models, ResearchGate.
25. Melero, M. (2024) The Future of Language (and Cultural) Diversity in the Age of AI, CLARIN.
26. Perlin, R. (op cit)
27. Russo Carroll, S., Rodriguez Lonebear, D., & Martinez, A. (2017). Data Governance for Native Nation Rebuilding, Native Nations Institute.
28. Te Mana Raraunga. (2018). Frequently Asked Questions, Te Mana Raraunga.
29. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
30. Walter, M., Kukutai, T., Carroll, S. R., & Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (Eds.). (2020). Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Taylor & Francis, p. 24
31. Mallory, F. (op cit)
32. Cymdeithas yr Iaith (2022) Cymru Rydd, Cymru Werdd, Cymru Gymraeg., p. 27
33. O’Sullivan, L. (2025). How AI’s Failure on Linguistic Diversity is Deepening Global Inequality, RESET – Digital for Good.
34. Harvey, F. (2024). Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 years, The Guardian.
35. Erdocia, I., Migge, B., & Schneider, B. (2024). Language is not a data set—Why overcoming ideologies of dataism is more important than ever in the age of AI. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 28(5), p. 23
36. O’Sullivan, L. (op cit)
37. Erdenesanaa, D. (2023) A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country, The New York Times
38. Heikkilä, M. (2022) We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint, MIT Technology Review.
39. Judah, J. (op cit)#4 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Breus #Cornish #Cornwall #data #generativeAI #history #jynn #kedhlow #Kernewek #Kernow #Kernowek #LLM #machine #PYB #SK #SKDinythus #SkiansKreftus #Sordya
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Turning Saffron into Slop – Treylya Safran yn Skomblans
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
Note: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to be synonymous with Generative AI (GenAI) and with Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, in common parlance. Unless explicitly stated, I use the terms interchangeably.
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow*, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
LOW-RESOURCES AND LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY
Simply adding a language to an AI model leads to a spike in poor-quality articles, drowning out quality writing by humans. AI has “industrialized the acts of destruction—which affect vulnerable languages most, since AI translations are typically far less reliable for them.”1 Wikipedia editors from varied languages evidence that machine translation tools have made it easier than ever before to create shoddy articles in minoritised languages, causing massive damage in minutes. AI leads to non-speakers producing much longer, truthier rubbish, Sámi computational linguistics expert Trond Trosterud notes: “the problem [is] that they are armed with Google Translate. Earlier they were armed only with dictionaries.”1
Kernewek, like all but 60 of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages, is designated “low-resource”, meaning it lacks sufficient data to train a machine.2 It is tempting, therefore, to assume that the solution is to provide more data. However, training an LLM requires petabytes of text, audio and video—manually categorised and in a machine-readable format—a vast trove that Kernewek simply does not have.3 Professor Will Lamb, Chair of Gaelic Ethnology and Linguistics at Edinburgh University, speaks of “millions of work hours devoted to just one aspect” of a working AI.4
Even if ChatGPT is trained on another language than English, the time and labour required may make it largely unviable. Current assessments of the performance of ChatGPT for different languages have shown that it performs worse in all tasks.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Furthermore, the amount of data and work is not the only barrier; at issue is the nature of the language itself. Microsoft has found that languages such as Breton—and thus Kernewek—cause a high rate of errors distinct from the size of their dataset, due to grammatical features, such as mutation, not present in well-sourced languages. As such, they remain poor without significant additional work.6 Essentially, simply adding more Kernewek may not help. Thus, engaging with AI is, for Kernewek, to tie ourselves to slop.
Noten: Skians Kreftus (SK) re dheuth ha bos kesstyr gans SK Dinythus (SKDin) ha gans Patronyow Yeth Bras (PYB), kepar ha ChatGPT, yn lavar kemmyn. Marnas bos menegys yn kler, my a us an termys yn keschanjyadow.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow*, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
ASNODHOW ISL HA TIPOLOGIETH YETHEL
Keworra yeth yn sempel orth patron SK a led orth spik yn erthyglow drog aga kwalita, ow peudhi skrif a gwalita gans tus. SK re wrug “diwysyansegi an aktys diswrians—hag a nas yethow goliadow an moyha, drefen bos treylyansow SK lieskweyth le lel yn tipek ragdha.”1 Golegydhyon Wikipedia a yethow divers a re dustuni re wrug medhelweyth-treylya y wul bos esya dell veu bythkweth kyns gwruthyl erthyglow pilyek yn yethow lyharivhes, ow kawsya damach kowrek yn mynysennow. SK a led orth digowsoryon owth askorra atal lieskweyth hirra ha gwirekka, konnyk yethonieth reknansek Sámi Trond Trosterud a not: “an kudyn [yw] aga bos ervys gans Google Translate. A-varra nyns ens ervys marnas gans gerlyvrow.”1
Kernewek, kepar hag oll marnas 60 a ogas lowr 7,000 yeth a’n bys, yw klassys avel “isel y asnodhow”, ow styrya nag eus dhodho kedhlow lowr dhe drenya jynn.2 Rakhenna, dynyek yw desevos bos an assoylyans profya moy a gedhlow. Byttegyns, res yw petavaytys a dekst, son ha gwydhyow—klassys dre leuv hag yn furvas redyadow gans jynn— dhe drenya PYB, tresorva efan nag eus dhe Gernewek yn sempel.3 Y kews Professor Will Lamb, Kaderyer Ethnologieth ha Yethonieth Wodhalek orth Pennskol Karedin, a “vilvilyow a ourys ober sakrys orth unn wedh hepken” a SK owth oberi.4
Hogen mars yw ChatGPT trenys war yeth a-der Sowsnek, an termyn hag ober yw res a styr y vos martesen anhewul dre vras. Arvreusyansow a-lemmyn a berformyans a ChatGPT rag yethow dyffrans re dhiskwedhas y perform gweth yn oberennow oll.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Pella, nyns yw an myns a gedhlow hag ober an unsel lett; a vern yw natur an yeth y honan. Microsoft re drovyas y kaws yethow kepar ha Bretonek—hag ytho Kernewek—kevradh ughel a wallow diblans a vraster aga sett kedhlow, drefen nasyow gramasek, kepar ha treylyansow, nag usi kevys yn yethow ughel aga asnodhow. Yndella, i a bes orth bos drog heb meur a ober keworransel.6 Yn essensek, possybyl yw ny wra keworra moy a Gernewek yn sempel gweres. Yndelma, oberi gans SK yw, rag Kernewek, omgelmi orth skomblans.
CORNISH UNDER CAPITALISM
But surely we can improve things over time? It will take a lot of help from AI companies, but it will be worth it. Sadly, Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, has found that once a tech company has established basic capabilities for a language, they pat themselves on the back and move on.7
Big tech companies are just that: companies. They exist to make a profit. Unfortunately, a market dominated by big languages gives them no incentive to invest in improvements for small ones.
All of the speech technology, smart homes and voice interaction systems used today are the products of commercial research. To put it bluntly, they exist to either make money from your data, to sell you more goods and services, or to influence your thinking. None of this AI exists for the public good. […] Unless there is a strong enough economic argument, don’t expect big companies to rush into producing Welsh, Gaelic or Cornish speech systems.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, University of Kent
Should they decide that a Kernewek AI is a viable profit-making enterprise, our situation may even be worse than abandonment. As Dr. Fintan Mallory remarks, the dominant means of profit for privately-funded AI enterprises is to convert their tools into surveillance devices.9 As Kernewek is currently one of the UK’s only languages which is not currently easily surveillable, this poses a huge risk to Kernewek activism and the fight for self-determination in a state that seeks to criminalise dissent.
While we’re on the subject of Kernewek and its position under capitalism, let’s consider the human cost. I lost my 13-year career in language to AI as soon as English output became viable enough to excuse not paying a human. In the unlikely instance that we achieve an AI that can produce quality Kernewek, why would anyone bother paying speakers? The idea of AI sucking all the life out of my heritage language when we are struggling to survive as-is is appalling.
Simply put, profit is antithetical to people. While AI is the new favourite toy of profit, it will be antithetical to people. And a language is its people.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Combinations of characters on a screen mean nothing without agency and intention.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
While language is not unique to humans, it is one of the chief parts of being human. It cannot be reduced to mere data, but is a highly social process.11 We all know how synthetic customer support via robot sounds or how AI fails to pick up nuance. As Dr. Mallory comments, “Language [is] something more like the soul of a community. You can’t store this in a machine. You can’t solve a human problem like linguicide with a view of language that removes the human component.”12
AI cannot comprehend Kernewek or any other language. It is a stochastic parrot: predicting what word is likely to follow the previous one.13 It cannot understand us. It cannot intend anything. If it tells you it feels delighted to help you, it is lying. I want our community to grow, but one hundred ‘Cornish-speaking’ computers do not add to it. One human does—bringing ideas and hopes and fears and foibles—and I do not think the Kernewek ‘speaking’ computers will add even one human to our community.
Worse, if it does, there is evidence from Microsoft to suggest that the use of GenAI on language tasks, even once a week, impairs cognitive ability to learn, leading to decreased engagement with the topic, overreliance on the technology and hobbled skills in independent problem-solving.14 By using AI tools to ‘teach’ a learner Kernewek, we may in fact be impairing their ability to learn the language at all without this crutch. We will make regurgitators in place of speakers.
Perlin also emphasises the human element, saying that when we hold community central to our languages, as we do, the stochastic parrot can feel like a violation.15 At the moment, I can tell when someone is using AI ‘Kernewek’ to me. The idea that one day I will not know when an outsider—someone I would welcome if they took up a book or a class—is puppeting my ancestors’ jaws and speaking through them is ghoulish. It has the instant sting of colonialism, of appropriation when one could appreciate, of parroting when one could join our chorus.
Hawai’ian scholar Ha‘alilio Solomon agrees: “It is painful, because it reminds us of all the times that our culture and language has been appropriated. We have been fighting tooth and nail in an uphill climb for language revitalization.[…] People are going to think that this is an accurate representation of the Hawaiian language.”16
TRUST AND COMMUNITY FEELING
The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface.17
NBC NEWS
The explosion of insults for AI itself (clanker, tinskin, toaster), its output (slop, dross, brainrot) and its users (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—as well as others more clearly based on real-world slurs than I am comfortable to include—tells a tale of the general attitude of distrust and disgust towards the technology and its use on anglophone and other majority language internet.18 While the attitude among tech bros and corporates remains bombastic, for the general public AI is “becoming interchangeable with things that sort of suck.”19
Further, it’s not just majority languages with this negative view of AI as taint. A quick sampling of social media comments and likes regarding AI and Scottish Gaelic by Professor Lamb showed a split of 54% negative, 33% positive and 13% neutral. (Lamb, 2024) The sentiment of the top-rated negative comment was that AI is harmful and the second-highest that AI should be kept away from heritage languages.
What are we telling our descendants? That our language and culture isn’t worth the personal effort? That’s how I might read it, if I were them.20
Kernewek survey respondent
Kernewek paints an even starker picture, especially among younger and more technologically-savvy learners and speakers. A survey on Cornish Discord and Whatsapp found that 65% felt AI would be bad (11.5%) or very bad (53%) for the language. When asked what the community response should be to AI, 46% said we should prevent it and 27% avoid it, with only over-60s thinking that we should work with it.20
31% of respondents said using AI in Kernewek would cause them to feel estranged from the language, while 54% said that they would feel strongly estranged and 23% a little estranged from any organisation, resource or teacher using AI.
The response from those who gave their knowledge of AI as either “expert” or “good” was particularly damning. Everyone in this group responded that AI would be harmful for the language, that the use of AI would estrange them from a source strongly and that we should prevent the use of AI for Kernewek.
IDENTITY, AUTHENTICITY AND DIVERSITY
Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, writing for UNESCO, was not speaking specifically about minoritised languages when he asked this, but the question resonates even more strongly for us: “How much loss of identity is one willing to sacrifice for efficiency?”21
Identity is of paramount importance to Kernewek speakers. Ute Wimmer’s study Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish identified the language’s “function as a symbol of national identity” as the second highest motive (66%**) among speakers and learners, beaten only by Cornish culture (80%).22 This would seem cause for celebration, but when AI is added to the mix, it becomes a risk. Vincent Koc of Hyperlink states that AI can “inadvertently contribute to the dilution of language and cultural identity.”23
He also identifies that automating language learning or generation “may diminish the richness and authenticity that comes from human speakers who carry cultural histories in their speech.” Indeed, four studies by the University of Southern California have shown that using LLMs to assist writing “is linked to notable declines in linguistic diversity and may interfere with the societal and psychological insights language provides.”24
This is in English, one of the richest and largest languages in the world. Imagine the possible impact on a smaller language like Kernewek—with less documentation, less data, a tiny speakerbase and basically no money—and on its many language varieties and orthographies. Particular to the Kernewek context, Late speakers are already struggling to be seen as valid under the dominance of Middle. Do we think AI knows the difference? Thoughtlessly, it will either mix everything together, confusing everyone, or it will use Middle to overwhelm Late.
Generative AI-driven content creation, by favoring standardized languages, risks the disappearance of regional dialects.25
Barcelona supercomputing Center ….
Not only are varieties at risk; AI threatens to drown Kernewek as a whole. Perlin agrees that the linguistic flattening that occurred over centuries in English could manifest overnight in a minoritised language with AI at the helm—as it would be, being able to effortlessly outstrip human Kernewek. He raises concerns of LLMs freezing a language in place and even defining what it means to know the language, especially with low numbers of native speakers.26
Garbage translations multiply online like fake news. Native speakers of the languages in question are bypassed as being “too hard to find,” compared with automated methods of vetting that are completely disconnected from real-life communication. While larger and more powerful language communities may be able to hold the bots to account and even make strategic use of them, it is all too easy to imagine [a minority language] being overwhelmed.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Uncontrolled and in the hands of tech giants, synthetic Kernewek will outnumber and outmanoeuvre human Kernewek.
DATA SOVEREIGNTY AND COLONIALISM
Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of [an indigenous nation] to govern the collection, ownership, and application of its own data.27
Native Nations Institute
There are, however, indigenous cultures that are working on a more equitable relationship with AI. Tech without the giant requires resources, but it allows communities to retain data sovereignty over the cultural asset that is their language. Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, has created a list of principles for the creation, use and sharing of Māori data, prioritising the need to enhance control for current and future Māori.
They raise a key point that should be considered carefully by stewards of linguistic and cultural knowledge: “Data from us, and about us and our resources, are valuable assets. Once control of it is lost, it is difficult to regain.”28 Decisions must not be taken lightly or hastily; we can always say “yes” if we have previously said “no” to a particular dataset’s use, but can never say “no” if we have already said “yes”.
The AI field, like any other space, is occupied by people who are set in their ways and unintentionally have a very colonial perspective.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
This is vital in the context of the potential control of Kernewek data by powerful external corporations. Capitalist extractivism has long been a bane on societies in the imperial periphery and our Cornish society is no different, having faced centuries of its wealth and natural resources being stripped and sold by and large for the profit of those outside Cornwall.
The book Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy notes that current data relations can be seen as “a continuation of the processes and underlying belief systems of extraction, exploitation, accumulation and dispossession that have been visited on Indigenous populations through historical colonialism.”30 This extractive understanding of information is, they note, not disrupted but rather replicated by paying people for their data.
Ultimately, our language must not lie in outside hands governed by proprietary principles that do not allow us sufficient sovereignty over one of our most valuable natural resources: our language. We must have open data principles, not bow to corporate control. We must steer and steward the use of our data, rather than expose it to use against our interests and for the pockets of big tech.
Rather than approaching language preservation as a technical problem, I think indigenous communities need to be politically empowered, whether that be funding from governments or legal protections to use their languages.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Durham University
We must prioritise language-as-community and seek open, equitable and ethical use of our language, heritage and other cultural assets. We must avoid thinking of AI as the magic that it promises and invest in basic research, driven by our own community. Corporations will not save us and, indeed, may do us great harm.
NO CORNISH ON A DEAD PLANET
Global capitalism and governments […] are addicted to ‘free’ market ideology over the wellbeing of communities, people and the planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
Honestly, most takedowns of AI would have hit this point already. It’s one of the main arguments against Generative AI, but in case you’re not familiar with it, we will briefly look over the main points.
Water used in cooling AI data centers must be drinkable water. AI guzzles this water. The University of California has reported that “global water demand from AI could reach 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027. That exceeds 50 percent of the UK’s annual water use in 2023.”33 All this while the Global Commission on the Economics of Water has declared “a rapidly accelerating water crisis” to which Kernewek should not be contributing.34
We have become utterly dependent on private technologies manufactured and controlled by a handful of opaque companies [who] appear mostly indifferent to the social consequences of their activities and only invest minimally if obliged by government regulations to enhance their public image.35
Iker Erdocia, Dublin City University
AI requires vast quantities of hardware at the cost of mining rare earth minerals. These are difficult to extract and purify and come with heavy environmental and social costs. They are often extracted from mines in countries with poorer environmental and labour protections. Reset states that “communities living near these mines, often indigenous or minority groups, regularly face land degradation, water contamination and human rights abuses. Much of this can be directly linked to the AI hardware.”36 When the hardware inevitably cooks and is useless, it is then thrown out as e-waste into poor communities. The potential advancement of Kernewek must not come at the expense of our sister indigenous and minority communities.
Training an also AI requires huge amounts of energy, soon perhaps as much as a small country37 and has an enormous carbon footprint.38 What is clear is that—through water usage, extractive industry, energy consumption and carbon footprint—AI is bad news for the struggling environment of the planet we live on and there is no Cornish on a dead planet.
MAKING AI AN EX-PARROT
Rather than making minority languages more accessible, AI is now creating an ever expanding minefield for students and speakers of those languages to navigate.39
mit technology review
We have heard of the vast improbability of getting AI to be able to mimic Kernewek in light of the costs in data, work, time and technology. We have considered the likely choice of cold negligence or surveillance product and the importance of data sovereignty. We have read about the effects on the livelihoods of Cornish speakers, as well as the the catastrophic costs to the environment and indigenous peoples.
We have learned that linguistic flattening by AI impoverishes its subjects and how AI may decide for us how our language must operate. We have seen the inescapability of language as human and the risks of creating ‘learners’ who cannot learn and ‘speakers’ who cannot speak. We have seen the dangers to reputation and trust for any organisation who would shovel what is seen as ‘slop’.
We have heard why giving in to the juggernaut of AI would be a mistake for Kernewek and how our community does not support our laying down of the shield. Instead, we must fight. We must make Kernewek a space as free of slop as possible, we must educate botlickers into ethical and effective language learning and use, we must avoid second-hand thinking.
We must make our language a no AI zone, a network of reliable humans and their human creations, built on authenticity, community, effort and trust: a Kernewek for the people, of the people and by the people.
KERNEWEK YN-DANN GEVALAV
Mes yn sur y hyllyn ni gwellhe taklow dres termyn? Y fydh res meur a weres a gompanis SK, mes y talvia dhyn. Yn trist, Gabriel Nicholas, kesvroder hwithrans orth an Center for Democracy and Technology, re drovyas pan wrug kompani tek fondya gallosow selyek rag unn yeth, i a omgeslowenha yn ughel hag ena movya yn-rag.7
Kompanis tek bras yw yndella poran: kompanis. Ymons i ena rag gwaynya budh. Y’n gwettha prys, ny wra marghas rewlys gans yethow bras ri kentryn dhe gevarghewi yn gwellhe rag an re byghan.
Oll a’n deknegieth kows, chiow konnyk ha systemow ynterweythres lev usys hedhyw yw an askorrasow a hwithrans kenwerthel. Dhe vos sogh, yth yns i po rag dendyl arghans a’th kedhlow, po gwertha gwara ha gonisyow, po delenwel dha dybyansow. Nyns yw tra vyth a’n SK ma rag an les kemmyn. […] Mar nag eus argyans erbysek krev lowr, na wra gwaytya kompanis bras dhe fyski dhe askorra systemow kows Kembrek, Godhalek po Kernewek.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, pennskol kint
Ha mars ervirons bos SK Kernewek aventur a yll gwaynya budh, possybyl yw bos agan studh gweth ages dell via gans forsakyans. Dell lever Dr. Fintan Mallor, an fordh vrassa a waynya budh rag kompanis SK arghesys yn privedh yw kedreylya aga thoulys yn devisyow aspians.9 Drefen bos Kernewek onan a’n yethow boghes y’n RU nag yw aspiadow yn es y’n eur ma, hemm yw peryl kowrek rag gweythresieth Kernewek ha’gan strif a-barth omdhetermyans yn stat a vynn galweythegi dissent.
Ha ni ow tochya Kernewek ha’y savla yn-dann gevalav, gwren ni mires orth an kost denel. My a gellis ow soodh 13 bloodh yn yethow dhe SK kettooth ha dell veu eskorrans Sowsnek hewul lowr dhe askusya sevel orth tyli den. Y’n kas diwirhaval may kevyn SK hag a yll askorra Kernewek da, prag y hwrussa nebonan omankombra ow pe kowser? An tybyans a SK ow tenna oll an bewnans a’m taves ertach ha ni ow kwynnel dhe dreusvewa dell on yw skruthus.
Yn sempel, budh yw gorthenebel orth tus. Hedre vo SK an degen nowydh flamm a vudh, y fydh gorthenebel orth tus. Ha yeth yw hy thus.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Nyns eus styr dhe gesunyansow a lytherennow war skrin heb dewis ha heb mynnas.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Kyn nag yw yeth dibarow dhe dhensys, onan a’n rannow chif a vos denel yw. Ny yll bos lehes dhe gedhlow hepken, mes yth yw argerdh sosyel dres eghen.11 Ni oll a wor py mar synthesek y sen skoodhyans prener der SK po fatel yll SK fyllel orth konvedhes arliwyow. Dell gampol Dr. Mallory, “Yeth [yw] neppyth moy kepar hag enev a gemeneth. Ny yllir gwitha hemma yn jynn. Ny yllir assoylya kudyn denel kepar ha yethladhans gans gwel a yeth hag a remov an gerann denel.”12
Ny yll SK konvedhes Kernewek po taves vyth aral. Papynjay chonsus yw: y targan py ger yw gwirhaval wosa an huni kyns.13 Ny yll agan konvedhes. Ny yll mynnes tra vyth. Mar kwra derivas orthis y vos pes da dha weres, gow yw. My a vynn agan kemeneth dhe devi, mes ny wra kans jynn-amontya a yll ‘kewsel Kernewek’ keworra orti. Y hwra unn den—ow tri tybyansow ha govenegow hag ownow ha gwanderyow—ha ny dybav y hwra an jynnys-amontya kernwegorek keworra unn den hogen orth agan kemeneth.
Gwettha, mar kwra, yma dustuni a-dhyworth Microsoft hag a brof y hwra an devnydh a SKDin war oberennow yeth, unweyth an seythen hogen, aperya gallos godhvosel a dhyski, ow ledya orth omworrans lehes gans an desten, gorfydhyans y’n deknegieth ha sleyneth sprallys a assoylya kudynnow yn anserghek.14 Der usya toulys SK dhe ‘dhyski’ Kernewek, possybyl yw ni dhe shyndya gallos dyski an yeth vytholl heb an kroch ma. Ni a wra gul mimyoryon yn le Kernewegoryon.
Ynwedh Perlin a boslev an elven dhenel, ow leverel pan wren ni synsi kemeneth avel kres agan yethow, dell wren, an papynjay chonsus a yll bos klewys kepar ha defolyans.15 Y’n eur ma, my a aswon pan eus nebonan owth usya ‘Kernewek’ SK dhymm. An tybyans ny wrav vy unn jydh godhvos pan eus estren—nebonan a wrussen vy dynerghi mar pe lyver po klass ganses—ow popettya diwawen ow hengerens ha kewsel dresta yw bedhrosus. Yma dhe’n dra an wan dhistowgh a drevesigeth, a berghenegyans pan yllir gwerthveurhe, a bapynjaya pan yllir junya agan kesgan.
Unver yw skolheyk Hawai’i henwys Noah Ha‘alilio Solomon: “Ankensi yw, drefen ni dhe vos kofhes a’n prysyow oll re beu agan gonisogeth ha yeth perghenegys. Ni re beu owth omladh dre dhens hag ewines yn batel gales a-barth dasvewheans yeth.[…] Y hwra pobel krysi bos hemma representyans ewn a’n yeth a Hawai’i.”16
TREST HAG OMGLEWANS AN GEMENETH
Hir re beu an kil-lash gorthjynn ow kovryjyon mes lemmyn yma va ow terri an arenep dell hevel.17
NBC NEWS
Tardh an arvedhennow rag SK y honan (clanker, tinskin, toaster), y askorras (slop, dross, brainrot) ha’y usyoryon (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—keffrys hag erel selys moy yn kler war geryow kas gwir dell ov attes gans aga heworra—a re hwedhel a stons ollgemmyn a wogrys ha divlases war-tu hag an deknegieth ha’y devnydh war an kesrosweyth Sowsnek ha yethow bras erel.18 Kynth yw an stons yn-mysk gwesyon dek ha korforeth hwath gwresek, rag an boblek gemmyn y hwra SK “dos ha bos keschanjyadow gans taklow tamm kawgh.”19
Pella, nyns yw marnas yethow moyhariv gans an gwel negedhek ma a SK avel podrek. Sampel uskis a gampollow media sosyel ha meusi ow tochya SK ha Godhalek Alban gans Professor Lamb a dhiskwedhas fals a 54% negedhek, 33% posedhek ha 13% heptu. (Lamb, 2024) Sentiment an kampol negedhek an moyha talvesys o bos SK dregynnus hag an nessa y talvia dhyn lettya SK rag kestav gans tavosow ertach.
Pyth eson ni ow leverel orth agan diyskynysi? Ny dal agan yeth ha gonisogeth an strivyans personel? Hemm yw martesen fatel wrussen vy y redya, a pen vy i.20
Gorthebydh sondyans Kernewek
Kernewek a baynt aven moy serth, yn arbennik gans dyskoryon ha kowsoryon yowynka ha moy skentel gans tek. Sondyans war Discord ha Whatsapp Kernewek a drovyas bos 65% a grysis y fia SK drog (11.5%) po pur dhrog (53%) rag an yeth. Pan veu govynnys pyth a dal bos gorthyp an gemeneth orth SK, 46% a leveris y kodh y hedhi ha 27% y woheles, gans an dus moy ha 60 bloodh hepken ow tybi y kodh oberi ganso.20
31% a worthebydhyon an sondyans a leveris y hwrussa an devnydh a SK yn Kernewek aga fellhe a’n yeth, hag ynwedh 54% a leveris y fiens i pellhes yn krev ha 23% pellhes tamm a by kowethas, asnodh po dyskador pynag ow tevnydhya SK.
An gorthyp a’n re a leveris bos aga godhvos a SK po “konnyk” po “da” o dampnus yn arbennik. Pubonan y’n bagas ma a worthebis y fia SK dregynnus rag Kernewek, y hwrussa an devnydh a SK gans pennfenten aga fellhe a’n bennfenten na yn krev hag y kodh dhyn hedhi an devnydh a SK rag Kernewek.
HONANIETH, LELDER HA DIVERSETH
Nyns esa Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, ow skrifa a-barth UNESCO, ow kewsel yn komparek a-dro dhe yethow lyharivhes pan wrug ev y wovyn, mes an govyn a dhassen yn kreffa ragon: “Pygemmys koll a honanieth a vynnir sakrifia rag effeythuster?”21
Honanieth yw a’n moyha bri rag Kernewegoryon. Studhyans Ute Wimmer Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish a henow “gweythres [an yeth] avel arwodh a honanieth kenedhlek” avel an nessa ughella skila (66%**) yn-mysk kowsoryon ha dyskoryon, fethys gans gonisogeth Kernow (80%) hepken.22 Yth havalsa hemma bos acheson solempnyans, mes pan vo SK keworrys, y teu ha bos peryl. Vincent Koc a Hyperlink a lever y hyll SK “kevri dre wall orth an gwannheans a yeth ha honanieth wonisogethel”.23
Ev a aswon ynwedh y hallsa awtomategi dyski po dinythi yeth “lehe an rychedh ha lelder hag a dheu a gowsoryon dhenel neb a dheg istoriow gonisogethel y’ga hows”. Yn hwir, peswar studhyans gwrys gans Pennskol Kaliforni Soth re dhiskwedhas bos devnydhya PYB dhe weres gans skrifa “kelmys orth dyfygyansow nosedhek yn diverseth yethel hag y hyll mellya gans an konvedhes brysoniethel ha kowethasel yw proviys gans yeth.”24
Ha hemm yw yn Sowsnek, onan a’n yethow an ryccha ha brassa y’n bys. Dismyk an effeyth war yeth byghanna kepar ha Kernewek—gans le a dhogvennans, le a gedhlow, sel kowsoryon munys hag ogas hag arghans mann—ha war y lies orgraf hag eghen yeth. Yn arbennik yn gettesten Kernewek, seulabrys yma kowsoryon Diwedhes ow strivya dhe vos gwelys avel vas gans gwartheyvans Kres. A dybyn y hwor SK an dyffrans? Heb preder, y hwra po kemyska puptra warbarth, ow sowdheni pubonan, po devnydhya Kres dhe fetha Diwedhes.
An gwruthyl a dhalgh herdhys gans SK Dinythus, dre favera yethow savonegys, a argyl an vansyans a rannyethow ranndiryel.25
Kresen woramontyorieth Barcelona
Nyns yw eghennow hepken yn peryl; SK a wodros beudhi Kernewek yn tien. Akordys yw Perlin y hallsa an platheans yethel a hwarva dres kansbledhynnyow yn Sowsnek hwarvos dres nos yn yeth lyharivhes gans SK orth an fronnow—dell via, ow pos gallosek a bassya Kernewek denel heb assay. Ev a venek prederow yn kever PYB ow rewi yeth yn hy le ha hogen ow settya pyth yw an styr a wodhvos an yeth, yn arbennik gans niverow munys a gowsoryon deythyek.26
Treylyansow leun a atal a liesha warlinen kepar ha nowodhow fug. Kowsoryon deythyek a’n yethow ma yw passyes avel bos “re gales dhe drovya”, komparys orth fordhow awtomategys a surheans kwalita hag yw disjunys yn tien a geskomunyans y’n bys gwir. Kynth yw possybyl rag kemenethow yeth brassa ha moy gallosek synsi an bottys ma dhe akont ha’ga devnydhya yn stratejek hogen, re es yw dismygi [yeth lyhariv] ow pos reverthys.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Heb kontrol hag yn diwla an gewri deknegieth, Kernewek synthesek a wra gornivera ha gorthrabellhe Kernewek denel.
SOVRANEDH KEDHLOW HA KOLONEGIETH
Sovranedh kedhlow teythyek yw an gwir gans [kenedhel teythyek] a woverna an kuntel, perghenogeth ha gweytha a’y hedhlow hy honan.27
Native Nations Institute
Byttegyns, yma gonisogethow teythyek hag usi owth oberi war geskowethyans moy ewnhynsek gans SK. Tek heb an kowr a res asnodhow, mes y as kemenethow gwitha sovranedh kedhlow war an gerthen wonisogethel hag yw aga yeth. Te Mana Raraunga, Rosweyth Sovranedh Kedhlow Māori, re wrug rol a bennrewlys rag an gwruthyl, devnydhya ha kevrenna a gedhlow Māori, ow ragwirhe an edhom a grefhe maystri rag Māori a-lemmyn hag a dheu.
I a venek poynt posek hag a dalvia bos konsidrys gans rach gans stywards a skians yethel ha gonisogethel: “Kedhlow ahanan, a-dro dhyn ha’gan asnodhow, yw kerthennow a bris. Pan vo maystri kellys, kales yw y dhaskemeres.”28 Ny dal gul erviransow yn skav po yn uskis; y hyllyn pupprys leverel “ea” mar kwrussyn leverel “na” kyns orth us sett kedhlow, mes ny yllyn nevra leverel “na” mar kwrussyn leverel “ea” seulabrys.
An desten SK, kepar ha pub le aral, yw leun a dus hag yw settys y’ga maneryow ha gans gwel pur drevesigel yn tidowl.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
Hemm yw pur bosek y’n gettesten a’n kontrol possybyl a gedhlow Kernewek gans korforethow gallosek a-ves. Estenegieth jatelydhek re beu molleth war gowethasow y’n amal emperourethek ha nyns yw kowethas Kernewek dyffrans, wosa enebi kansvledhynnyow a’y rychys hag asnodhow naturek ow pos destryppys ha gwerthys dre vras gans budh tus yn-mes a Gernow.
An lyver henwys Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy a verk lemmyn y hyllir gweles perthynyansow kedhlow avel “pesyans a’n argerdhow ha systemow-krysi isworwedhek a estennans, drogusyans, kuntellyans ha diberghenogeth re beu gwrys war boblansow Teythyek dres trevesigeth istorek.”30 An konvedhes estennek ma a gedhlow yw, dell verkons, hevelebys a-der goderrys gans tyli pobel rag aga hedhlow.
Wostiwedh, res yw ma na vo agan yeth gorrys yn diwla a-ves routys gans pennrewlys perghenogel na as dhyn sovranedh lowr a onan a’gan asnodhow naturel an moyha posek: agan yeth. Res yw dhyn kavos pennrewlys kedhlow ygor, a-der plegya orth kontrol korforethel. Res yw dhyn lewya ha gidya an devnydh a’gan kedhlow, a-der y usya erbynn agan lesow ha rag pocketys tek bras.
A-der drehedhes an arwithans a davosow avel kudyn teknegiethel, my a dyb bos res dhe gemenethow teythyek bos reythhes yn politek, po der arghasans a wovernansow po dre dhifresyansow laghel dhe dhevnydhya aga yethow.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Pennskol Durham
Res yw dhyn ragwirhe yeth-avel-kemeneth ha hwilas devnydh ygor, ewnhynsek hag ethegel a’gan kerthennow yeth, ertach ha gonisogethel. Res yw dhyn goheles tybi a SK avel an hus mayth ambos ha kevarghewi yn hwithrans selyek, lewys gans agan kemeneth. Ny wra korforethow agan selwel ha, hogen, i a yll agan shyndya.
NYNS EUS KERNEWEK WAR BLANET MAROW
Governansow ha kevalav ollvysel […] yw omres dhe ideologieth marghas ‘rydh’ moy es dell yns omres dhe sewena kemenethow, pobel ha’n planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
An brassa rann a vreusyansow a SK a wrussa meneges hemma seulabrys. Onan a’n argyansow brassa yw erbynn SK Dinythus, mes rag own bos ankoth dhis, ni a wra mires orth an chif boyntys.
Res yw bos evadow an dowr goyeynhe pub kresen kedhlow SK. Y kollenk an dowr ma. Pennskol Kaliforni re dherivas “y hallsa demond dowr ollvysel SK hedhes 4.2-6.6 bilvil metrow kubek erbynn 2027. Henn yw moy es 50 kansran a us dowr bledhynnyek an RU yn 2023.”33 Y kettermyn, an Desedhek Ollvysel Erbysieth Dowr a dheklaryas “barras dowr ow tardha yn uskis” ma na dal Kernewek kevri dhodho.34
Ni re dheuth ha bos yn hwir omres dhe deknegiethow privedh gwrys ha kontrolys gans dornas a gompanis diskler [hag] a hevel bos mygyl dre vras orth an sewyansow sosyel a’ga gwriansow ha kevri yn ispoyntel marnas mars yns i konstrinys gans rewlys an wovernans dhe wellhe aga imach poblek.35
Iker Erdocia, Pennskol Sita Dulyn
Yma edhom dhe SK a vynsow kowrek a galesweyth orth kost palas monyow tanow. Kales yw estenna ha purhe an re ma hag yma kostow kerghynedhel ha sosyel poos. Estennys yns i yn fenowgh a hwelyow yn powyow gans difresyansow lakka rag lavur ha’n kerghynnedh. Reset a lever “yn fenowgh y hwra kemenethow yw trigys yn ogas dhe’n hwelyow, yn fenowgh bagasow lyhariv po teythyek, enebi gwethheans an tir, defolyans an dowr hag abusyans gwiryow denel. Meur a hemma a yll bos kelmys yn tidro orth an galesweyth SK.”36 Pan yw an galesweyth kegys yn sertan hag euver, ena tewlys yw avel e-wast yn kemenethow boghosek. Res yw nyns yw an avonsyans possybyl a Gernewek orth kost agan kemenethow hwor lyhariv ha teythyek.
Ynwedh res yw myns hujes a nerth rag trenya SK, yn skon martesen an keth myns ha pow byghan37 hag yma ol troos karbon kowrek.38 Kler yw—der usadow dowr, diwysyans estennek, konsumyans nerth hag ol troos karbon—bos SK yeyn nowodhow rag kerghynnedh ow strivya a’n planet mayth on ni trigys warnodho ha nyns eus Kernewek war blanet marow.
GUL DHE SK BOS EKS-PAPYNJAY
A-der gul dhe yethow lyhariv bos moy hedhadow, lemmyn yma SK ow kwruthyl tardhek pupprys owth omlesa rag studhyoryon ha kowsoryon a’n yethow ma dhe wolya.39
mit technology review
Ni re glewas a’n anwirhevelepter efan a wul dhe SK gallos mimya Kernewek yn golow an kostys yn kedhlow, ober, termyn ha teknegieth. Ni re gonsidras lycklod an dewisynter dispresyans yeyn po askorras-aspia ha’n posekter a sovranedh kedhlow. Ni re redyas a-dro dhe’n effeythyow war vewnansow Kernewegoryon, keffrys ha’n kostys katastrofek rag an kerghynnedh ha poblow teythyek.
Ni re dhyskas y hwra platheans yethel gans SK boghosekhe y destennow ha fatel yll SK martesen ervira a’gan parth fatel godh dh’agan yeth oberi. Ni re welas an anwoheladewder a yeth avel denel ha’n peryllyow a wul ‘dyskoryon’ na yll dyski ha ‘kowsoryon’ na yll kewsel. Ni re welas an peryllyow orth bri ha fydhyans rag kowethasow a wrussa palas an pyth hag yw gwelys avel ‘skomblans’.
Ni re glewas prag y fia omblegya orth an jagganat a SK error rag Kernewek ha dell na vynn agan kemeneth skoodhya gorra an skoos a-dhyworthyn. Yn y le, res yw dhyn batalyas. Res yw dhyn gul dhe Gernewek bos spas mar rydh a skomblans dell yll bos, res yw adhyski orth botlapyoryon yn dyski ha devnydh yeth yn ethegel hag yn effeythus, res yw goheles tybi wortaswerth.
Res yw dhyn gul dh’agan yeth bos parth heb SK, rosweyth a dus fydhyadow ha’ga gwriansow denel, drehevys war lelder, kemeneth, assay ha trest: Kernewek hag yw a-barth an bobel, a’n bobel ha gans an bobel.
Niwlen Ster
Notennow
* A prime example is the laughably-unaffordable restaurant RenMor, which The Headland Hotel thinks is a version of “Re’n Mor”, which they believe means “by the sea” as in “next to the sea” but actually means “by the sea!” like saying “by Zeus!”. This is both hilarious and enraging.
** A figure perhaps lower than it should be if you consider that many of the “emotional motives” which were not counted in this category, such as “I’m Cornish, what better reason do you need?”, do also refer to identity.
FENTENNOW
1. Judah, J. (2025) How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral, MIT Technology Review.
2. Ackermann, A. (2023) When AI doesn’t speak your language, Coda.
3. Crichton, D. (2024) AI and the Death of Human Languages, Lux.
4. Lamb, W. (2024). Could Artificial Intelligence save Scottish Gaelic?, The University of Edinburgh.
5. Dencik, L. (/2025) AI Inequalities: Minority Languages, TUC Cymru.
6. Joshi, P., Santy, S., Budhiraja, A., Bali, K., & Microsoft Research, India. (2020). The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World. Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
7. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
8. McLoughlin, I. (2018) How to teach AI to speak Welsh (and other minority languages), The Conversation.
9. Mallory, F. (2025) RISE UP Panel Discussion & Q&A: What AI Can and Cannot Do for Minoritised Languages, YouTube.
10. Perlin, R. (2024) AI Won’t Protect Endangered Languages, The Dial.
11. RISE UP (2025) #4 RISE UP Event Summary: What AI Can and Cannot Do For Minoritised Languages, RISE UP.
12. Mallory, F. (2024) European Day of Languages: Will lesser spoken languages soon only be kept alive by AI technology? Durham University.
13. Bender, E., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Mitchell, M. (2021) On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
14. Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025) The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers. Microsoft.
15. Perlin, R. (op cit)
16. Judah, J. (op cit)
17. Abbruzzese, J., & Wile, R. (2025) Is an AI backlash brewing? What ‘clanker’ says about growing frustrations with emerging tech, NBC News.
18. Webster, K. (2025) Why Using ChatGPT at Work Could Hurt Your Reputation, Inc. Magazine.
19. Herrman, J. (2024) Is That AI? Or Does It Just Suck?, Intelligencer.
20. Wilson, L. (2025) Skians Kreftus ha Kernewek/Artificial Intelligence and Cornish
21. Paschalidis, A. I. (2025) AI and the great linguistic flattening, UNESCO.
22. Wimmer, U. (2010). Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish. Cornish Language Board, p. 113
23. Koc, V. (2025) Generative AI and Large Language Models in Language Preservation: Opportunities and Challenges, ResearchGate.
24. Sourati, Z., Karimi-Malekabadi, F., & Ozcan, M. (2025) The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models, ResearchGate.
25. Melero, M. (2024) The Future of Language (and Cultural) Diversity in the Age of AI, CLARIN.
26. Perlin, R. (op cit)
27. Russo Carroll, S., Rodriguez Lonebear, D., & Martinez, A. (2017). Data Governance for Native Nation Rebuilding, Native Nations Institute.
28. Te Mana Raraunga. (2018). Frequently Asked Questions, Te Mana Raraunga.
29. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
30. Walter, M., Kukutai, T., Carroll, S. R., & Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (Eds.). (2020). Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Taylor & Francis, p. 24
31. Mallory, F. (op cit)
32. Cymdeithas yr Iaith (2022) Cymru Rydd, Cymru Werdd, Cymru Gymraeg., p. 27
33. O’Sullivan, L. (2025). How AI’s Failure on Linguistic Diversity is Deepening Global Inequality, RESET – Digital for Good.
34. Harvey, F. (2024). Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 years, The Guardian.
35. Erdocia, I., Migge, B., & Schneider, B. (2024). Language is not a data set—Why overcoming ideologies of dataism is more important than ever in the age of AI. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 28(5), p. 23
36. O’Sullivan, L. (op cit)
37. Erdenesanaa, D. (2023) A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country, The New York Times
38. Heikkilä, M. (2022) We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint, MIT Technology Review.
39. Judah, J. (op cit)#4 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Breus #Cornish #Cornwall #data #generativeAI #history #jynn #kedhlow #Kernewek #Kernow #Kernowek #LLM #machine #PYB #SK #SKDinythus #SkiansKreftus #Sordya
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Turning Saffron into Slop – Treylya Safran yn Skomblans
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
Note: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to be synonymous with Generative AI (GenAI) and with Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, in common parlance. Unless explicitly stated, I use the terms interchangeably.
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow*, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
LOW-RESOURCES AND LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY
Simply adding a language to an AI model leads to a spike in poor-quality articles, drowning out quality writing by humans. AI has “industrialized the acts of destruction—which affect vulnerable languages most, since AI translations are typically far less reliable for them.”1 Wikipedia editors from varied languages evidence that machine translation tools have made it easier than ever before to create shoddy articles in minoritised languages, causing massive damage in minutes. AI leads to non-speakers producing much longer, truthier rubbish, Sámi computational linguistics expert Trond Trosterud notes: “the problem [is] that they are armed with Google Translate. Earlier they were armed only with dictionaries.”1
Kernewek, like all but 60 of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages, is designated “low-resource”, meaning it lacks sufficient data to train a machine.2 It is tempting, therefore, to assume that the solution is to provide more data. However, training an LLM requires petabytes of text, audio and video—manually categorised and in a machine-readable format—a vast trove that Kernewek simply does not have.3 Professor Will Lamb, Chair of Gaelic Ethnology and Linguistics at Edinburgh University, speaks of “millions of work hours devoted to just one aspect” of a working AI.4
Even if ChatGPT is trained on another language than English, the time and labour required may make it largely unviable. Current assessments of the performance of ChatGPT for different languages have shown that it performs worse in all tasks.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Furthermore, the amount of data and work is not the only barrier; at issue is the nature of the language itself. Microsoft has found that languages such as Breton—and thus Kernewek—cause a high rate of errors distinct from the size of their dataset, due to grammatical features, such as mutation, not present in well-sourced languages. As such, they remain poor without significant additional work.6 Essentially, simply adding more Kernewek may not help. Thus, engaging with AI is, for Kernewek, to tie ourselves to slop.
Noten: Skians Kreftus (SK) re dheuth ha bos kesstyr gans SK Dinythus (SKDin) ha gans Patronyow Yeth Bras (PYB), kepar ha ChatGPT, yn lavar kemmyn. Marnas bos menegys yn kler, my a us an termys yn keschanjyadow.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow*, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
ASNODHOW ISL HA TIPOLOGIETH YETHEL
Keworra yeth yn sempel orth patron SK a led orth spik yn erthyglow drog aga kwalita, ow peudhi skrif a gwalita gans tus. SK re wrug “diwysyansegi an aktys diswrians—hag a nas yethow goliadow an moyha, drefen bos treylyansow SK lieskweyth le lel yn tipek ragdha.”1 Golegydhyon Wikipedia a yethow divers a re dustuni re wrug medhelweyth-treylya y wul bos esya dell veu bythkweth kyns gwruthyl erthyglow pilyek yn yethow lyharivhes, ow kawsya damach kowrek yn mynysennow. SK a led orth digowsoryon owth askorra atal lieskweyth hirra ha gwirekka, konnyk yethonieth reknansek Sámi Trond Trosterud a not: “an kudyn [yw] aga bos ervys gans Google Translate. A-varra nyns ens ervys marnas gans gerlyvrow.”1
Kernewek, kepar hag oll marnas 60 a ogas lowr 7,000 yeth a’n bys, yw klassys avel “isel y asnodhow”, ow styrya nag eus dhodho kedhlow lowr dhe drenya jynn.2 Rakhenna, dynyek yw desevos bos an assoylyans profya moy a gedhlow. Byttegyns, res yw petavaytys a dekst, son ha gwydhyow—klassys dre leuv hag yn furvas redyadow gans jynn— dhe drenya PYB, tresorva efan nag eus dhe Gernewek yn sempel.3 Y kews Professor Will Lamb, Kaderyer Ethnologieth ha Yethonieth Wodhalek orth Pennskol Karedin, a “vilvilyow a ourys ober sakrys orth unn wedh hepken” a SK owth oberi.4
Hogen mars yw ChatGPT trenys war yeth a-der Sowsnek, an termyn hag ober yw res a styr y vos martesen anhewul dre vras. Arvreusyansow a-lemmyn a berformyans a ChatGPT rag yethow dyffrans re dhiskwedhas y perform gweth yn oberennow oll.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Pella, nyns yw an myns a gedhlow hag ober an unsel lett; a vern yw natur an yeth y honan. Microsoft re drovyas y kaws yethow kepar ha Bretonek—hag ytho Kernewek—kevradh ughel a wallow diblans a vraster aga sett kedhlow, drefen nasyow gramasek, kepar ha treylyansow, nag usi kevys yn yethow ughel aga asnodhow. Yndella, i a bes orth bos drog heb meur a ober keworransel.6 Yn essensek, possybyl yw ny wra keworra moy a Gernewek yn sempel gweres. Yndelma, oberi gans SK yw, rag Kernewek, omgelmi orth skomblans.
CORNISH UNDER CAPITALISM
But surely we can improve things over time? It will take a lot of help from AI companies, but it will be worth it. Sadly, Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, has found that once a tech company has established basic capabilities for a language, they pat themselves on the back and move on.7
Big tech companies are just that: companies. They exist to make a profit. Unfortunately, a market dominated by big languages gives them no incentive to invest in improvements for small ones.
All of the speech technology, smart homes and voice interaction systems used today are the products of commercial research. To put it bluntly, they exist to either make money from your data, to sell you more goods and services, or to influence your thinking. None of this AI exists for the public good. […] Unless there is a strong enough economic argument, don’t expect big companies to rush into producing Welsh, Gaelic or Cornish speech systems.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, University of Kent
Should they decide that a Kernewek AI is a viable profit-making enterprise, our situation may even be worse than abandonment. As Dr. Fintan Mallory remarks, the dominant means of profit for privately-funded AI enterprises is to convert their tools into surveillance devices.9 As Kernewek is currently one of the UK’s only languages which is not currently easily surveillable, this poses a huge risk to Kernewek activism and the fight for self-determination in a state that seeks to criminalise dissent.
While we’re on the subject of Kernewek and its position under capitalism, let’s consider the human cost. I lost my 13-year career in language to AI as soon as English output became viable enough to excuse not paying a human. In the unlikely instance that we achieve an AI that can produce quality Kernewek, why would anyone bother paying speakers? The idea of AI sucking all the life out of my heritage language when we are struggling to survive as-is is appalling.
Simply put, profit is antithetical to people. While AI is the new favourite toy of profit, it will be antithetical to people. And a language is its people.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Combinations of characters on a screen mean nothing without agency and intention.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
While language is not unique to humans, it is one of the chief parts of being human. It cannot be reduced to mere data, but is a highly social process.11 We all know how synthetic customer support via robot sounds or how AI fails to pick up nuance. As Dr. Mallory comments, “Language [is] something more like the soul of a community. You can’t store this in a machine. You can’t solve a human problem like linguicide with a view of language that removes the human component.”12
AI cannot comprehend Kernewek or any other language. It is a stochastic parrot: predicting what word is likely to follow the previous one.13 It cannot understand us. It cannot intend anything. If it tells you it feels delighted to help you, it is lying. I want our community to grow, but one hundred ‘Cornish-speaking’ computers do not add to it. One human does—bringing ideas and hopes and fears and foibles—and I do not think the Kernewek ‘speaking’ computers will add even one human to our community.
Worse, if it does, there is evidence from Microsoft to suggest that the use of GenAI on language tasks, even once a week, impairs cognitive ability to learn, leading to decreased engagement with the topic, overreliance on the technology and hobbled skills in independent problem-solving.14 By using AI tools to ‘teach’ a learner Kernewek, we may in fact be impairing their ability to learn the language at all without this crutch. We will make regurgitators in place of speakers.
Perlin also emphasises the human element, saying that when we hold community central to our languages, as we do, the stochastic parrot can feel like a violation.15 At the moment, I can tell when someone is using AI ‘Kernewek’ to me. The idea that one day I will not know when an outsider—someone I would welcome if they took up a book or a class—is puppeting my ancestors’ jaws and speaking through them is ghoulish. It has the instant sting of colonialism, of appropriation when one could appreciate, of parroting when one could join our chorus.
Hawai’ian scholar Ha‘alilio Solomon agrees: “It is painful, because it reminds us of all the times that our culture and language has been appropriated. We have been fighting tooth and nail in an uphill climb for language revitalization.[…] People are going to think that this is an accurate representation of the Hawaiian language.”16
TRUST AND COMMUNITY FEELING
The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface.17
NBC NEWS
The explosion of insults for AI itself (clanker, tinskin, toaster), its output (slop, dross, brainrot) and its users (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—as well as others more clearly based on real-world slurs than I am comfortable to include—tells a tale of the general attitude of distrust and disgust towards the technology and its use on anglophone and other majority language internet.18 While the attitude among tech bros and corporates remains bombastic, for the general public AI is “becoming interchangeable with things that sort of suck.”19
Further, it’s not just majority languages with this negative view of AI as taint. A quick sampling of social media comments and likes regarding AI and Scottish Gaelic by Professor Lamb showed a split of 54% negative, 33% positive and 13% neutral. (Lamb, 2024) The sentiment of the top-rated negative comment was that AI is harmful and the second-highest that AI should be kept away from heritage languages.
What are we telling our descendants? That our language and culture isn’t worth the personal effort? That’s how I might read it, if I were them.20
Kernewek survey respondent
Kernewek paints an even starker picture, especially among younger and more technologically-savvy learners and speakers. A survey on Cornish Discord and Whatsapp found that 65% felt AI would be bad (11.5%) or very bad (53%) for the language. When asked what the community response should be to AI, 46% said we should prevent it and 27% avoid it, with only over-60s thinking that we should work with it.20
31% of respondents said using AI in Kernewek would cause them to feel estranged from the language, while 54% said that they would feel strongly estranged and 23% a little estranged from any organisation, resource or teacher using AI.
The response from those who gave their knowledge of AI as either “expert” or “good” was particularly damning. Everyone in this group responded that AI would be harmful for the language, that the use of AI would estrange them from a source strongly and that we should prevent the use of AI for Kernewek.
IDENTITY, AUTHENTICITY AND DIVERSITY
Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, writing for UNESCO, was not speaking specifically about minoritised languages when he asked this, but the question resonates even more strongly for us: “How much loss of identity is one willing to sacrifice for efficiency?”21
Identity is of paramount importance to Kernewek speakers. Ute Wimmer’s study Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish identified the language’s “function as a symbol of national identity” as the second highest motive (66%**) among speakers and learners, beaten only by Cornish culture (80%).22 This would seem cause for celebration, but when AI is added to the mix, it becomes a risk. Vincent Koc of Hyperlink states that AI can “inadvertently contribute to the dilution of language and cultural identity.”23
He also identifies that automating language learning or generation “may diminish the richness and authenticity that comes from human speakers who carry cultural histories in their speech.” Indeed, four studies by the University of Southern California have shown that using LLMs to assist writing “is linked to notable declines in linguistic diversity and may interfere with the societal and psychological insights language provides.”24
This is in English, one of the richest and largest languages in the world. Imagine the possible impact on a smaller language like Kernewek—with less documentation, less data, a tiny speakerbase and basically no money—and on its many language varieties and orthographies. Particular to the Kernewek context, Late speakers are already struggling to be seen as valid under the dominance of Middle. Do we think AI knows the difference? Thoughtlessly, it will either mix everything together, confusing everyone, or it will use Middle to overwhelm Late.
Generative AI-driven content creation, by favoring standardized languages, risks the disappearance of regional dialects.25
Barcelona supercomputing Center ….
Not only are varieties at risk; AI threatens to drown Kernewek as a whole. Perlin agrees that the linguistic flattening that occurred over centuries in English could manifest overnight in a minoritised language with AI at the helm—as it would be, being able to effortlessly outstrip human Kernewek. He raises concerns of LLMs freezing a language in place and even defining what it means to know the language, especially with low numbers of native speakers.26
Garbage translations multiply online like fake news. Native speakers of the languages in question are bypassed as being “too hard to find,” compared with automated methods of vetting that are completely disconnected from real-life communication. While larger and more powerful language communities may be able to hold the bots to account and even make strategic use of them, it is all too easy to imagine [a minority language] being overwhelmed.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Uncontrolled and in the hands of tech giants, synthetic Kernewek will outnumber and outmanoeuvre human Kernewek.
DATA SOVEREIGNTY AND COLONIALISM
Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of [an indigenous nation] to govern the collection, ownership, and application of its own data.27
Native Nations Institute
There are, however, indigenous cultures that are working on a more equitable relationship with AI. Tech without the giant requires resources, but it allows communities to retain data sovereignty over the cultural asset that is their language. Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, has created a list of principles for the creation, use and sharing of Māori data, prioritising the need to enhance control for current and future Māori.
They raise a key point that should be considered carefully by stewards of linguistic and cultural knowledge: “Data from us, and about us and our resources, are valuable assets. Once control of it is lost, it is difficult to regain.”28 Decisions must not be taken lightly or hastily; we can always say “yes” if we have previously said “no” to a particular dataset’s use, but can never say “no” if we have already said “yes”.
The AI field, like any other space, is occupied by people who are set in their ways and unintentionally have a very colonial perspective.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
This is vital in the context of the potential control of Kernewek data by powerful external corporations. Capitalist extractivism has long been a bane on societies in the imperial periphery and our Cornish society is no different, having faced centuries of its wealth and natural resources being stripped and sold by and large for the profit of those outside Cornwall.
The book Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy notes that current data relations can be seen as “a continuation of the processes and underlying belief systems of extraction, exploitation, accumulation and dispossession that have been visited on Indigenous populations through historical colonialism.”30 This extractive understanding of information is, they note, not disrupted but rather replicated by paying people for their data.
Ultimately, our language must not lie in outside hands governed by proprietary principles that do not allow us sufficient sovereignty over one of our most valuable natural resources: our language. We must have open data principles, not bow to corporate control. We must steer and steward the use of our data, rather than expose it to use against our interests and for the pockets of big tech.
Rather than approaching language preservation as a technical problem, I think indigenous communities need to be politically empowered, whether that be funding from governments or legal protections to use their languages.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Durham University
We must prioritise language-as-community and seek open, equitable and ethical use of our language, heritage and other cultural assets. We must avoid thinking of AI as the magic that it promises and invest in basic research, driven by our own community. Corporations will not save us and, indeed, may do us great harm.
NO CORNISH ON A DEAD PLANET
Global capitalism and governments […] are addicted to ‘free’ market ideology over the wellbeing of communities, people and the planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
Honestly, most takedowns of AI would have hit this point already. It’s one of the main arguments against Generative AI, but in case you’re not familiar with it, we will briefly look over the main points.
Water used in cooling AI data centers must be drinkable water. AI guzzles this water. The University of California has reported that “global water demand from AI could reach 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027. That exceeds 50 percent of the UK’s annual water use in 2023.”33 All this while the Global Commission on the Economics of Water has declared “a rapidly accelerating water crisis” to which Kernewek should not be contributing.34
We have become utterly dependent on private technologies manufactured and controlled by a handful of opaque companies [who] appear mostly indifferent to the social consequences of their activities and only invest minimally if obliged by government regulations to enhance their public image.35
Iker Erdocia, Dublin City University
AI requires vast quantities of hardware at the cost of mining rare earth minerals. These are difficult to extract and purify and come with heavy environmental and social costs. They are often extracted from mines in countries with poorer environmental and labour protections. Reset states that “communities living near these mines, often indigenous or minority groups, regularly face land degradation, water contamination and human rights abuses. Much of this can be directly linked to the AI hardware.”36 When the hardware inevitably cooks and is useless, it is then thrown out as e-waste into poor communities. The potential advancement of Kernewek must not come at the expense of our sister indigenous and minority communities.
Training an also AI requires huge amounts of energy, soon perhaps as much as a small country37 and has an enormous carbon footprint.38 What is clear is that—through water usage, extractive industry, energy consumption and carbon footprint—AI is bad news for the struggling environment of the planet we live on and there is no Cornish on a dead planet.
MAKING AI AN EX-PARROT
Rather than making minority languages more accessible, AI is now creating an ever expanding minefield for students and speakers of those languages to navigate.39
mit technology review
We have heard of the vast improbability of getting AI to be able to mimic Kernewek in light of the costs in data, work, time and technology. We have considered the likely choice of cold negligence or surveillance product and the importance of data sovereignty. We have read about the effects on the livelihoods of Cornish speakers, as well as the the catastrophic costs to the environment and indigenous peoples.
We have learned that linguistic flattening by AI impoverishes its subjects and how AI may decide for us how our language must operate. We have seen the inescapability of language as human and the risks of creating ‘learners’ who cannot learn and ‘speakers’ who cannot speak. We have seen the dangers to reputation and trust for any organisation who would shovel what is seen as ‘slop’.
We have heard why giving in to the juggernaut of AI would be a mistake for Kernewek and how our community does not support our laying down of the shield. Instead, we must fight. We must make Kernewek a space as free of slop as possible, we must educate botlickers into ethical and effective language learning and use, we must avoid second-hand thinking.
We must make our language a no AI zone, a network of reliable humans and their human creations, built on authenticity, community, effort and trust: a Kernewek for the people, of the people and by the people.
KERNEWEK YN-DANN GEVALAV
Mes yn sur y hyllyn ni gwellhe taklow dres termyn? Y fydh res meur a weres a gompanis SK, mes y talvia dhyn. Yn trist, Gabriel Nicholas, kesvroder hwithrans orth an Center for Democracy and Technology, re drovyas pan wrug kompani tek fondya gallosow selyek rag unn yeth, i a omgeslowenha yn ughel hag ena movya yn-rag.7
Kompanis tek bras yw yndella poran: kompanis. Ymons i ena rag gwaynya budh. Y’n gwettha prys, ny wra marghas rewlys gans yethow bras ri kentryn dhe gevarghewi yn gwellhe rag an re byghan.
Oll a’n deknegieth kows, chiow konnyk ha systemow ynterweythres lev usys hedhyw yw an askorrasow a hwithrans kenwerthel. Dhe vos sogh, yth yns i po rag dendyl arghans a’th kedhlow, po gwertha gwara ha gonisyow, po delenwel dha dybyansow. Nyns yw tra vyth a’n SK ma rag an les kemmyn. […] Mar nag eus argyans erbysek krev lowr, na wra gwaytya kompanis bras dhe fyski dhe askorra systemow kows Kembrek, Godhalek po Kernewek.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, pennskol kint
Ha mars ervirons bos SK Kernewek aventur a yll gwaynya budh, possybyl yw bos agan studh gweth ages dell via gans forsakyans. Dell lever Dr. Fintan Mallor, an fordh vrassa a waynya budh rag kompanis SK arghesys yn privedh yw kedreylya aga thoulys yn devisyow aspians.9 Drefen bos Kernewek onan a’n yethow boghes y’n RU nag yw aspiadow yn es y’n eur ma, hemm yw peryl kowrek rag gweythresieth Kernewek ha’gan strif a-barth omdhetermyans yn stat a vynn galweythegi dissent.
Ha ni ow tochya Kernewek ha’y savla yn-dann gevalav, gwren ni mires orth an kost denel. My a gellis ow soodh 13 bloodh yn yethow dhe SK kettooth ha dell veu eskorrans Sowsnek hewul lowr dhe askusya sevel orth tyli den. Y’n kas diwirhaval may kevyn SK hag a yll askorra Kernewek da, prag y hwrussa nebonan omankombra ow pe kowser? An tybyans a SK ow tenna oll an bewnans a’m taves ertach ha ni ow kwynnel dhe dreusvewa dell on yw skruthus.
Yn sempel, budh yw gorthenebel orth tus. Hedre vo SK an degen nowydh flamm a vudh, y fydh gorthenebel orth tus. Ha yeth yw hy thus.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Nyns eus styr dhe gesunyansow a lytherennow war skrin heb dewis ha heb mynnas.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Kyn nag yw yeth dibarow dhe dhensys, onan a’n rannow chif a vos denel yw. Ny yll bos lehes dhe gedhlow hepken, mes yth yw argerdh sosyel dres eghen.11 Ni oll a wor py mar synthesek y sen skoodhyans prener der SK po fatel yll SK fyllel orth konvedhes arliwyow. Dell gampol Dr. Mallory, “Yeth [yw] neppyth moy kepar hag enev a gemeneth. Ny yllir gwitha hemma yn jynn. Ny yllir assoylya kudyn denel kepar ha yethladhans gans gwel a yeth hag a remov an gerann denel.”12
Ny yll SK konvedhes Kernewek po taves vyth aral. Papynjay chonsus yw: y targan py ger yw gwirhaval wosa an huni kyns.13 Ny yll agan konvedhes. Ny yll mynnes tra vyth. Mar kwra derivas orthis y vos pes da dha weres, gow yw. My a vynn agan kemeneth dhe devi, mes ny wra kans jynn-amontya a yll ‘kewsel Kernewek’ keworra orti. Y hwra unn den—ow tri tybyansow ha govenegow hag ownow ha gwanderyow—ha ny dybav y hwra an jynnys-amontya kernwegorek keworra unn den hogen orth agan kemeneth.
Gwettha, mar kwra, yma dustuni a-dhyworth Microsoft hag a brof y hwra an devnydh a SKDin war oberennow yeth, unweyth an seythen hogen, aperya gallos godhvosel a dhyski, ow ledya orth omworrans lehes gans an desten, gorfydhyans y’n deknegieth ha sleyneth sprallys a assoylya kudynnow yn anserghek.14 Der usya toulys SK dhe ‘dhyski’ Kernewek, possybyl yw ni dhe shyndya gallos dyski an yeth vytholl heb an kroch ma. Ni a wra gul mimyoryon yn le Kernewegoryon.
Ynwedh Perlin a boslev an elven dhenel, ow leverel pan wren ni synsi kemeneth avel kres agan yethow, dell wren, an papynjay chonsus a yll bos klewys kepar ha defolyans.15 Y’n eur ma, my a aswon pan eus nebonan owth usya ‘Kernewek’ SK dhymm. An tybyans ny wrav vy unn jydh godhvos pan eus estren—nebonan a wrussen vy dynerghi mar pe lyver po klass ganses—ow popettya diwawen ow hengerens ha kewsel dresta yw bedhrosus. Yma dhe’n dra an wan dhistowgh a drevesigeth, a berghenegyans pan yllir gwerthveurhe, a bapynjaya pan yllir junya agan kesgan.
Unver yw skolheyk Hawai’i henwys Noah Ha‘alilio Solomon: “Ankensi yw, drefen ni dhe vos kofhes a’n prysyow oll re beu agan gonisogeth ha yeth perghenegys. Ni re beu owth omladh dre dhens hag ewines yn batel gales a-barth dasvewheans yeth.[…] Y hwra pobel krysi bos hemma representyans ewn a’n yeth a Hawai’i.”16
TREST HAG OMGLEWANS AN GEMENETH
Hir re beu an kil-lash gorthjynn ow kovryjyon mes lemmyn yma va ow terri an arenep dell hevel.17
NBC NEWS
Tardh an arvedhennow rag SK y honan (clanker, tinskin, toaster), y askorras (slop, dross, brainrot) ha’y usyoryon (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—keffrys hag erel selys moy yn kler war geryow kas gwir dell ov attes gans aga heworra—a re hwedhel a stons ollgemmyn a wogrys ha divlases war-tu hag an deknegieth ha’y devnydh war an kesrosweyth Sowsnek ha yethow bras erel.18 Kynth yw an stons yn-mysk gwesyon dek ha korforeth hwath gwresek, rag an boblek gemmyn y hwra SK “dos ha bos keschanjyadow gans taklow tamm kawgh.”19
Pella, nyns yw marnas yethow moyhariv gans an gwel negedhek ma a SK avel podrek. Sampel uskis a gampollow media sosyel ha meusi ow tochya SK ha Godhalek Alban gans Professor Lamb a dhiskwedhas fals a 54% negedhek, 33% posedhek ha 13% heptu. (Lamb, 2024) Sentiment an kampol negedhek an moyha talvesys o bos SK dregynnus hag an nessa y talvia dhyn lettya SK rag kestav gans tavosow ertach.
Pyth eson ni ow leverel orth agan diyskynysi? Ny dal agan yeth ha gonisogeth an strivyans personel? Hemm yw martesen fatel wrussen vy y redya, a pen vy i.20
Gorthebydh sondyans Kernewek
Kernewek a baynt aven moy serth, yn arbennik gans dyskoryon ha kowsoryon yowynka ha moy skentel gans tek. Sondyans war Discord ha Whatsapp Kernewek a drovyas bos 65% a grysis y fia SK drog (11.5%) po pur dhrog (53%) rag an yeth. Pan veu govynnys pyth a dal bos gorthyp an gemeneth orth SK, 46% a leveris y kodh y hedhi ha 27% y woheles, gans an dus moy ha 60 bloodh hepken ow tybi y kodh oberi ganso.20
31% a worthebydhyon an sondyans a leveris y hwrussa an devnydh a SK yn Kernewek aga fellhe a’n yeth, hag ynwedh 54% a leveris y fiens i pellhes yn krev ha 23% pellhes tamm a by kowethas, asnodh po dyskador pynag ow tevnydhya SK.
An gorthyp a’n re a leveris bos aga godhvos a SK po “konnyk” po “da” o dampnus yn arbennik. Pubonan y’n bagas ma a worthebis y fia SK dregynnus rag Kernewek, y hwrussa an devnydh a SK gans pennfenten aga fellhe a’n bennfenten na yn krev hag y kodh dhyn hedhi an devnydh a SK rag Kernewek.
HONANIETH, LELDER HA DIVERSETH
Nyns esa Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, ow skrifa a-barth UNESCO, ow kewsel yn komparek a-dro dhe yethow lyharivhes pan wrug ev y wovyn, mes an govyn a dhassen yn kreffa ragon: “Pygemmys koll a honanieth a vynnir sakrifia rag effeythuster?”21
Honanieth yw a’n moyha bri rag Kernewegoryon. Studhyans Ute Wimmer Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish a henow “gweythres [an yeth] avel arwodh a honanieth kenedhlek” avel an nessa ughella skila (66%**) yn-mysk kowsoryon ha dyskoryon, fethys gans gonisogeth Kernow (80%) hepken.22 Yth havalsa hemma bos acheson solempnyans, mes pan vo SK keworrys, y teu ha bos peryl. Vincent Koc a Hyperlink a lever y hyll SK “kevri dre wall orth an gwannheans a yeth ha honanieth wonisogethel”.23
Ev a aswon ynwedh y hallsa awtomategi dyski po dinythi yeth “lehe an rychedh ha lelder hag a dheu a gowsoryon dhenel neb a dheg istoriow gonisogethel y’ga hows”. Yn hwir, peswar studhyans gwrys gans Pennskol Kaliforni Soth re dhiskwedhas bos devnydhya PYB dhe weres gans skrifa “kelmys orth dyfygyansow nosedhek yn diverseth yethel hag y hyll mellya gans an konvedhes brysoniethel ha kowethasel yw proviys gans yeth.”24
Ha hemm yw yn Sowsnek, onan a’n yethow an ryccha ha brassa y’n bys. Dismyk an effeyth war yeth byghanna kepar ha Kernewek—gans le a dhogvennans, le a gedhlow, sel kowsoryon munys hag ogas hag arghans mann—ha war y lies orgraf hag eghen yeth. Yn arbennik yn gettesten Kernewek, seulabrys yma kowsoryon Diwedhes ow strivya dhe vos gwelys avel vas gans gwartheyvans Kres. A dybyn y hwor SK an dyffrans? Heb preder, y hwra po kemyska puptra warbarth, ow sowdheni pubonan, po devnydhya Kres dhe fetha Diwedhes.
An gwruthyl a dhalgh herdhys gans SK Dinythus, dre favera yethow savonegys, a argyl an vansyans a rannyethow ranndiryel.25
Kresen woramontyorieth Barcelona
Nyns yw eghennow hepken yn peryl; SK a wodros beudhi Kernewek yn tien. Akordys yw Perlin y hallsa an platheans yethel a hwarva dres kansbledhynnyow yn Sowsnek hwarvos dres nos yn yeth lyharivhes gans SK orth an fronnow—dell via, ow pos gallosek a bassya Kernewek denel heb assay. Ev a venek prederow yn kever PYB ow rewi yeth yn hy le ha hogen ow settya pyth yw an styr a wodhvos an yeth, yn arbennik gans niverow munys a gowsoryon deythyek.26
Treylyansow leun a atal a liesha warlinen kepar ha nowodhow fug. Kowsoryon deythyek a’n yethow ma yw passyes avel bos “re gales dhe drovya”, komparys orth fordhow awtomategys a surheans kwalita hag yw disjunys yn tien a geskomunyans y’n bys gwir. Kynth yw possybyl rag kemenethow yeth brassa ha moy gallosek synsi an bottys ma dhe akont ha’ga devnydhya yn stratejek hogen, re es yw dismygi [yeth lyhariv] ow pos reverthys.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Heb kontrol hag yn diwla an gewri deknegieth, Kernewek synthesek a wra gornivera ha gorthrabellhe Kernewek denel.
SOVRANEDH KEDHLOW HA KOLONEGIETH
Sovranedh kedhlow teythyek yw an gwir gans [kenedhel teythyek] a woverna an kuntel, perghenogeth ha gweytha a’y hedhlow hy honan.27
Native Nations Institute
Byttegyns, yma gonisogethow teythyek hag usi owth oberi war geskowethyans moy ewnhynsek gans SK. Tek heb an kowr a res asnodhow, mes y as kemenethow gwitha sovranedh kedhlow war an gerthen wonisogethel hag yw aga yeth. Te Mana Raraunga, Rosweyth Sovranedh Kedhlow Māori, re wrug rol a bennrewlys rag an gwruthyl, devnydhya ha kevrenna a gedhlow Māori, ow ragwirhe an edhom a grefhe maystri rag Māori a-lemmyn hag a dheu.
I a venek poynt posek hag a dalvia bos konsidrys gans rach gans stywards a skians yethel ha gonisogethel: “Kedhlow ahanan, a-dro dhyn ha’gan asnodhow, yw kerthennow a bris. Pan vo maystri kellys, kales yw y dhaskemeres.”28 Ny dal gul erviransow yn skav po yn uskis; y hyllyn pupprys leverel “ea” mar kwrussyn leverel “na” kyns orth us sett kedhlow, mes ny yllyn nevra leverel “na” mar kwrussyn leverel “ea” seulabrys.
An desten SK, kepar ha pub le aral, yw leun a dus hag yw settys y’ga maneryow ha gans gwel pur drevesigel yn tidowl.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
Hemm yw pur bosek y’n gettesten a’n kontrol possybyl a gedhlow Kernewek gans korforethow gallosek a-ves. Estenegieth jatelydhek re beu molleth war gowethasow y’n amal emperourethek ha nyns yw kowethas Kernewek dyffrans, wosa enebi kansvledhynnyow a’y rychys hag asnodhow naturek ow pos destryppys ha gwerthys dre vras gans budh tus yn-mes a Gernow.
An lyver henwys Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy a verk lemmyn y hyllir gweles perthynyansow kedhlow avel “pesyans a’n argerdhow ha systemow-krysi isworwedhek a estennans, drogusyans, kuntellyans ha diberghenogeth re beu gwrys war boblansow Teythyek dres trevesigeth istorek.”30 An konvedhes estennek ma a gedhlow yw, dell verkons, hevelebys a-der goderrys gans tyli pobel rag aga hedhlow.
Wostiwedh, res yw ma na vo agan yeth gorrys yn diwla a-ves routys gans pennrewlys perghenogel na as dhyn sovranedh lowr a onan a’gan asnodhow naturel an moyha posek: agan yeth. Res yw dhyn kavos pennrewlys kedhlow ygor, a-der plegya orth kontrol korforethel. Res yw dhyn lewya ha gidya an devnydh a’gan kedhlow, a-der y usya erbynn agan lesow ha rag pocketys tek bras.
A-der drehedhes an arwithans a davosow avel kudyn teknegiethel, my a dyb bos res dhe gemenethow teythyek bos reythhes yn politek, po der arghasans a wovernansow po dre dhifresyansow laghel dhe dhevnydhya aga yethow.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Pennskol Durham
Res yw dhyn ragwirhe yeth-avel-kemeneth ha hwilas devnydh ygor, ewnhynsek hag ethegel a’gan kerthennow yeth, ertach ha gonisogethel. Res yw dhyn goheles tybi a SK avel an hus mayth ambos ha kevarghewi yn hwithrans selyek, lewys gans agan kemeneth. Ny wra korforethow agan selwel ha, hogen, i a yll agan shyndya.
NYNS EUS KERNEWEK WAR BLANET MAROW
Governansow ha kevalav ollvysel […] yw omres dhe ideologieth marghas ‘rydh’ moy es dell yns omres dhe sewena kemenethow, pobel ha’n planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
An brassa rann a vreusyansow a SK a wrussa meneges hemma seulabrys. Onan a’n argyansow brassa yw erbynn SK Dinythus, mes rag own bos ankoth dhis, ni a wra mires orth an chif boyntys.
Res yw bos evadow an dowr goyeynhe pub kresen kedhlow SK. Y kollenk an dowr ma. Pennskol Kaliforni re dherivas “y hallsa demond dowr ollvysel SK hedhes 4.2-6.6 bilvil metrow kubek erbynn 2027. Henn yw moy es 50 kansran a us dowr bledhynnyek an RU yn 2023.”33 Y kettermyn, an Desedhek Ollvysel Erbysieth Dowr a dheklaryas “barras dowr ow tardha yn uskis” ma na dal Kernewek kevri dhodho.34
Ni re dheuth ha bos yn hwir omres dhe deknegiethow privedh gwrys ha kontrolys gans dornas a gompanis diskler [hag] a hevel bos mygyl dre vras orth an sewyansow sosyel a’ga gwriansow ha kevri yn ispoyntel marnas mars yns i konstrinys gans rewlys an wovernans dhe wellhe aga imach poblek.35
Iker Erdocia, Pennskol Sita Dulyn
Yma edhom dhe SK a vynsow kowrek a galesweyth orth kost palas monyow tanow. Kales yw estenna ha purhe an re ma hag yma kostow kerghynedhel ha sosyel poos. Estennys yns i yn fenowgh a hwelyow yn powyow gans difresyansow lakka rag lavur ha’n kerghynnedh. Reset a lever “yn fenowgh y hwra kemenethow yw trigys yn ogas dhe’n hwelyow, yn fenowgh bagasow lyhariv po teythyek, enebi gwethheans an tir, defolyans an dowr hag abusyans gwiryow denel. Meur a hemma a yll bos kelmys yn tidro orth an galesweyth SK.”36 Pan yw an galesweyth kegys yn sertan hag euver, ena tewlys yw avel e-wast yn kemenethow boghosek. Res yw nyns yw an avonsyans possybyl a Gernewek orth kost agan kemenethow hwor lyhariv ha teythyek.
Ynwedh res yw myns hujes a nerth rag trenya SK, yn skon martesen an keth myns ha pow byghan37 hag yma ol troos karbon kowrek.38 Kler yw—der usadow dowr, diwysyans estennek, konsumyans nerth hag ol troos karbon—bos SK yeyn nowodhow rag kerghynnedh ow strivya a’n planet mayth on ni trigys warnodho ha nyns eus Kernewek war blanet marow.
GUL DHE SK BOS EKS-PAPYNJAY
A-der gul dhe yethow lyhariv bos moy hedhadow, lemmyn yma SK ow kwruthyl tardhek pupprys owth omlesa rag studhyoryon ha kowsoryon a’n yethow ma dhe wolya.39
mit technology review
Ni re glewas a’n anwirhevelepter efan a wul dhe SK gallos mimya Kernewek yn golow an kostys yn kedhlow, ober, termyn ha teknegieth. Ni re gonsidras lycklod an dewisynter dispresyans yeyn po askorras-aspia ha’n posekter a sovranedh kedhlow. Ni re redyas a-dro dhe’n effeythyow war vewnansow Kernewegoryon, keffrys ha’n kostys katastrofek rag an kerghynnedh ha poblow teythyek.
Ni re dhyskas y hwra platheans yethel gans SK boghosekhe y destennow ha fatel yll SK martesen ervira a’gan parth fatel godh dh’agan yeth oberi. Ni re welas an anwoheladewder a yeth avel denel ha’n peryllyow a wul ‘dyskoryon’ na yll dyski ha ‘kowsoryon’ na yll kewsel. Ni re welas an peryllyow orth bri ha fydhyans rag kowethasow a wrussa palas an pyth hag yw gwelys avel ‘skomblans’.
Ni re glewas prag y fia omblegya orth an jagganat a SK error rag Kernewek ha dell na vynn agan kemeneth skoodhya gorra an skoos a-dhyworthyn. Yn y le, res yw dhyn batalyas. Res yw dhyn gul dhe Gernewek bos spas mar rydh a skomblans dell yll bos, res yw adhyski orth botlapyoryon yn dyski ha devnydh yeth yn ethegel hag yn effeythus, res yw goheles tybi wortaswerth.
Res yw dhyn gul dh’agan yeth bos parth heb SK, rosweyth a dus fydhyadow ha’ga gwriansow denel, drehevys war lelder, kemeneth, assay ha trest: Kernewek hag yw a-barth an bobel, a’n bobel ha gans an bobel.
Niwlen Ster
Notennow
* A prime example is the laughably-unaffordable restaurant RenMor, which The Headland Hotel thinks is a version of “Re’n Mor”, which they believe means “by the sea” as in “next to the sea” but actually means “by the sea!” like saying “by Zeus!”. This is both hilarious and enraging.
** A figure perhaps lower than it should be if you consider that many of the “emotional motives” which were not counted in this category, such as “I’m Cornish, what better reason do you need?”, do also refer to identity.
FENTENNOW
1. Judah, J. (2025) How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral, MIT Technology Review.
2. Ackermann, A. (2023) When AI doesn’t speak your language, Coda.
3. Crichton, D. (2024) AI and the Death of Human Languages, Lux.
4. Lamb, W. (2024). Could Artificial Intelligence save Scottish Gaelic?, The University of Edinburgh.
5. Dencik, L. (/2025) AI Inequalities: Minority Languages, TUC Cymru.
6. Joshi, P., Santy, S., Budhiraja, A., Bali, K., & Microsoft Research, India. (2020). The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World. Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
7. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
8. McLoughlin, I. (2018) How to teach AI to speak Welsh (and other minority languages), The Conversation.
9. Mallory, F. (2025) RISE UP Panel Discussion & Q&A: What AI Can and Cannot Do for Minoritised Languages, YouTube.
10. Perlin, R. (2024) AI Won’t Protect Endangered Languages, The Dial.
11. RISE UP (2025) #4 RISE UP Event Summary: What AI Can and Cannot Do For Minoritised Languages, RISE UP.
12. Mallory, F. (2024) European Day of Languages: Will lesser spoken languages soon only be kept alive by AI technology? Durham University.
13. Bender, E., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Mitchell, M. (2021) On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
14. Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025) The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers. Microsoft.
15. Perlin, R. (op cit)
16. Judah, J. (op cit)
17. Abbruzzese, J., & Wile, R. (2025) Is an AI backlash brewing? What ‘clanker’ says about growing frustrations with emerging tech, NBC News.
18. Webster, K. (2025) Why Using ChatGPT at Work Could Hurt Your Reputation, Inc. Magazine.
19. Herrman, J. (2024) Is That AI? Or Does It Just Suck?, Intelligencer.
20. Wilson, L. (2025) Skians Kreftus ha Kernewek/Artificial Intelligence and Cornish
21. Paschalidis, A. I. (2025) AI and the great linguistic flattening, UNESCO.
22. Wimmer, U. (2010). Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish. Cornish Language Board, p. 113
23. Koc, V. (2025) Generative AI and Large Language Models in Language Preservation: Opportunities and Challenges, ResearchGate.
24. Sourati, Z., Karimi-Malekabadi, F., & Ozcan, M. (2025) The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models, ResearchGate.
25. Melero, M. (2024) The Future of Language (and Cultural) Diversity in the Age of AI, CLARIN.
26. Perlin, R. (op cit)
27. Russo Carroll, S., Rodriguez Lonebear, D., & Martinez, A. (2017). Data Governance for Native Nation Rebuilding, Native Nations Institute.
28. Te Mana Raraunga. (2018). Frequently Asked Questions, Te Mana Raraunga.
29. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
30. Walter, M., Kukutai, T., Carroll, S. R., & Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (Eds.). (2020). Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Taylor & Francis, p. 24
31. Mallory, F. (op cit)
32. Cymdeithas yr Iaith (2022) Cymru Rydd, Cymru Werdd, Cymru Gymraeg., p. 27
33. O’Sullivan, L. (2025). How AI’s Failure on Linguistic Diversity is Deepening Global Inequality, RESET – Digital for Good.
34. Harvey, F. (2024). Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 years, The Guardian.
35. Erdocia, I., Migge, B., & Schneider, B. (2024). Language is not a data set—Why overcoming ideologies of dataism is more important than ever in the age of AI. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 28(5), p. 23
36. O’Sullivan, L. (op cit)
37. Erdenesanaa, D. (2023) A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country, The New York Times
38. Heikkilä, M. (2022) We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint, MIT Technology Review.
39. Judah, J. (op cit)#4 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Breus #Cornish #Cornwall #data #generativeAI #history #jynn #kedhlow #Kernewek #Kernow #Kernowek #LLM #machine #PYB #SK #SKDinythus #SkiansKreftus #Sordya
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Turning Saffron into Slop – Treylya Safran yn Skomblans
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
Note: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to be synonymous with Generative AI (GenAI) and with Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, in common parlance. Unless explicitly stated, I use the terms interchangeably.
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow*, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
LOW-RESOURCES AND LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY
Simply adding a language to an AI model leads to a spike in poor-quality articles, drowning out quality writing by humans. AI has “industrialized the acts of destruction—which affect vulnerable languages most, since AI translations are typically far less reliable for them.”1 Wikipedia editors from varied languages evidence that machine translation tools have made it easier than ever before to create shoddy articles in minoritised languages, causing massive damage in minutes. AI leads to non-speakers producing much longer, truthier rubbish, Sámi computational linguistics expert Trond Trosterud notes: “the problem [is] that they are armed with Google Translate. Earlier they were armed only with dictionaries.”1
Kernewek, like all but 60 of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages, is designated “low-resource”, meaning it lacks sufficient data to train a machine.2 It is tempting, therefore, to assume that the solution is to provide more data. However, training an LLM requires petabytes of text, audio and video—manually categorised and in a machine-readable format—a vast trove that Kernewek simply does not have.3 Professor Will Lamb, Chair of Gaelic Ethnology and Linguistics at Edinburgh University, speaks of “millions of work hours devoted to just one aspect” of a working AI.4
Even if ChatGPT is trained on another language than English, the time and labour required may make it largely unviable. Current assessments of the performance of ChatGPT for different languages have shown that it performs worse in all tasks.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Furthermore, the amount of data and work is not the only barrier; at issue is the nature of the language itself. Microsoft has found that languages such as Breton—and thus Kernewek—cause a high rate of errors distinct from the size of their dataset, due to grammatical features, such as mutation, not present in well-sourced languages. As such, they remain poor without significant additional work.6 Essentially, simply adding more Kernewek may not help. Thus, engaging with AI is, for Kernewek, to tie ourselves to slop.
Noten: Skians Kreftus (SK) re dheuth ha bos kesstyr gans SK Dinythus (SKDin) ha gans Patronyow Yeth Bras (PYB), kepar ha ChatGPT, yn lavar kemmyn. Marnas bos menegys yn kler, my a us an termys yn keschanjyadow.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow*, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
ASNODHOW ISL HA TIPOLOGIETH YETHEL
Keworra yeth yn sempel orth patron SK a led orth spik yn erthyglow drog aga kwalita, ow peudhi skrif a gwalita gans tus. SK re wrug “diwysyansegi an aktys diswrians—hag a nas yethow goliadow an moyha, drefen bos treylyansow SK lieskweyth le lel yn tipek ragdha.”1 Golegydhyon Wikipedia a yethow divers a re dustuni re wrug medhelweyth-treylya y wul bos esya dell veu bythkweth kyns gwruthyl erthyglow pilyek yn yethow lyharivhes, ow kawsya damach kowrek yn mynysennow. SK a led orth digowsoryon owth askorra atal lieskweyth hirra ha gwirekka, konnyk yethonieth reknansek Sámi Trond Trosterud a not: “an kudyn [yw] aga bos ervys gans Google Translate. A-varra nyns ens ervys marnas gans gerlyvrow.”1
Kernewek, kepar hag oll marnas 60 a ogas lowr 7,000 yeth a’n bys, yw klassys avel “isel y asnodhow”, ow styrya nag eus dhodho kedhlow lowr dhe drenya jynn.2 Rakhenna, dynyek yw desevos bos an assoylyans profya moy a gedhlow. Byttegyns, res yw petavaytys a dekst, son ha gwydhyow—klassys dre leuv hag yn furvas redyadow gans jynn— dhe drenya PYB, tresorva efan nag eus dhe Gernewek yn sempel.3 Y kews Professor Will Lamb, Kaderyer Ethnologieth ha Yethonieth Wodhalek orth Pennskol Karedin, a “vilvilyow a ourys ober sakrys orth unn wedh hepken” a SK owth oberi.4
Hogen mars yw ChatGPT trenys war yeth a-der Sowsnek, an termyn hag ober yw res a styr y vos martesen anhewul dre vras. Arvreusyansow a-lemmyn a berformyans a ChatGPT rag yethow dyffrans re dhiskwedhas y perform gweth yn oberennow oll.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Pella, nyns yw an myns a gedhlow hag ober an unsel lett; a vern yw natur an yeth y honan. Microsoft re drovyas y kaws yethow kepar ha Bretonek—hag ytho Kernewek—kevradh ughel a wallow diblans a vraster aga sett kedhlow, drefen nasyow gramasek, kepar ha treylyansow, nag usi kevys yn yethow ughel aga asnodhow. Yndella, i a bes orth bos drog heb meur a ober keworransel.6 Yn essensek, possybyl yw ny wra keworra moy a Gernewek yn sempel gweres. Yndelma, oberi gans SK yw, rag Kernewek, omgelmi orth skomblans.
CORNISH UNDER CAPITALISM
But surely we can improve things over time? It will take a lot of help from AI companies, but it will be worth it. Sadly, Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, has found that once a tech company has established basic capabilities for a language, they pat themselves on the back and move on.7
Big tech companies are just that: companies. They exist to make a profit. Unfortunately, a market dominated by big languages gives them no incentive to invest in improvements for small ones.
All of the speech technology, smart homes and voice interaction systems used today are the products of commercial research. To put it bluntly, they exist to either make money from your data, to sell you more goods and services, or to influence your thinking. None of this AI exists for the public good. […] Unless there is a strong enough economic argument, don’t expect big companies to rush into producing Welsh, Gaelic or Cornish speech systems.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, University of Kent
Should they decide that a Kernewek AI is a viable profit-making enterprise, our situation may even be worse than abandonment. As Dr. Fintan Mallory remarks, the dominant means of profit for privately-funded AI enterprises is to convert their tools into surveillance devices.9 As Kernewek is currently one of the UK’s only languages which is not currently easily surveillable, this poses a huge risk to Kernewek activism and the fight for self-determination in a state that seeks to criminalise dissent.
While we’re on the subject of Kernewek and its position under capitalism, let’s consider the human cost. I lost my 13-year career in language to AI as soon as English output became viable enough to excuse not paying a human. In the unlikely instance that we achieve an AI that can produce quality Kernewek, why would anyone bother paying speakers? The idea of AI sucking all the life out of my heritage language when we are struggling to survive as-is is appalling.
Simply put, profit is antithetical to people. While AI is the new favourite toy of profit, it will be antithetical to people. And a language is its people.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Combinations of characters on a screen mean nothing without agency and intention.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
While language is not unique to humans, it is one of the chief parts of being human. It cannot be reduced to mere data, but is a highly social process.11 We all know how synthetic customer support via robot sounds or how AI fails to pick up nuance. As Dr. Mallory comments, “Language [is] something more like the soul of a community. You can’t store this in a machine. You can’t solve a human problem like linguicide with a view of language that removes the human component.”12
AI cannot comprehend Kernewek or any other language. It is a stochastic parrot: predicting what word is likely to follow the previous one.13 It cannot understand us. It cannot intend anything. If it tells you it feels delighted to help you, it is lying. I want our community to grow, but one hundred ‘Cornish-speaking’ computers do not add to it. One human does—bringing ideas and hopes and fears and foibles—and I do not think the Kernewek ‘speaking’ computers will add even one human to our community.
Worse, if it does, there is evidence from Microsoft to suggest that the use of GenAI on language tasks, even once a week, impairs cognitive ability to learn, leading to decreased engagement with the topic, overreliance on the technology and hobbled skills in independent problem-solving.14 By using AI tools to ‘teach’ a learner Kernewek, we may in fact be impairing their ability to learn the language at all without this crutch. We will make regurgitators in place of speakers.
Perlin also emphasises the human element, saying that when we hold community central to our languages, as we do, the stochastic parrot can feel like a violation.15 At the moment, I can tell when someone is using AI ‘Kernewek’ to me. The idea that one day I will not know when an outsider—someone I would welcome if they took up a book or a class—is puppeting my ancestors’ jaws and speaking through them is ghoulish. It has the instant sting of colonialism, of appropriation when one could appreciate, of parroting when one could join our chorus.
Hawai’ian scholar Ha‘alilio Solomon agrees: “It is painful, because it reminds us of all the times that our culture and language has been appropriated. We have been fighting tooth and nail in an uphill climb for language revitalization.[…] People are going to think that this is an accurate representation of the Hawaiian language.”16
TRUST AND COMMUNITY FEELING
The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface.17
NBC NEWS
The explosion of insults for AI itself (clanker, tinskin, toaster), its output (slop, dross, brainrot) and its users (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—as well as others more clearly based on real-world slurs than I am comfortable to include—tells a tale of the general attitude of distrust and disgust towards the technology and its use on anglophone and other majority language internet.18 While the attitude among tech bros and corporates remains bombastic, for the general public AI is “becoming interchangeable with things that sort of suck.”19
Further, it’s not just majority languages with this negative view of AI as taint. A quick sampling of social media comments and likes regarding AI and Scottish Gaelic by Professor Lamb showed a split of 54% negative, 33% positive and 13% neutral. (Lamb, 2024) The sentiment of the top-rated negative comment was that AI is harmful and the second-highest that AI should be kept away from heritage languages.
What are we telling our descendants? That our language and culture isn’t worth the personal effort? That’s how I might read it, if I were them.20
Kernewek survey respondent
Kernewek paints an even starker picture, especially among younger and more technologically-savvy learners and speakers. A survey on Cornish Discord and Whatsapp found that 65% felt AI would be bad (11.5%) or very bad (53%) for the language. When asked what the community response should be to AI, 46% said we should prevent it and 27% avoid it, with only over-60s thinking that we should work with it.20
31% of respondents said using AI in Kernewek would cause them to feel estranged from the language, while 54% said that they would feel strongly estranged and 23% a little estranged from any organisation, resource or teacher using AI.
The response from those who gave their knowledge of AI as either “expert” or “good” was particularly damning. Everyone in this group responded that AI would be harmful for the language, that the use of AI would estrange them from a source strongly and that we should prevent the use of AI for Kernewek.
IDENTITY, AUTHENTICITY AND DIVERSITY
Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, writing for UNESCO, was not speaking specifically about minoritised languages when he asked this, but the question resonates even more strongly for us: “How much loss of identity is one willing to sacrifice for efficiency?”21
Identity is of paramount importance to Kernewek speakers. Ute Wimmer’s study Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish identified the language’s “function as a symbol of national identity” as the second highest motive (66%**) among speakers and learners, beaten only by Cornish culture (80%).22 This would seem cause for celebration, but when AI is added to the mix, it becomes a risk. Vincent Koc of Hyperlink states that AI can “inadvertently contribute to the dilution of language and cultural identity.”23
He also identifies that automating language learning or generation “may diminish the richness and authenticity that comes from human speakers who carry cultural histories in their speech.” Indeed, four studies by the University of Southern California have shown that using LLMs to assist writing “is linked to notable declines in linguistic diversity and may interfere with the societal and psychological insights language provides.”24
This is in English, one of the richest and largest languages in the world. Imagine the possible impact on a smaller language like Kernewek—with less documentation, less data, a tiny speakerbase and basically no money—and on its many language varieties and orthographies. Particular to the Kernewek context, Late speakers are already struggling to be seen as valid under the dominance of Middle. Do we think AI knows the difference? Thoughtlessly, it will either mix everything together, confusing everyone, or it will use Middle to overwhelm Late.
Generative AI-driven content creation, by favoring standardized languages, risks the disappearance of regional dialects.25
Barcelona supercomputing Center ….
Not only are varieties at risk; AI threatens to drown Kernewek as a whole. Perlin agrees that the linguistic flattening that occurred over centuries in English could manifest overnight in a minoritised language with AI at the helm—as it would be, being able to effortlessly outstrip human Kernewek. He raises concerns of LLMs freezing a language in place and even defining what it means to know the language, especially with low numbers of native speakers.26
Garbage translations multiply online like fake news. Native speakers of the languages in question are bypassed as being “too hard to find,” compared with automated methods of vetting that are completely disconnected from real-life communication. While larger and more powerful language communities may be able to hold the bots to account and even make strategic use of them, it is all too easy to imagine [a minority language] being overwhelmed.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Uncontrolled and in the hands of tech giants, synthetic Kernewek will outnumber and outmanoeuvre human Kernewek.
DATA SOVEREIGNTY AND COLONIALISM
Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of [an indigenous nation] to govern the collection, ownership, and application of its own data.27
Native Nations Institute
There are, however, indigenous cultures that are working on a more equitable relationship with AI. Tech without the giant requires resources, but it allows communities to retain data sovereignty over the cultural asset that is their language. Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, has created a list of principles for the creation, use and sharing of Māori data, prioritising the need to enhance control for current and future Māori.
They raise a key point that should be considered carefully by stewards of linguistic and cultural knowledge: “Data from us, and about us and our resources, are valuable assets. Once control of it is lost, it is difficult to regain.”28 Decisions must not be taken lightly or hastily; we can always say “yes” if we have previously said “no” to a particular dataset’s use, but can never say “no” if we have already said “yes”.
The AI field, like any other space, is occupied by people who are set in their ways and unintentionally have a very colonial perspective.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
This is vital in the context of the potential control of Kernewek data by powerful external corporations. Capitalist extractivism has long been a bane on societies in the imperial periphery and our Cornish society is no different, having faced centuries of its wealth and natural resources being stripped and sold by and large for the profit of those outside Cornwall.
The book Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy notes that current data relations can be seen as “a continuation of the processes and underlying belief systems of extraction, exploitation, accumulation and dispossession that have been visited on Indigenous populations through historical colonialism.”30 This extractive understanding of information is, they note, not disrupted but rather replicated by paying people for their data.
Ultimately, our language must not lie in outside hands governed by proprietary principles that do not allow us sufficient sovereignty over one of our most valuable natural resources: our language. We must have open data principles, not bow to corporate control. We must steer and steward the use of our data, rather than expose it to use against our interests and for the pockets of big tech.
Rather than approaching language preservation as a technical problem, I think indigenous communities need to be politically empowered, whether that be funding from governments or legal protections to use their languages.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Durham University
We must prioritise language-as-community and seek open, equitable and ethical use of our language, heritage and other cultural assets. We must avoid thinking of AI as the magic that it promises and invest in basic research, driven by our own community. Corporations will not save us and, indeed, may do us great harm.
NO CORNISH ON A DEAD PLANET
Global capitalism and governments […] are addicted to ‘free’ market ideology over the wellbeing of communities, people and the planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
Honestly, most takedowns of AI would have hit this point already. It’s one of the main arguments against Generative AI, but in case you’re not familiar with it, we will briefly look over the main points.
Water used in cooling AI data centers must be drinkable water. AI guzzles this water. The University of California has reported that “global water demand from AI could reach 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027. That exceeds 50 percent of the UK’s annual water use in 2023.”33 All this while the Global Commission on the Economics of Water has declared “a rapidly accelerating water crisis” to which Kernewek should not be contributing.34
We have become utterly dependent on private technologies manufactured and controlled by a handful of opaque companies [who] appear mostly indifferent to the social consequences of their activities and only invest minimally if obliged by government regulations to enhance their public image.35
Iker Erdocia, Dublin City University
AI requires vast quantities of hardware at the cost of mining rare earth minerals. These are difficult to extract and purify and come with heavy environmental and social costs. They are often extracted from mines in countries with poorer environmental and labour protections. Reset states that “communities living near these mines, often indigenous or minority groups, regularly face land degradation, water contamination and human rights abuses. Much of this can be directly linked to the AI hardware.”36 When the hardware inevitably cooks and is useless, it is then thrown out as e-waste into poor communities. The potential advancement of Kernewek must not come at the expense of our sister indigenous and minority communities.
Training an also AI requires huge amounts of energy, soon perhaps as much as a small country37 and has an enormous carbon footprint.38 What is clear is that—through water usage, extractive industry, energy consumption and carbon footprint—AI is bad news for the struggling environment of the planet we live on and there is no Cornish on a dead planet.
MAKING AI AN EX-PARROT
Rather than making minority languages more accessible, AI is now creating an ever expanding minefield for students and speakers of those languages to navigate.39
mit technology review
We have heard of the vast improbability of getting AI to be able to mimic Kernewek in light of the costs in data, work, time and technology. We have considered the likely choice of cold negligence or surveillance product and the importance of data sovereignty. We have read about the effects on the livelihoods of Cornish speakers, as well as the the catastrophic costs to the environment and indigenous peoples.
We have learned that linguistic flattening by AI impoverishes its subjects and how AI may decide for us how our language must operate. We have seen the inescapability of language as human and the risks of creating ‘learners’ who cannot learn and ‘speakers’ who cannot speak. We have seen the dangers to reputation and trust for any organisation who would shovel what is seen as ‘slop’.
We have heard why giving in to the juggernaut of AI would be a mistake for Kernewek and how our community does not support our laying down of the shield. Instead, we must fight. We must make Kernewek a space as free of slop as possible, we must educate botlickers into ethical and effective language learning and use, we must avoid second-hand thinking.
We must make our language a no AI zone, a network of reliable humans and their human creations, built on authenticity, community, effort and trust: a Kernewek for the people, of the people and by the people.
KERNEWEK YN-DANN GEVALAV
Mes yn sur y hyllyn ni gwellhe taklow dres termyn? Y fydh res meur a weres a gompanis SK, mes y talvia dhyn. Yn trist, Gabriel Nicholas, kesvroder hwithrans orth an Center for Democracy and Technology, re drovyas pan wrug kompani tek fondya gallosow selyek rag unn yeth, i a omgeslowenha yn ughel hag ena movya yn-rag.7
Kompanis tek bras yw yndella poran: kompanis. Ymons i ena rag gwaynya budh. Y’n gwettha prys, ny wra marghas rewlys gans yethow bras ri kentryn dhe gevarghewi yn gwellhe rag an re byghan.
Oll a’n deknegieth kows, chiow konnyk ha systemow ynterweythres lev usys hedhyw yw an askorrasow a hwithrans kenwerthel. Dhe vos sogh, yth yns i po rag dendyl arghans a’th kedhlow, po gwertha gwara ha gonisyow, po delenwel dha dybyansow. Nyns yw tra vyth a’n SK ma rag an les kemmyn. […] Mar nag eus argyans erbysek krev lowr, na wra gwaytya kompanis bras dhe fyski dhe askorra systemow kows Kembrek, Godhalek po Kernewek.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, pennskol kint
Ha mars ervirons bos SK Kernewek aventur a yll gwaynya budh, possybyl yw bos agan studh gweth ages dell via gans forsakyans. Dell lever Dr. Fintan Mallor, an fordh vrassa a waynya budh rag kompanis SK arghesys yn privedh yw kedreylya aga thoulys yn devisyow aspians.9 Drefen bos Kernewek onan a’n yethow boghes y’n RU nag yw aspiadow yn es y’n eur ma, hemm yw peryl kowrek rag gweythresieth Kernewek ha’gan strif a-barth omdhetermyans yn stat a vynn galweythegi dissent.
Ha ni ow tochya Kernewek ha’y savla yn-dann gevalav, gwren ni mires orth an kost denel. My a gellis ow soodh 13 bloodh yn yethow dhe SK kettooth ha dell veu eskorrans Sowsnek hewul lowr dhe askusya sevel orth tyli den. Y’n kas diwirhaval may kevyn SK hag a yll askorra Kernewek da, prag y hwrussa nebonan omankombra ow pe kowser? An tybyans a SK ow tenna oll an bewnans a’m taves ertach ha ni ow kwynnel dhe dreusvewa dell on yw skruthus.
Yn sempel, budh yw gorthenebel orth tus. Hedre vo SK an degen nowydh flamm a vudh, y fydh gorthenebel orth tus. Ha yeth yw hy thus.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Nyns eus styr dhe gesunyansow a lytherennow war skrin heb dewis ha heb mynnas.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Kyn nag yw yeth dibarow dhe dhensys, onan a’n rannow chif a vos denel yw. Ny yll bos lehes dhe gedhlow hepken, mes yth yw argerdh sosyel dres eghen.11 Ni oll a wor py mar synthesek y sen skoodhyans prener der SK po fatel yll SK fyllel orth konvedhes arliwyow. Dell gampol Dr. Mallory, “Yeth [yw] neppyth moy kepar hag enev a gemeneth. Ny yllir gwitha hemma yn jynn. Ny yllir assoylya kudyn denel kepar ha yethladhans gans gwel a yeth hag a remov an gerann denel.”12
Ny yll SK konvedhes Kernewek po taves vyth aral. Papynjay chonsus yw: y targan py ger yw gwirhaval wosa an huni kyns.13 Ny yll agan konvedhes. Ny yll mynnes tra vyth. Mar kwra derivas orthis y vos pes da dha weres, gow yw. My a vynn agan kemeneth dhe devi, mes ny wra kans jynn-amontya a yll ‘kewsel Kernewek’ keworra orti. Y hwra unn den—ow tri tybyansow ha govenegow hag ownow ha gwanderyow—ha ny dybav y hwra an jynnys-amontya kernwegorek keworra unn den hogen orth agan kemeneth.
Gwettha, mar kwra, yma dustuni a-dhyworth Microsoft hag a brof y hwra an devnydh a SKDin war oberennow yeth, unweyth an seythen hogen, aperya gallos godhvosel a dhyski, ow ledya orth omworrans lehes gans an desten, gorfydhyans y’n deknegieth ha sleyneth sprallys a assoylya kudynnow yn anserghek.14 Der usya toulys SK dhe ‘dhyski’ Kernewek, possybyl yw ni dhe shyndya gallos dyski an yeth vytholl heb an kroch ma. Ni a wra gul mimyoryon yn le Kernewegoryon.
Ynwedh Perlin a boslev an elven dhenel, ow leverel pan wren ni synsi kemeneth avel kres agan yethow, dell wren, an papynjay chonsus a yll bos klewys kepar ha defolyans.15 Y’n eur ma, my a aswon pan eus nebonan owth usya ‘Kernewek’ SK dhymm. An tybyans ny wrav vy unn jydh godhvos pan eus estren—nebonan a wrussen vy dynerghi mar pe lyver po klass ganses—ow popettya diwawen ow hengerens ha kewsel dresta yw bedhrosus. Yma dhe’n dra an wan dhistowgh a drevesigeth, a berghenegyans pan yllir gwerthveurhe, a bapynjaya pan yllir junya agan kesgan.
Unver yw skolheyk Hawai’i henwys Noah Ha‘alilio Solomon: “Ankensi yw, drefen ni dhe vos kofhes a’n prysyow oll re beu agan gonisogeth ha yeth perghenegys. Ni re beu owth omladh dre dhens hag ewines yn batel gales a-barth dasvewheans yeth.[…] Y hwra pobel krysi bos hemma representyans ewn a’n yeth a Hawai’i.”16
TREST HAG OMGLEWANS AN GEMENETH
Hir re beu an kil-lash gorthjynn ow kovryjyon mes lemmyn yma va ow terri an arenep dell hevel.17
NBC NEWS
Tardh an arvedhennow rag SK y honan (clanker, tinskin, toaster), y askorras (slop, dross, brainrot) ha’y usyoryon (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—keffrys hag erel selys moy yn kler war geryow kas gwir dell ov attes gans aga heworra—a re hwedhel a stons ollgemmyn a wogrys ha divlases war-tu hag an deknegieth ha’y devnydh war an kesrosweyth Sowsnek ha yethow bras erel.18 Kynth yw an stons yn-mysk gwesyon dek ha korforeth hwath gwresek, rag an boblek gemmyn y hwra SK “dos ha bos keschanjyadow gans taklow tamm kawgh.”19
Pella, nyns yw marnas yethow moyhariv gans an gwel negedhek ma a SK avel podrek. Sampel uskis a gampollow media sosyel ha meusi ow tochya SK ha Godhalek Alban gans Professor Lamb a dhiskwedhas fals a 54% negedhek, 33% posedhek ha 13% heptu. (Lamb, 2024) Sentiment an kampol negedhek an moyha talvesys o bos SK dregynnus hag an nessa y talvia dhyn lettya SK rag kestav gans tavosow ertach.
Pyth eson ni ow leverel orth agan diyskynysi? Ny dal agan yeth ha gonisogeth an strivyans personel? Hemm yw martesen fatel wrussen vy y redya, a pen vy i.20
Gorthebydh sondyans Kernewek
Kernewek a baynt aven moy serth, yn arbennik gans dyskoryon ha kowsoryon yowynka ha moy skentel gans tek. Sondyans war Discord ha Whatsapp Kernewek a drovyas bos 65% a grysis y fia SK drog (11.5%) po pur dhrog (53%) rag an yeth. Pan veu govynnys pyth a dal bos gorthyp an gemeneth orth SK, 46% a leveris y kodh y hedhi ha 27% y woheles, gans an dus moy ha 60 bloodh hepken ow tybi y kodh oberi ganso.20
31% a worthebydhyon an sondyans a leveris y hwrussa an devnydh a SK yn Kernewek aga fellhe a’n yeth, hag ynwedh 54% a leveris y fiens i pellhes yn krev ha 23% pellhes tamm a by kowethas, asnodh po dyskador pynag ow tevnydhya SK.
An gorthyp a’n re a leveris bos aga godhvos a SK po “konnyk” po “da” o dampnus yn arbennik. Pubonan y’n bagas ma a worthebis y fia SK dregynnus rag Kernewek, y hwrussa an devnydh a SK gans pennfenten aga fellhe a’n bennfenten na yn krev hag y kodh dhyn hedhi an devnydh a SK rag Kernewek.
HONANIETH, LELDER HA DIVERSETH
Nyns esa Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, ow skrifa a-barth UNESCO, ow kewsel yn komparek a-dro dhe yethow lyharivhes pan wrug ev y wovyn, mes an govyn a dhassen yn kreffa ragon: “Pygemmys koll a honanieth a vynnir sakrifia rag effeythuster?”21
Honanieth yw a’n moyha bri rag Kernewegoryon. Studhyans Ute Wimmer Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish a henow “gweythres [an yeth] avel arwodh a honanieth kenedhlek” avel an nessa ughella skila (66%**) yn-mysk kowsoryon ha dyskoryon, fethys gans gonisogeth Kernow (80%) hepken.22 Yth havalsa hemma bos acheson solempnyans, mes pan vo SK keworrys, y teu ha bos peryl. Vincent Koc a Hyperlink a lever y hyll SK “kevri dre wall orth an gwannheans a yeth ha honanieth wonisogethel”.23
Ev a aswon ynwedh y hallsa awtomategi dyski po dinythi yeth “lehe an rychedh ha lelder hag a dheu a gowsoryon dhenel neb a dheg istoriow gonisogethel y’ga hows”. Yn hwir, peswar studhyans gwrys gans Pennskol Kaliforni Soth re dhiskwedhas bos devnydhya PYB dhe weres gans skrifa “kelmys orth dyfygyansow nosedhek yn diverseth yethel hag y hyll mellya gans an konvedhes brysoniethel ha kowethasel yw proviys gans yeth.”24
Ha hemm yw yn Sowsnek, onan a’n yethow an ryccha ha brassa y’n bys. Dismyk an effeyth war yeth byghanna kepar ha Kernewek—gans le a dhogvennans, le a gedhlow, sel kowsoryon munys hag ogas hag arghans mann—ha war y lies orgraf hag eghen yeth. Yn arbennik yn gettesten Kernewek, seulabrys yma kowsoryon Diwedhes ow strivya dhe vos gwelys avel vas gans gwartheyvans Kres. A dybyn y hwor SK an dyffrans? Heb preder, y hwra po kemyska puptra warbarth, ow sowdheni pubonan, po devnydhya Kres dhe fetha Diwedhes.
An gwruthyl a dhalgh herdhys gans SK Dinythus, dre favera yethow savonegys, a argyl an vansyans a rannyethow ranndiryel.25
Kresen woramontyorieth Barcelona
Nyns yw eghennow hepken yn peryl; SK a wodros beudhi Kernewek yn tien. Akordys yw Perlin y hallsa an platheans yethel a hwarva dres kansbledhynnyow yn Sowsnek hwarvos dres nos yn yeth lyharivhes gans SK orth an fronnow—dell via, ow pos gallosek a bassya Kernewek denel heb assay. Ev a venek prederow yn kever PYB ow rewi yeth yn hy le ha hogen ow settya pyth yw an styr a wodhvos an yeth, yn arbennik gans niverow munys a gowsoryon deythyek.26
Treylyansow leun a atal a liesha warlinen kepar ha nowodhow fug. Kowsoryon deythyek a’n yethow ma yw passyes avel bos “re gales dhe drovya”, komparys orth fordhow awtomategys a surheans kwalita hag yw disjunys yn tien a geskomunyans y’n bys gwir. Kynth yw possybyl rag kemenethow yeth brassa ha moy gallosek synsi an bottys ma dhe akont ha’ga devnydhya yn stratejek hogen, re es yw dismygi [yeth lyhariv] ow pos reverthys.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Heb kontrol hag yn diwla an gewri deknegieth, Kernewek synthesek a wra gornivera ha gorthrabellhe Kernewek denel.
SOVRANEDH KEDHLOW HA KOLONEGIETH
Sovranedh kedhlow teythyek yw an gwir gans [kenedhel teythyek] a woverna an kuntel, perghenogeth ha gweytha a’y hedhlow hy honan.27
Native Nations Institute
Byttegyns, yma gonisogethow teythyek hag usi owth oberi war geskowethyans moy ewnhynsek gans SK. Tek heb an kowr a res asnodhow, mes y as kemenethow gwitha sovranedh kedhlow war an gerthen wonisogethel hag yw aga yeth. Te Mana Raraunga, Rosweyth Sovranedh Kedhlow Māori, re wrug rol a bennrewlys rag an gwruthyl, devnydhya ha kevrenna a gedhlow Māori, ow ragwirhe an edhom a grefhe maystri rag Māori a-lemmyn hag a dheu.
I a venek poynt posek hag a dalvia bos konsidrys gans rach gans stywards a skians yethel ha gonisogethel: “Kedhlow ahanan, a-dro dhyn ha’gan asnodhow, yw kerthennow a bris. Pan vo maystri kellys, kales yw y dhaskemeres.”28 Ny dal gul erviransow yn skav po yn uskis; y hyllyn pupprys leverel “ea” mar kwrussyn leverel “na” kyns orth us sett kedhlow, mes ny yllyn nevra leverel “na” mar kwrussyn leverel “ea” seulabrys.
An desten SK, kepar ha pub le aral, yw leun a dus hag yw settys y’ga maneryow ha gans gwel pur drevesigel yn tidowl.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
Hemm yw pur bosek y’n gettesten a’n kontrol possybyl a gedhlow Kernewek gans korforethow gallosek a-ves. Estenegieth jatelydhek re beu molleth war gowethasow y’n amal emperourethek ha nyns yw kowethas Kernewek dyffrans, wosa enebi kansvledhynnyow a’y rychys hag asnodhow naturek ow pos destryppys ha gwerthys dre vras gans budh tus yn-mes a Gernow.
An lyver henwys Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy a verk lemmyn y hyllir gweles perthynyansow kedhlow avel “pesyans a’n argerdhow ha systemow-krysi isworwedhek a estennans, drogusyans, kuntellyans ha diberghenogeth re beu gwrys war boblansow Teythyek dres trevesigeth istorek.”30 An konvedhes estennek ma a gedhlow yw, dell verkons, hevelebys a-der goderrys gans tyli pobel rag aga hedhlow.
Wostiwedh, res yw ma na vo agan yeth gorrys yn diwla a-ves routys gans pennrewlys perghenogel na as dhyn sovranedh lowr a onan a’gan asnodhow naturel an moyha posek: agan yeth. Res yw dhyn kavos pennrewlys kedhlow ygor, a-der plegya orth kontrol korforethel. Res yw dhyn lewya ha gidya an devnydh a’gan kedhlow, a-der y usya erbynn agan lesow ha rag pocketys tek bras.
A-der drehedhes an arwithans a davosow avel kudyn teknegiethel, my a dyb bos res dhe gemenethow teythyek bos reythhes yn politek, po der arghasans a wovernansow po dre dhifresyansow laghel dhe dhevnydhya aga yethow.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Pennskol Durham
Res yw dhyn ragwirhe yeth-avel-kemeneth ha hwilas devnydh ygor, ewnhynsek hag ethegel a’gan kerthennow yeth, ertach ha gonisogethel. Res yw dhyn goheles tybi a SK avel an hus mayth ambos ha kevarghewi yn hwithrans selyek, lewys gans agan kemeneth. Ny wra korforethow agan selwel ha, hogen, i a yll agan shyndya.
NYNS EUS KERNEWEK WAR BLANET MAROW
Governansow ha kevalav ollvysel […] yw omres dhe ideologieth marghas ‘rydh’ moy es dell yns omres dhe sewena kemenethow, pobel ha’n planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
An brassa rann a vreusyansow a SK a wrussa meneges hemma seulabrys. Onan a’n argyansow brassa yw erbynn SK Dinythus, mes rag own bos ankoth dhis, ni a wra mires orth an chif boyntys.
Res yw bos evadow an dowr goyeynhe pub kresen kedhlow SK. Y kollenk an dowr ma. Pennskol Kaliforni re dherivas “y hallsa demond dowr ollvysel SK hedhes 4.2-6.6 bilvil metrow kubek erbynn 2027. Henn yw moy es 50 kansran a us dowr bledhynnyek an RU yn 2023.”33 Y kettermyn, an Desedhek Ollvysel Erbysieth Dowr a dheklaryas “barras dowr ow tardha yn uskis” ma na dal Kernewek kevri dhodho.34
Ni re dheuth ha bos yn hwir omres dhe deknegiethow privedh gwrys ha kontrolys gans dornas a gompanis diskler [hag] a hevel bos mygyl dre vras orth an sewyansow sosyel a’ga gwriansow ha kevri yn ispoyntel marnas mars yns i konstrinys gans rewlys an wovernans dhe wellhe aga imach poblek.35
Iker Erdocia, Pennskol Sita Dulyn
Yma edhom dhe SK a vynsow kowrek a galesweyth orth kost palas monyow tanow. Kales yw estenna ha purhe an re ma hag yma kostow kerghynedhel ha sosyel poos. Estennys yns i yn fenowgh a hwelyow yn powyow gans difresyansow lakka rag lavur ha’n kerghynnedh. Reset a lever “yn fenowgh y hwra kemenethow yw trigys yn ogas dhe’n hwelyow, yn fenowgh bagasow lyhariv po teythyek, enebi gwethheans an tir, defolyans an dowr hag abusyans gwiryow denel. Meur a hemma a yll bos kelmys yn tidro orth an galesweyth SK.”36 Pan yw an galesweyth kegys yn sertan hag euver, ena tewlys yw avel e-wast yn kemenethow boghosek. Res yw nyns yw an avonsyans possybyl a Gernewek orth kost agan kemenethow hwor lyhariv ha teythyek.
Ynwedh res yw myns hujes a nerth rag trenya SK, yn skon martesen an keth myns ha pow byghan37 hag yma ol troos karbon kowrek.38 Kler yw—der usadow dowr, diwysyans estennek, konsumyans nerth hag ol troos karbon—bos SK yeyn nowodhow rag kerghynnedh ow strivya a’n planet mayth on ni trigys warnodho ha nyns eus Kernewek war blanet marow.
GUL DHE SK BOS EKS-PAPYNJAY
A-der gul dhe yethow lyhariv bos moy hedhadow, lemmyn yma SK ow kwruthyl tardhek pupprys owth omlesa rag studhyoryon ha kowsoryon a’n yethow ma dhe wolya.39
mit technology review
Ni re glewas a’n anwirhevelepter efan a wul dhe SK gallos mimya Kernewek yn golow an kostys yn kedhlow, ober, termyn ha teknegieth. Ni re gonsidras lycklod an dewisynter dispresyans yeyn po askorras-aspia ha’n posekter a sovranedh kedhlow. Ni re redyas a-dro dhe’n effeythyow war vewnansow Kernewegoryon, keffrys ha’n kostys katastrofek rag an kerghynnedh ha poblow teythyek.
Ni re dhyskas y hwra platheans yethel gans SK boghosekhe y destennow ha fatel yll SK martesen ervira a’gan parth fatel godh dh’agan yeth oberi. Ni re welas an anwoheladewder a yeth avel denel ha’n peryllyow a wul ‘dyskoryon’ na yll dyski ha ‘kowsoryon’ na yll kewsel. Ni re welas an peryllyow orth bri ha fydhyans rag kowethasow a wrussa palas an pyth hag yw gwelys avel ‘skomblans’.
Ni re glewas prag y fia omblegya orth an jagganat a SK error rag Kernewek ha dell na vynn agan kemeneth skoodhya gorra an skoos a-dhyworthyn. Yn y le, res yw dhyn batalyas. Res yw dhyn gul dhe Gernewek bos spas mar rydh a skomblans dell yll bos, res yw adhyski orth botlapyoryon yn dyski ha devnydh yeth yn ethegel hag yn effeythus, res yw goheles tybi wortaswerth.
Res yw dhyn gul dh’agan yeth bos parth heb SK, rosweyth a dus fydhyadow ha’ga gwriansow denel, drehevys war lelder, kemeneth, assay ha trest: Kernewek hag yw a-barth an bobel, a’n bobel ha gans an bobel.
Niwlen Ster
Notennow
* A prime example is the laughably-unaffordable restaurant RenMor, which The Headland Hotel thinks is a version of “Re’n Mor”, which they believe means “by the sea” as in “next to the sea” but actually means “by the sea!” like saying “by Zeus!”. This is both hilarious and enraging.
** A figure perhaps lower than it should be if you consider that many of the “emotional motives” which were not counted in this category, such as “I’m Cornish, what better reason do you need?”, do also refer to identity.
FENTENNOW
1. Judah, J. (2025) How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral, MIT Technology Review.
2. Ackermann, A. (2023) When AI doesn’t speak your language, Coda.
3. Crichton, D. (2024) AI and the Death of Human Languages, Lux.
4. Lamb, W. (2024). Could Artificial Intelligence save Scottish Gaelic?, The University of Edinburgh.
5. Dencik, L. (/2025) AI Inequalities: Minority Languages, TUC Cymru.
6. Joshi, P., Santy, S., Budhiraja, A., Bali, K., & Microsoft Research, India. (2020). The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World. Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
7. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
8. McLoughlin, I. (2018) How to teach AI to speak Welsh (and other minority languages), The Conversation.
9. Mallory, F. (2025) RISE UP Panel Discussion & Q&A: What AI Can and Cannot Do for Minoritised Languages, YouTube.
10. Perlin, R. (2024) AI Won’t Protect Endangered Languages, The Dial.
11. RISE UP (2025) #4 RISE UP Event Summary: What AI Can and Cannot Do For Minoritised Languages, RISE UP.
12. Mallory, F. (2024) European Day of Languages: Will lesser spoken languages soon only be kept alive by AI technology? Durham University.
13. Bender, E., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Mitchell, M. (2021) On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
14. Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025) The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers. Microsoft.
15. Perlin, R. (op cit)
16. Judah, J. (op cit)
17. Abbruzzese, J., & Wile, R. (2025) Is an AI backlash brewing? What ‘clanker’ says about growing frustrations with emerging tech, NBC News.
18. Webster, K. (2025) Why Using ChatGPT at Work Could Hurt Your Reputation, Inc. Magazine.
19. Herrman, J. (2024) Is That AI? Or Does It Just Suck?, Intelligencer.
20. Wilson, L. (2025) Skians Kreftus ha Kernewek/Artificial Intelligence and Cornish
21. Paschalidis, A. I. (2025) AI and the great linguistic flattening, UNESCO.
22. Wimmer, U. (2010). Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish. Cornish Language Board, p. 113
23. Koc, V. (2025) Generative AI and Large Language Models in Language Preservation: Opportunities and Challenges, ResearchGate.
24. Sourati, Z., Karimi-Malekabadi, F., & Ozcan, M. (2025) The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models, ResearchGate.
25. Melero, M. (2024) The Future of Language (and Cultural) Diversity in the Age of AI, CLARIN.
26. Perlin, R. (op cit)
27. Russo Carroll, S., Rodriguez Lonebear, D., & Martinez, A. (2017). Data Governance for Native Nation Rebuilding, Native Nations Institute.
28. Te Mana Raraunga. (2018). Frequently Asked Questions, Te Mana Raraunga.
29. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
30. Walter, M., Kukutai, T., Carroll, S. R., & Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (Eds.). (2020). Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Taylor & Francis, p. 24
31. Mallory, F. (op cit)
32. Cymdeithas yr Iaith (2022) Cymru Rydd, Cymru Werdd, Cymru Gymraeg., p. 27
33. O’Sullivan, L. (2025). How AI’s Failure on Linguistic Diversity is Deepening Global Inequality, RESET – Digital for Good.
34. Harvey, F. (2024). Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 years, The Guardian.
35. Erdocia, I., Migge, B., & Schneider, B. (2024). Language is not a data set—Why overcoming ideologies of dataism is more important than ever in the age of AI. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 28(5), p. 23
36. O’Sullivan, L. (op cit)
37. Erdenesanaa, D. (2023) A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country, The New York Times
38. Heikkilä, M. (2022) We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint, MIT Technology Review.
39. Judah, J. (op cit)#4 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Breus #Cornish #Cornwall #data #generativeAI #history #jynn #kedhlow #Kernewek #Kernow #Kernowek #LLM #machine #PYB #SK #SKDinythus #SkiansKreftus #Sordya
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Turning Saffron into Slop – Treylya Safran yn Skomblans
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
Note: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to be synonymous with Generative AI (GenAI) and with Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, in common parlance. Unless explicitly stated, I use the terms interchangeably.
Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow*, the shoddiness has spiralled.
Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.
There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.
LOW-RESOURCES AND LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY
Simply adding a language to an AI model leads to a spike in poor-quality articles, drowning out quality writing by humans. AI has “industrialized the acts of destruction—which affect vulnerable languages most, since AI translations are typically far less reliable for them.”1 Wikipedia editors from varied languages evidence that machine translation tools have made it easier than ever before to create shoddy articles in minoritised languages, causing massive damage in minutes. AI leads to non-speakers producing much longer, truthier rubbish, Sámi computational linguistics expert Trond Trosterud notes: “the problem [is] that they are armed with Google Translate. Earlier they were armed only with dictionaries.”1
Kernewek, like all but 60 of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages, is designated “low-resource”, meaning it lacks sufficient data to train a machine.2 It is tempting, therefore, to assume that the solution is to provide more data. However, training an LLM requires petabytes of text, audio and video—manually categorised and in a machine-readable format—a vast trove that Kernewek simply does not have.3 Professor Will Lamb, Chair of Gaelic Ethnology and Linguistics at Edinburgh University, speaks of “millions of work hours devoted to just one aspect” of a working AI.4
Even if ChatGPT is trained on another language than English, the time and labour required may make it largely unviable. Current assessments of the performance of ChatGPT for different languages have shown that it performs worse in all tasks.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Furthermore, the amount of data and work is not the only barrier; at issue is the nature of the language itself. Microsoft has found that languages such as Breton—and thus Kernewek—cause a high rate of errors distinct from the size of their dataset, due to grammatical features, such as mutation, not present in well-sourced languages. As such, they remain poor without significant additional work.6 Essentially, simply adding more Kernewek may not help. Thus, engaging with AI is, for Kernewek, to tie ourselves to slop.
Noten: Skians Kreftus (SK) re dheuth ha bos kesstyr gans SK Dinythus (SKDin) ha gans Patronyow Yeth Bras (PYB), kepar ha ChatGPT, yn lavar kemmyn. Marnas bos menegys yn kler, my a us an termys yn keschanjyadow.
Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow*, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.
‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.
Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.
ASNODHOW ISL HA TIPOLOGIETH YETHEL
Keworra yeth yn sempel orth patron SK a led orth spik yn erthyglow drog aga kwalita, ow peudhi skrif a gwalita gans tus. SK re wrug “diwysyansegi an aktys diswrians—hag a nas yethow goliadow an moyha, drefen bos treylyansow SK lieskweyth le lel yn tipek ragdha.”1 Golegydhyon Wikipedia a yethow divers a re dustuni re wrug medhelweyth-treylya y wul bos esya dell veu bythkweth kyns gwruthyl erthyglow pilyek yn yethow lyharivhes, ow kawsya damach kowrek yn mynysennow. SK a led orth digowsoryon owth askorra atal lieskweyth hirra ha gwirekka, konnyk yethonieth reknansek Sámi Trond Trosterud a not: “an kudyn [yw] aga bos ervys gans Google Translate. A-varra nyns ens ervys marnas gans gerlyvrow.”1
Kernewek, kepar hag oll marnas 60 a ogas lowr 7,000 yeth a’n bys, yw klassys avel “isel y asnodhow”, ow styrya nag eus dhodho kedhlow lowr dhe drenya jynn.2 Rakhenna, dynyek yw desevos bos an assoylyans profya moy a gedhlow. Byttegyns, res yw petavaytys a dekst, son ha gwydhyow—klassys dre leuv hag yn furvas redyadow gans jynn— dhe drenya PYB, tresorva efan nag eus dhe Gernewek yn sempel.3 Y kews Professor Will Lamb, Kaderyer Ethnologieth ha Yethonieth Wodhalek orth Pennskol Karedin, a “vilvilyow a ourys ober sakrys orth unn wedh hepken” a SK owth oberi.4
Hogen mars yw ChatGPT trenys war yeth a-der Sowsnek, an termyn hag ober yw res a styr y vos martesen anhewul dre vras. Arvreusyansow a-lemmyn a berformyans a ChatGPT rag yethow dyffrans re dhiskwedhas y perform gweth yn oberennow oll.5
Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab
Pella, nyns yw an myns a gedhlow hag ober an unsel lett; a vern yw natur an yeth y honan. Microsoft re drovyas y kaws yethow kepar ha Bretonek—hag ytho Kernewek—kevradh ughel a wallow diblans a vraster aga sett kedhlow, drefen nasyow gramasek, kepar ha treylyansow, nag usi kevys yn yethow ughel aga asnodhow. Yndella, i a bes orth bos drog heb meur a ober keworransel.6 Yn essensek, possybyl yw ny wra keworra moy a Gernewek yn sempel gweres. Yndelma, oberi gans SK yw, rag Kernewek, omgelmi orth skomblans.
CORNISH UNDER CAPITALISM
But surely we can improve things over time? It will take a lot of help from AI companies, but it will be worth it. Sadly, Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, has found that once a tech company has established basic capabilities for a language, they pat themselves on the back and move on.7
Big tech companies are just that: companies. They exist to make a profit. Unfortunately, a market dominated by big languages gives them no incentive to invest in improvements for small ones.
All of the speech technology, smart homes and voice interaction systems used today are the products of commercial research. To put it bluntly, they exist to either make money from your data, to sell you more goods and services, or to influence your thinking. None of this AI exists for the public good. […] Unless there is a strong enough economic argument, don’t expect big companies to rush into producing Welsh, Gaelic or Cornish speech systems.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, University of Kent
Should they decide that a Kernewek AI is a viable profit-making enterprise, our situation may even be worse than abandonment. As Dr. Fintan Mallory remarks, the dominant means of profit for privately-funded AI enterprises is to convert their tools into surveillance devices.9 As Kernewek is currently one of the UK’s only languages which is not currently easily surveillable, this poses a huge risk to Kernewek activism and the fight for self-determination in a state that seeks to criminalise dissent.
While we’re on the subject of Kernewek and its position under capitalism, let’s consider the human cost. I lost my 13-year career in language to AI as soon as English output became viable enough to excuse not paying a human. In the unlikely instance that we achieve an AI that can produce quality Kernewek, why would anyone bother paying speakers? The idea of AI sucking all the life out of my heritage language when we are struggling to survive as-is is appalling.
Simply put, profit is antithetical to people. While AI is the new favourite toy of profit, it will be antithetical to people. And a language is its people.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Combinations of characters on a screen mean nothing without agency and intention.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
While language is not unique to humans, it is one of the chief parts of being human. It cannot be reduced to mere data, but is a highly social process.11 We all know how synthetic customer support via robot sounds or how AI fails to pick up nuance. As Dr. Mallory comments, “Language [is] something more like the soul of a community. You can’t store this in a machine. You can’t solve a human problem like linguicide with a view of language that removes the human component.”12
AI cannot comprehend Kernewek or any other language. It is a stochastic parrot: predicting what word is likely to follow the previous one.13 It cannot understand us. It cannot intend anything. If it tells you it feels delighted to help you, it is lying. I want our community to grow, but one hundred ‘Cornish-speaking’ computers do not add to it. One human does—bringing ideas and hopes and fears and foibles—and I do not think the Kernewek ‘speaking’ computers will add even one human to our community.
Worse, if it does, there is evidence from Microsoft to suggest that the use of GenAI on language tasks, even once a week, impairs cognitive ability to learn, leading to decreased engagement with the topic, overreliance on the technology and hobbled skills in independent problem-solving.14 By using AI tools to ‘teach’ a learner Kernewek, we may in fact be impairing their ability to learn the language at all without this crutch. We will make regurgitators in place of speakers.
Perlin also emphasises the human element, saying that when we hold community central to our languages, as we do, the stochastic parrot can feel like a violation.15 At the moment, I can tell when someone is using AI ‘Kernewek’ to me. The idea that one day I will not know when an outsider—someone I would welcome if they took up a book or a class—is puppeting my ancestors’ jaws and speaking through them is ghoulish. It has the instant sting of colonialism, of appropriation when one could appreciate, of parroting when one could join our chorus.
Hawai’ian scholar Ha‘alilio Solomon agrees: “It is painful, because it reminds us of all the times that our culture and language has been appropriated. We have been fighting tooth and nail in an uphill climb for language revitalization.[…] People are going to think that this is an accurate representation of the Hawaiian language.”16
TRUST AND COMMUNITY FEELING
The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface.17
NBC NEWS
The explosion of insults for AI itself (clanker, tinskin, toaster), its output (slop, dross, brainrot) and its users (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—as well as others more clearly based on real-world slurs than I am comfortable to include—tells a tale of the general attitude of distrust and disgust towards the technology and its use on anglophone and other majority language internet.18 While the attitude among tech bros and corporates remains bombastic, for the general public AI is “becoming interchangeable with things that sort of suck.”19
Further, it’s not just majority languages with this negative view of AI as taint. A quick sampling of social media comments and likes regarding AI and Scottish Gaelic by Professor Lamb showed a split of 54% negative, 33% positive and 13% neutral. (Lamb, 2024) The sentiment of the top-rated negative comment was that AI is harmful and the second-highest that AI should be kept away from heritage languages.
What are we telling our descendants? That our language and culture isn’t worth the personal effort? That’s how I might read it, if I were them.20
Kernewek survey respondent
Kernewek paints an even starker picture, especially among younger and more technologically-savvy learners and speakers. A survey on Cornish Discord and Whatsapp found that 65% felt AI would be bad (11.5%) or very bad (53%) for the language. When asked what the community response should be to AI, 46% said we should prevent it and 27% avoid it, with only over-60s thinking that we should work with it.20
31% of respondents said using AI in Kernewek would cause them to feel estranged from the language, while 54% said that they would feel strongly estranged and 23% a little estranged from any organisation, resource or teacher using AI.
The response from those who gave their knowledge of AI as either “expert” or “good” was particularly damning. Everyone in this group responded that AI would be harmful for the language, that the use of AI would estrange them from a source strongly and that we should prevent the use of AI for Kernewek.
IDENTITY, AUTHENTICITY AND DIVERSITY
Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, writing for UNESCO, was not speaking specifically about minoritised languages when he asked this, but the question resonates even more strongly for us: “How much loss of identity is one willing to sacrifice for efficiency?”21
Identity is of paramount importance to Kernewek speakers. Ute Wimmer’s study Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish identified the language’s “function as a symbol of national identity” as the second highest motive (66%**) among speakers and learners, beaten only by Cornish culture (80%).22 This would seem cause for celebration, but when AI is added to the mix, it becomes a risk. Vincent Koc of Hyperlink states that AI can “inadvertently contribute to the dilution of language and cultural identity.”23
He also identifies that automating language learning or generation “may diminish the richness and authenticity that comes from human speakers who carry cultural histories in their speech.” Indeed, four studies by the University of Southern California have shown that using LLMs to assist writing “is linked to notable declines in linguistic diversity and may interfere with the societal and psychological insights language provides.”24
This is in English, one of the richest and largest languages in the world. Imagine the possible impact on a smaller language like Kernewek—with less documentation, less data, a tiny speakerbase and basically no money—and on its many language varieties and orthographies. Particular to the Kernewek context, Late speakers are already struggling to be seen as valid under the dominance of Middle. Do we think AI knows the difference? Thoughtlessly, it will either mix everything together, confusing everyone, or it will use Middle to overwhelm Late.
Generative AI-driven content creation, by favoring standardized languages, risks the disappearance of regional dialects.25
Barcelona supercomputing Center ….
Not only are varieties at risk; AI threatens to drown Kernewek as a whole. Perlin agrees that the linguistic flattening that occurred over centuries in English could manifest overnight in a minoritised language with AI at the helm—as it would be, being able to effortlessly outstrip human Kernewek. He raises concerns of LLMs freezing a language in place and even defining what it means to know the language, especially with low numbers of native speakers.26
Garbage translations multiply online like fake news. Native speakers of the languages in question are bypassed as being “too hard to find,” compared with automated methods of vetting that are completely disconnected from real-life communication. While larger and more powerful language communities may be able to hold the bots to account and even make strategic use of them, it is all too easy to imagine [a minority language] being overwhelmed.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Uncontrolled and in the hands of tech giants, synthetic Kernewek will outnumber and outmanoeuvre human Kernewek.
DATA SOVEREIGNTY AND COLONIALISM
Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of [an indigenous nation] to govern the collection, ownership, and application of its own data.27
Native Nations Institute
There are, however, indigenous cultures that are working on a more equitable relationship with AI. Tech without the giant requires resources, but it allows communities to retain data sovereignty over the cultural asset that is their language. Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, has created a list of principles for the creation, use and sharing of Māori data, prioritising the need to enhance control for current and future Māori.
They raise a key point that should be considered carefully by stewards of linguistic and cultural knowledge: “Data from us, and about us and our resources, are valuable assets. Once control of it is lost, it is difficult to regain.”28 Decisions must not be taken lightly or hastily; we can always say “yes” if we have previously said “no” to a particular dataset’s use, but can never say “no” if we have already said “yes”.
The AI field, like any other space, is occupied by people who are set in their ways and unintentionally have a very colonial perspective.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
This is vital in the context of the potential control of Kernewek data by powerful external corporations. Capitalist extractivism has long been a bane on societies in the imperial periphery and our Cornish society is no different, having faced centuries of its wealth and natural resources being stripped and sold by and large for the profit of those outside Cornwall.
The book Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy notes that current data relations can be seen as “a continuation of the processes and underlying belief systems of extraction, exploitation, accumulation and dispossession that have been visited on Indigenous populations through historical colonialism.”30 This extractive understanding of information is, they note, not disrupted but rather replicated by paying people for their data.
Ultimately, our language must not lie in outside hands governed by proprietary principles that do not allow us sufficient sovereignty over one of our most valuable natural resources: our language. We must have open data principles, not bow to corporate control. We must steer and steward the use of our data, rather than expose it to use against our interests and for the pockets of big tech.
Rather than approaching language preservation as a technical problem, I think indigenous communities need to be politically empowered, whether that be funding from governments or legal protections to use their languages.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Durham University
We must prioritise language-as-community and seek open, equitable and ethical use of our language, heritage and other cultural assets. We must avoid thinking of AI as the magic that it promises and invest in basic research, driven by our own community. Corporations will not save us and, indeed, may do us great harm.
NO CORNISH ON A DEAD PLANET
Global capitalism and governments […] are addicted to ‘free’ market ideology over the wellbeing of communities, people and the planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
Honestly, most takedowns of AI would have hit this point already. It’s one of the main arguments against Generative AI, but in case you’re not familiar with it, we will briefly look over the main points.
Water used in cooling AI data centers must be drinkable water. AI guzzles this water. The University of California has reported that “global water demand from AI could reach 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027. That exceeds 50 percent of the UK’s annual water use in 2023.”33 All this while the Global Commission on the Economics of Water has declared “a rapidly accelerating water crisis” to which Kernewek should not be contributing.34
We have become utterly dependent on private technologies manufactured and controlled by a handful of opaque companies [who] appear mostly indifferent to the social consequences of their activities and only invest minimally if obliged by government regulations to enhance their public image.35
Iker Erdocia, Dublin City University
AI requires vast quantities of hardware at the cost of mining rare earth minerals. These are difficult to extract and purify and come with heavy environmental and social costs. They are often extracted from mines in countries with poorer environmental and labour protections. Reset states that “communities living near these mines, often indigenous or minority groups, regularly face land degradation, water contamination and human rights abuses. Much of this can be directly linked to the AI hardware.”36 When the hardware inevitably cooks and is useless, it is then thrown out as e-waste into poor communities. The potential advancement of Kernewek must not come at the expense of our sister indigenous and minority communities.
Training an also AI requires huge amounts of energy, soon perhaps as much as a small country37 and has an enormous carbon footprint.38 What is clear is that—through water usage, extractive industry, energy consumption and carbon footprint—AI is bad news for the struggling environment of the planet we live on and there is no Cornish on a dead planet.
MAKING AI AN EX-PARROT
Rather than making minority languages more accessible, AI is now creating an ever expanding minefield for students and speakers of those languages to navigate.39
mit technology review
We have heard of the vast improbability of getting AI to be able to mimic Kernewek in light of the costs in data, work, time and technology. We have considered the likely choice of cold negligence or surveillance product and the importance of data sovereignty. We have read about the effects on the livelihoods of Cornish speakers, as well as the the catastrophic costs to the environment and indigenous peoples.
We have learned that linguistic flattening by AI impoverishes its subjects and how AI may decide for us how our language must operate. We have seen the inescapability of language as human and the risks of creating ‘learners’ who cannot learn and ‘speakers’ who cannot speak. We have seen the dangers to reputation and trust for any organisation who would shovel what is seen as ‘slop’.
We have heard why giving in to the juggernaut of AI would be a mistake for Kernewek and how our community does not support our laying down of the shield. Instead, we must fight. We must make Kernewek a space as free of slop as possible, we must educate botlickers into ethical and effective language learning and use, we must avoid second-hand thinking.
We must make our language a no AI zone, a network of reliable humans and their human creations, built on authenticity, community, effort and trust: a Kernewek for the people, of the people and by the people.
KERNEWEK YN-DANN GEVALAV
Mes yn sur y hyllyn ni gwellhe taklow dres termyn? Y fydh res meur a weres a gompanis SK, mes y talvia dhyn. Yn trist, Gabriel Nicholas, kesvroder hwithrans orth an Center for Democracy and Technology, re drovyas pan wrug kompani tek fondya gallosow selyek rag unn yeth, i a omgeslowenha yn ughel hag ena movya yn-rag.7
Kompanis tek bras yw yndella poran: kompanis. Ymons i ena rag gwaynya budh. Y’n gwettha prys, ny wra marghas rewlys gans yethow bras ri kentryn dhe gevarghewi yn gwellhe rag an re byghan.
Oll a’n deknegieth kows, chiow konnyk ha systemow ynterweythres lev usys hedhyw yw an askorrasow a hwithrans kenwerthel. Dhe vos sogh, yth yns i po rag dendyl arghans a’th kedhlow, po gwertha gwara ha gonisyow, po delenwel dha dybyansow. Nyns yw tra vyth a’n SK ma rag an les kemmyn. […] Mar nag eus argyans erbysek krev lowr, na wra gwaytya kompanis bras dhe fyski dhe askorra systemow kows Kembrek, Godhalek po Kernewek.8
Prof. Ian McLoughlin, pennskol kint
Ha mars ervirons bos SK Kernewek aventur a yll gwaynya budh, possybyl yw bos agan studh gweth ages dell via gans forsakyans. Dell lever Dr. Fintan Mallor, an fordh vrassa a waynya budh rag kompanis SK arghesys yn privedh yw kedreylya aga thoulys yn devisyow aspians.9 Drefen bos Kernewek onan a’n yethow boghes y’n RU nag yw aspiadow yn es y’n eur ma, hemm yw peryl kowrek rag gweythresieth Kernewek ha’gan strif a-barth omdhetermyans yn stat a vynn galweythegi dissent.
Ha ni ow tochya Kernewek ha’y savla yn-dann gevalav, gwren ni mires orth an kost denel. My a gellis ow soodh 13 bloodh yn yethow dhe SK kettooth ha dell veu eskorrans Sowsnek hewul lowr dhe askusya sevel orth tyli den. Y’n kas diwirhaval may kevyn SK hag a yll askorra Kernewek da, prag y hwrussa nebonan omankombra ow pe kowser? An tybyans a SK ow tenna oll an bewnans a’m taves ertach ha ni ow kwynnel dhe dreusvewa dell on yw skruthus.
Yn sempel, budh yw gorthenebel orth tus. Hedre vo SK an degen nowydh flamm a vudh, y fydh gorthenebel orth tus. Ha yeth yw hy thus.
KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON
Nyns eus styr dhe gesunyansow a lytherennow war skrin heb dewis ha heb mynnas.10
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Kyn nag yw yeth dibarow dhe dhensys, onan a’n rannow chif a vos denel yw. Ny yll bos lehes dhe gedhlow hepken, mes yth yw argerdh sosyel dres eghen.11 Ni oll a wor py mar synthesek y sen skoodhyans prener der SK po fatel yll SK fyllel orth konvedhes arliwyow. Dell gampol Dr. Mallory, “Yeth [yw] neppyth moy kepar hag enev a gemeneth. Ny yllir gwitha hemma yn jynn. Ny yllir assoylya kudyn denel kepar ha yethladhans gans gwel a yeth hag a remov an gerann denel.”12
Ny yll SK konvedhes Kernewek po taves vyth aral. Papynjay chonsus yw: y targan py ger yw gwirhaval wosa an huni kyns.13 Ny yll agan konvedhes. Ny yll mynnes tra vyth. Mar kwra derivas orthis y vos pes da dha weres, gow yw. My a vynn agan kemeneth dhe devi, mes ny wra kans jynn-amontya a yll ‘kewsel Kernewek’ keworra orti. Y hwra unn den—ow tri tybyansow ha govenegow hag ownow ha gwanderyow—ha ny dybav y hwra an jynnys-amontya kernwegorek keworra unn den hogen orth agan kemeneth.
Gwettha, mar kwra, yma dustuni a-dhyworth Microsoft hag a brof y hwra an devnydh a SKDin war oberennow yeth, unweyth an seythen hogen, aperya gallos godhvosel a dhyski, ow ledya orth omworrans lehes gans an desten, gorfydhyans y’n deknegieth ha sleyneth sprallys a assoylya kudynnow yn anserghek.14 Der usya toulys SK dhe ‘dhyski’ Kernewek, possybyl yw ni dhe shyndya gallos dyski an yeth vytholl heb an kroch ma. Ni a wra gul mimyoryon yn le Kernewegoryon.
Ynwedh Perlin a boslev an elven dhenel, ow leverel pan wren ni synsi kemeneth avel kres agan yethow, dell wren, an papynjay chonsus a yll bos klewys kepar ha defolyans.15 Y’n eur ma, my a aswon pan eus nebonan owth usya ‘Kernewek’ SK dhymm. An tybyans ny wrav vy unn jydh godhvos pan eus estren—nebonan a wrussen vy dynerghi mar pe lyver po klass ganses—ow popettya diwawen ow hengerens ha kewsel dresta yw bedhrosus. Yma dhe’n dra an wan dhistowgh a drevesigeth, a berghenegyans pan yllir gwerthveurhe, a bapynjaya pan yllir junya agan kesgan.
Unver yw skolheyk Hawai’i henwys Noah Ha‘alilio Solomon: “Ankensi yw, drefen ni dhe vos kofhes a’n prysyow oll re beu agan gonisogeth ha yeth perghenegys. Ni re beu owth omladh dre dhens hag ewines yn batel gales a-barth dasvewheans yeth.[…] Y hwra pobel krysi bos hemma representyans ewn a’n yeth a Hawai’i.”16
TREST HAG OMGLEWANS AN GEMENETH
Hir re beu an kil-lash gorthjynn ow kovryjyon mes lemmyn yma va ow terri an arenep dell hevel.17
NBC NEWS
Tardh an arvedhennow rag SK y honan (clanker, tinskin, toaster), y askorras (slop, dross, brainrot) ha’y usyoryon (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—keffrys hag erel selys moy yn kler war geryow kas gwir dell ov attes gans aga heworra—a re hwedhel a stons ollgemmyn a wogrys ha divlases war-tu hag an deknegieth ha’y devnydh war an kesrosweyth Sowsnek ha yethow bras erel.18 Kynth yw an stons yn-mysk gwesyon dek ha korforeth hwath gwresek, rag an boblek gemmyn y hwra SK “dos ha bos keschanjyadow gans taklow tamm kawgh.”19
Pella, nyns yw marnas yethow moyhariv gans an gwel negedhek ma a SK avel podrek. Sampel uskis a gampollow media sosyel ha meusi ow tochya SK ha Godhalek Alban gans Professor Lamb a dhiskwedhas fals a 54% negedhek, 33% posedhek ha 13% heptu. (Lamb, 2024) Sentiment an kampol negedhek an moyha talvesys o bos SK dregynnus hag an nessa y talvia dhyn lettya SK rag kestav gans tavosow ertach.
Pyth eson ni ow leverel orth agan diyskynysi? Ny dal agan yeth ha gonisogeth an strivyans personel? Hemm yw martesen fatel wrussen vy y redya, a pen vy i.20
Gorthebydh sondyans Kernewek
Kernewek a baynt aven moy serth, yn arbennik gans dyskoryon ha kowsoryon yowynka ha moy skentel gans tek. Sondyans war Discord ha Whatsapp Kernewek a drovyas bos 65% a grysis y fia SK drog (11.5%) po pur dhrog (53%) rag an yeth. Pan veu govynnys pyth a dal bos gorthyp an gemeneth orth SK, 46% a leveris y kodh y hedhi ha 27% y woheles, gans an dus moy ha 60 bloodh hepken ow tybi y kodh oberi ganso.20
31% a worthebydhyon an sondyans a leveris y hwrussa an devnydh a SK yn Kernewek aga fellhe a’n yeth, hag ynwedh 54% a leveris y fiens i pellhes yn krev ha 23% pellhes tamm a by kowethas, asnodh po dyskador pynag ow tevnydhya SK.
An gorthyp a’n re a leveris bos aga godhvos a SK po “konnyk” po “da” o dampnus yn arbennik. Pubonan y’n bagas ma a worthebis y fia SK dregynnus rag Kernewek, y hwrussa an devnydh a SK gans pennfenten aga fellhe a’n bennfenten na yn krev hag y kodh dhyn hedhi an devnydh a SK rag Kernewek.
HONANIETH, LELDER HA DIVERSETH
Nyns esa Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, ow skrifa a-barth UNESCO, ow kewsel yn komparek a-dro dhe yethow lyharivhes pan wrug ev y wovyn, mes an govyn a dhassen yn kreffa ragon: “Pygemmys koll a honanieth a vynnir sakrifia rag effeythuster?”21
Honanieth yw a’n moyha bri rag Kernewegoryon. Studhyans Ute Wimmer Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish a henow “gweythres [an yeth] avel arwodh a honanieth kenedhlek” avel an nessa ughella skila (66%**) yn-mysk kowsoryon ha dyskoryon, fethys gans gonisogeth Kernow (80%) hepken.22 Yth havalsa hemma bos acheson solempnyans, mes pan vo SK keworrys, y teu ha bos peryl. Vincent Koc a Hyperlink a lever y hyll SK “kevri dre wall orth an gwannheans a yeth ha honanieth wonisogethel”.23
Ev a aswon ynwedh y hallsa awtomategi dyski po dinythi yeth “lehe an rychedh ha lelder hag a dheu a gowsoryon dhenel neb a dheg istoriow gonisogethel y’ga hows”. Yn hwir, peswar studhyans gwrys gans Pennskol Kaliforni Soth re dhiskwedhas bos devnydhya PYB dhe weres gans skrifa “kelmys orth dyfygyansow nosedhek yn diverseth yethel hag y hyll mellya gans an konvedhes brysoniethel ha kowethasel yw proviys gans yeth.”24
Ha hemm yw yn Sowsnek, onan a’n yethow an ryccha ha brassa y’n bys. Dismyk an effeyth war yeth byghanna kepar ha Kernewek—gans le a dhogvennans, le a gedhlow, sel kowsoryon munys hag ogas hag arghans mann—ha war y lies orgraf hag eghen yeth. Yn arbennik yn gettesten Kernewek, seulabrys yma kowsoryon Diwedhes ow strivya dhe vos gwelys avel vas gans gwartheyvans Kres. A dybyn y hwor SK an dyffrans? Heb preder, y hwra po kemyska puptra warbarth, ow sowdheni pubonan, po devnydhya Kres dhe fetha Diwedhes.
An gwruthyl a dhalgh herdhys gans SK Dinythus, dre favera yethow savonegys, a argyl an vansyans a rannyethow ranndiryel.25
Kresen woramontyorieth Barcelona
Nyns yw eghennow hepken yn peryl; SK a wodros beudhi Kernewek yn tien. Akordys yw Perlin y hallsa an platheans yethel a hwarva dres kansbledhynnyow yn Sowsnek hwarvos dres nos yn yeth lyharivhes gans SK orth an fronnow—dell via, ow pos gallosek a bassya Kernewek denel heb assay. Ev a venek prederow yn kever PYB ow rewi yeth yn hy le ha hogen ow settya pyth yw an styr a wodhvos an yeth, yn arbennik gans niverow munys a gowsoryon deythyek.26
Treylyansow leun a atal a liesha warlinen kepar ha nowodhow fug. Kowsoryon deythyek a’n yethow ma yw passyes avel bos “re gales dhe drovya”, komparys orth fordhow awtomategys a surheans kwalita hag yw disjunys yn tien a geskomunyans y’n bys gwir. Kynth yw possybyl rag kemenethow yeth brassa ha moy gallosek synsi an bottys ma dhe akont ha’ga devnydhya yn stratejek hogen, re es yw dismygi [yeth lyhariv] ow pos reverthys.26
Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance
Heb kontrol hag yn diwla an gewri deknegieth, Kernewek synthesek a wra gornivera ha gorthrabellhe Kernewek denel.
SOVRANEDH KEDHLOW HA KOLONEGIETH
Sovranedh kedhlow teythyek yw an gwir gans [kenedhel teythyek] a woverna an kuntel, perghenogeth ha gweytha a’y hedhlow hy honan.27
Native Nations Institute
Byttegyns, yma gonisogethow teythyek hag usi owth oberi war geskowethyans moy ewnhynsek gans SK. Tek heb an kowr a res asnodhow, mes y as kemenethow gwitha sovranedh kedhlow war an gerthen wonisogethel hag yw aga yeth. Te Mana Raraunga, Rosweyth Sovranedh Kedhlow Māori, re wrug rol a bennrewlys rag an gwruthyl, devnydhya ha kevrenna a gedhlow Māori, ow ragwirhe an edhom a grefhe maystri rag Māori a-lemmyn hag a dheu.
I a venek poynt posek hag a dalvia bos konsidrys gans rach gans stywards a skians yethel ha gonisogethel: “Kedhlow ahanan, a-dro dhyn ha’gan asnodhow, yw kerthennow a bris. Pan vo maystri kellys, kales yw y dhaskemeres.”28 Ny dal gul erviransow yn skav po yn uskis; y hyllyn pupprys leverel “ea” mar kwrussyn leverel “na” kyns orth us sett kedhlow, mes ny yllyn nevra leverel “na” mar kwrussyn leverel “ea” seulabrys.
An desten SK, kepar ha pub le aral, yw leun a dus hag yw settys y’ga maneryow ha gans gwel pur drevesigel yn tidowl.29
Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality
Hemm yw pur bosek y’n gettesten a’n kontrol possybyl a gedhlow Kernewek gans korforethow gallosek a-ves. Estenegieth jatelydhek re beu molleth war gowethasow y’n amal emperourethek ha nyns yw kowethas Kernewek dyffrans, wosa enebi kansvledhynnyow a’y rychys hag asnodhow naturek ow pos destryppys ha gwerthys dre vras gans budh tus yn-mes a Gernow.
An lyver henwys Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy a verk lemmyn y hyllir gweles perthynyansow kedhlow avel “pesyans a’n argerdhow ha systemow-krysi isworwedhek a estennans, drogusyans, kuntellyans ha diberghenogeth re beu gwrys war boblansow Teythyek dres trevesigeth istorek.”30 An konvedhes estennek ma a gedhlow yw, dell verkons, hevelebys a-der goderrys gans tyli pobel rag aga hedhlow.
Wostiwedh, res yw ma na vo agan yeth gorrys yn diwla a-ves routys gans pennrewlys perghenogel na as dhyn sovranedh lowr a onan a’gan asnodhow naturel an moyha posek: agan yeth. Res yw dhyn kavos pennrewlys kedhlow ygor, a-der plegya orth kontrol korforethel. Res yw dhyn lewya ha gidya an devnydh a’gan kedhlow, a-der y usya erbynn agan lesow ha rag pocketys tek bras.
A-der drehedhes an arwithans a davosow avel kudyn teknegiethel, my a dyb bos res dhe gemenethow teythyek bos reythhes yn politek, po der arghasans a wovernansow po dre dhifresyansow laghel dhe dhevnydhya aga yethow.31
Dr. Fintan Mallory, Pennskol Durham
Res yw dhyn ragwirhe yeth-avel-kemeneth ha hwilas devnydh ygor, ewnhynsek hag ethegel a’gan kerthennow yeth, ertach ha gonisogethel. Res yw dhyn goheles tybi a SK avel an hus mayth ambos ha kevarghewi yn hwithrans selyek, lewys gans agan kemeneth. Ny wra korforethow agan selwel ha, hogen, i a yll agan shyndya.
NYNS EUS KERNEWEK WAR BLANET MAROW
Governansow ha kevalav ollvysel […] yw omres dhe ideologieth marghas ‘rydh’ moy es dell yns omres dhe sewena kemenethow, pobel ha’n planet.32
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022
An brassa rann a vreusyansow a SK a wrussa meneges hemma seulabrys. Onan a’n argyansow brassa yw erbynn SK Dinythus, mes rag own bos ankoth dhis, ni a wra mires orth an chif boyntys.
Res yw bos evadow an dowr goyeynhe pub kresen kedhlow SK. Y kollenk an dowr ma. Pennskol Kaliforni re dherivas “y hallsa demond dowr ollvysel SK hedhes 4.2-6.6 bilvil metrow kubek erbynn 2027. Henn yw moy es 50 kansran a us dowr bledhynnyek an RU yn 2023.”33 Y kettermyn, an Desedhek Ollvysel Erbysieth Dowr a dheklaryas “barras dowr ow tardha yn uskis” ma na dal Kernewek kevri dhodho.34
Ni re dheuth ha bos yn hwir omres dhe deknegiethow privedh gwrys ha kontrolys gans dornas a gompanis diskler [hag] a hevel bos mygyl dre vras orth an sewyansow sosyel a’ga gwriansow ha kevri yn ispoyntel marnas mars yns i konstrinys gans rewlys an wovernans dhe wellhe aga imach poblek.35
Iker Erdocia, Pennskol Sita Dulyn
Yma edhom dhe SK a vynsow kowrek a galesweyth orth kost palas monyow tanow. Kales yw estenna ha purhe an re ma hag yma kostow kerghynedhel ha sosyel poos. Estennys yns i yn fenowgh a hwelyow yn powyow gans difresyansow lakka rag lavur ha’n kerghynnedh. Reset a lever “yn fenowgh y hwra kemenethow yw trigys yn ogas dhe’n hwelyow, yn fenowgh bagasow lyhariv po teythyek, enebi gwethheans an tir, defolyans an dowr hag abusyans gwiryow denel. Meur a hemma a yll bos kelmys yn tidro orth an galesweyth SK.”36 Pan yw an galesweyth kegys yn sertan hag euver, ena tewlys yw avel e-wast yn kemenethow boghosek. Res yw nyns yw an avonsyans possybyl a Gernewek orth kost agan kemenethow hwor lyhariv ha teythyek.
Ynwedh res yw myns hujes a nerth rag trenya SK, yn skon martesen an keth myns ha pow byghan37 hag yma ol troos karbon kowrek.38 Kler yw—der usadow dowr, diwysyans estennek, konsumyans nerth hag ol troos karbon—bos SK yeyn nowodhow rag kerghynnedh ow strivya a’n planet mayth on ni trigys warnodho ha nyns eus Kernewek war blanet marow.
GUL DHE SK BOS EKS-PAPYNJAY
A-der gul dhe yethow lyhariv bos moy hedhadow, lemmyn yma SK ow kwruthyl tardhek pupprys owth omlesa rag studhyoryon ha kowsoryon a’n yethow ma dhe wolya.39
mit technology review
Ni re glewas a’n anwirhevelepter efan a wul dhe SK gallos mimya Kernewek yn golow an kostys yn kedhlow, ober, termyn ha teknegieth. Ni re gonsidras lycklod an dewisynter dispresyans yeyn po askorras-aspia ha’n posekter a sovranedh kedhlow. Ni re redyas a-dro dhe’n effeythyow war vewnansow Kernewegoryon, keffrys ha’n kostys katastrofek rag an kerghynnedh ha poblow teythyek.
Ni re dhyskas y hwra platheans yethel gans SK boghosekhe y destennow ha fatel yll SK martesen ervira a’gan parth fatel godh dh’agan yeth oberi. Ni re welas an anwoheladewder a yeth avel denel ha’n peryllyow a wul ‘dyskoryon’ na yll dyski ha ‘kowsoryon’ na yll kewsel. Ni re welas an peryllyow orth bri ha fydhyans rag kowethasow a wrussa palas an pyth hag yw gwelys avel ‘skomblans’.
Ni re glewas prag y fia omblegya orth an jagganat a SK error rag Kernewek ha dell na vynn agan kemeneth skoodhya gorra an skoos a-dhyworthyn. Yn y le, res yw dhyn batalyas. Res yw dhyn gul dhe Gernewek bos spas mar rydh a skomblans dell yll bos, res yw adhyski orth botlapyoryon yn dyski ha devnydh yeth yn ethegel hag yn effeythus, res yw goheles tybi wortaswerth.
Res yw dhyn gul dh’agan yeth bos parth heb SK, rosweyth a dus fydhyadow ha’ga gwriansow denel, drehevys war lelder, kemeneth, assay ha trest: Kernewek hag yw a-barth an bobel, a’n bobel ha gans an bobel.
Niwlen Ster
Notennow
* A prime example is the laughably-unaffordable restaurant RenMor, which The Headland Hotel thinks is a version of “Re’n Mor”, which they believe means “by the sea” as in “next to the sea” but actually means “by the sea!” like saying “by Zeus!”. This is both hilarious and enraging.
** A figure perhaps lower than it should be if you consider that many of the “emotional motives” which were not counted in this category, such as “I’m Cornish, what better reason do you need?”, do also refer to identity.
FENTENNOW
1. Judah, J. (2025) How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral, MIT Technology Review.
2. Ackermann, A. (2023) When AI doesn’t speak your language, Coda.
3. Crichton, D. (2024) AI and the Death of Human Languages, Lux.
4. Lamb, W. (2024). Could Artificial Intelligence save Scottish Gaelic?, The University of Edinburgh.
5. Dencik, L. (/2025) AI Inequalities: Minority Languages, TUC Cymru.
6. Joshi, P., Santy, S., Budhiraja, A., Bali, K., & Microsoft Research, India. (2020). The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World. Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
7. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
8. McLoughlin, I. (2018) How to teach AI to speak Welsh (and other minority languages), The Conversation.
9. Mallory, F. (2025) RISE UP Panel Discussion & Q&A: What AI Can and Cannot Do for Minoritised Languages, YouTube.
10. Perlin, R. (2024) AI Won’t Protect Endangered Languages, The Dial.
11. RISE UP (2025) #4 RISE UP Event Summary: What AI Can and Cannot Do For Minoritised Languages, RISE UP.
12. Mallory, F. (2024) European Day of Languages: Will lesser spoken languages soon only be kept alive by AI technology? Durham University.
13. Bender, E., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Mitchell, M. (2021) On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
14. Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025) The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers. Microsoft.
15. Perlin, R. (op cit)
16. Judah, J. (op cit)
17. Abbruzzese, J., & Wile, R. (2025) Is an AI backlash brewing? What ‘clanker’ says about growing frustrations with emerging tech, NBC News.
18. Webster, K. (2025) Why Using ChatGPT at Work Could Hurt Your Reputation, Inc. Magazine.
19. Herrman, J. (2024) Is That AI? Or Does It Just Suck?, Intelligencer.
20. Wilson, L. (2025) Skians Kreftus ha Kernewek/Artificial Intelligence and Cornish
21. Paschalidis, A. I. (2025) AI and the great linguistic flattening, UNESCO.
22. Wimmer, U. (2010). Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish. Cornish Language Board, p. 113
23. Koc, V. (2025) Generative AI and Large Language Models in Language Preservation: Opportunities and Challenges, ResearchGate.
24. Sourati, Z., Karimi-Malekabadi, F., & Ozcan, M. (2025) The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models, ResearchGate.
25. Melero, M. (2024) The Future of Language (and Cultural) Diversity in the Age of AI, CLARIN.
26. Perlin, R. (op cit)
27. Russo Carroll, S., Rodriguez Lonebear, D., & Martinez, A. (2017). Data Governance for Native Nation Rebuilding, Native Nations Institute.
28. Te Mana Raraunga. (2018). Frequently Asked Questions, Te Mana Raraunga.
29. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
30. Walter, M., Kukutai, T., Carroll, S. R., & Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (Eds.). (2020). Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Taylor & Francis, p. 24
31. Mallory, F. (op cit)
32. Cymdeithas yr Iaith (2022) Cymru Rydd, Cymru Werdd, Cymru Gymraeg., p. 27
33. O’Sullivan, L. (2025). How AI’s Failure on Linguistic Diversity is Deepening Global Inequality, RESET – Digital for Good.
34. Harvey, F. (2024). Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 years, The Guardian.
35. Erdocia, I., Migge, B., & Schneider, B. (2024). Language is not a data set—Why overcoming ideologies of dataism is more important than ever in the age of AI. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 28(5), p. 23
36. O’Sullivan, L. (op cit)
37. Erdenesanaa, D. (2023) A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country, The New York Times
38. Heikkilä, M. (2022) We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint, MIT Technology Review.
39. Judah, J. (op cit)#4 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Breus #Cornish #Cornwall #data #generativeAI #history #jynn #kedhlow #Kernewek #Kernow #Kernowek #LLM #machine #PYB #SK #SKDinythus #SkiansKreftus #Sordya
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Mayke Nas Componist des vaderlands: Tien redenen om te componeren
Gisteren werd bekend dat Mayke Nas (1972) de nieuwe Componist des Vaderlands wordt, als opvolger van Willem Jeths. Een geweldige keuze, aangezien Nas een heel ander soort muziek schrijft dan Jeths en een ongekend frisse kijk heeft op het leven en op componeren.
Voor de opening van de komende Cellobiënnale componeerde ze een nieuw werk, Unraveled voor vier slagwerkers, vier cello’s en orkest, dat ook wordt uitgevoerd tijdens het festival November Music. Eerder dit jaar won ze de Kees van Baarenprijs met Down the Rabbit-Hole, dat zij componeerde voor het Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest. Ik sprak haar hierover voor Cultuurpers.
Als Componist des Vaderlands gaat Nas zich niet bezighouden met het schrijven van stukjes bij de geboorte van prinsesjes, maar wil zij zich opwerpen als ambassadeur voor de eigentijdse muziek. Met name ook de Nederlandse muziek, die volgens haar ‘te weinig gehoorde schatten’ kent, die zij onder de aandacht van het publiek wil brengen.
Geen piepknor
Moderne muziek wordt volgens Nas nog te vaak gezien als een akelige vorm van ‘piepknor’ en daar wil zij graag verandering in brengen. Zij is daartoe de aangewezen persoon, want niet alleen is zij een aanstekelijke verteller, maar ook straalt uit haar eigen werk een enorme levenslust. Humor en ironie zijn nooit ver weg, ook al erkent ze vaak lang op een stuk te zwoegen.
Mayke Nas timmert al lang aan de weg. In 2003 interviewde ik haar voor het aan Nederlandse muziek gewijde tijdschrift Oorsprong. We spraken over haar 10 redenden om te componeren. De dertien jaar oude tekst is nog altijd actueel.
Haar muziek beweegt zich op de rand van klank en ruis, maar beukt er bij wijlen ook genadeloos op los; vaak valt er wat te lachen. Mayke Nas houdt niet van bloedige ernst, maar van speelvreugde en relativering. Ze verkent de grenzen van muziek met een tomeloze energie en verbeeldingskracht, die ook haar persoon kenmerken.
Mayke Nas (c) Maurice Haak
Bij wijze van biografie stuurt ze twee partituren, een cd-r en een link naar haar ‘weblog’. Daar treffen we bespiegelingen als Een puzzel waarvan de helft van de stukjes ontbreekt: dát is pas een puzzel en Sturgeon’s law: ‘90% of everything is crap’. Als illustratiemateriaal stuurt ze tien afbeeldingen van haar piano spelende handen, voorzien van even zo veel redenen om te componeren. – Die koppen we in.
Tijd rekken
‘Componeren gaat over het manipuleren van tijd: hoe structureer je die. Ik ben goed in tijd rekken, kom altijd te laat (ook op onze afspraak, waardoor we de repetitie van Calefax voor Entrez! mislopen – TD). Ik ben te optimistisch. Als mensen bellen: Waar blijft je stuk? roep ik enthousiast dat het over twee dagen klaar is. Dat geloof ik echt, maar vervolgens wordt het natuurlijk toch later. Meestal heb ik composities vlak voor de première af, maar ooit heb ik verstek laten gaan bij het Schönberg Ensemble. Dat achtervolgt me nog.’
Problemen zoeken
‘Ik heb collega’s gevraagd wat ze de leukste fase vinden van het componeren: het zoeken naar een idee; het vinden daarvan; het kiezen van het materiaal; de vraag hoe je dat behandelt; de crises die je doormaakt; het repetitieproces of de uiteindelijke uitvoering. Bijna iedereen noemde de initiërende fase. Ook voor mij is het zoekmoment het belangrijkste. Daan Manneke zei het zo: ‘Pas als je je probleem gevonden hebt, kun je een antwoord formuleren’.’
Getallenfetisjisme
‘Als ik structuren opzet kies ik bijvoorbeeld herhalingen van 7, 9, of 11 keer, nooit 6, 8, of 10. Dat vind ik afschuwelijke getallen. Geen idee waarom, dat is volkomen irrationeel. Je bent voortdurend bezig met getalsverhoudingen, tijdsverhoudingen. Sommige wiskundige verhoudingen zijn in theorie wonderschoon, maar slaan dood als je ze doortrekt naar muziek.
Dus als ik een strenge getalsmatige reeks ontwerp fungeert die slechts als leidraad; ik laat me altijd leiden door mijn oren.’
Krankzinnigheid
‘Je moet wel gek zijn om te willen componeren. Toen ik begon aan Enkele reis slaapkamer voor klavecimbel solo, dacht ik: Dat schrijf ik even. Maar ik heb er zes weken dag en nacht aan gewerkt. Dat is weer mijn optimisme. Ik denk: Kom, ik schrijf er wat tekstjes bij; ik vraag die om een filmpje, ik maak nog even een reeks interactieve geluiden… Een gezond mens zou op een gegeven moment stoppen, maar ik ga door.’
Belofte
‘Een belangrijk drijfveer bij het componeren is de belofte die ik iemand gedaan heb om een stuk te leveren. Het gaat niet om iets dat ik mezelf beloof. Natuurlijk maak ik soms iets op eigen initiatief, zoals Digit # 2 voor piano vierhandig, maar mijn output wordt grotendeels bepaald door de vraag. Ik vind het verschrikkelijk mensen teleur te stellen, want ik koester het persoonlijke contact dat zo’n compositieopdracht met zich meebrengt.’
Dwangneurose
‘Dat betreft die enorme scheppingsdrift. Dat je nachtenlang doorwerkt omdat je nu dat idee wilt uitwerken. Als ik niet creëer – dat hoeft niet per se een compositie te zijn, het kan ook film of tekst betreffen – voel ik me verloren. Soms vraag ik me af of het nuttig is wat ik doe, maar ik ben er tegelijkertijd van overtuigd dat kunst je beter maakt: zij helpt je verwachtingspatronen doorbreken. Dat werkt door op het sociale vlak.’
Seks, drank & gebakken ganzenlever
‘Ik doe niet aan drugs, wel aan drank en ik houd van lekker eten. Componeren is voor mij sterk gekoppeld aan lijfelijke lol: tijdens etentjes maak je afspraken met musici en na een concert hang je samen in de kroeg. Je krijgt een enorm sterke band, want je moet gezamenlijk allerlei problemen oplossen. Daarom moet er naast het harde werken ruimte zijn voor feestjes. Ik kook als afterparty vaak een driegangendiner.’
Nergens anders voor deugen
‘Een tijdlang vroeg ik me af of ik wel componist wilde worden. Het is zó zwaar! Het gaat gepaard met ontzettende onzekerheid en stress en bovendien is er al zoveel muziek. Toen vertelde een vriend dat hij ooit vanuit diezelfde twijfels overwoog vrachtwagenchauffeur te worden. De directrice van het conservatorium zei: “Dan neem je dus de plaats in van iemand die niets anders kan.” Als ik weer eens totaal vastzit, denk ik aan dat verhaal: je hebt een verplichting aan je talent.’
Eine aussergewöhnlich lustige Idee (naar Stockhausen)
‘Karlheinz Stockhausen heeft boekenplanken volgeschreven over zijn doorwrochte compositietechnieken. Werkelijk alles klopt. Maar laatst speelde Alban Wesly in Orchesterfinalisten, waarin hij op bepaalde momenten zijn been moet optillen. Ik vroeg waarom, maar hij had geen idee en benaderde Stockhausen. Die antwoordde simpelweg: “Omdat ik dat buitengewoon grappig vind!” Dat vind ik prachtig: componeren gaat ook over intuïtie, gekke invallen en ideeën die niet verantwoord hoeven te worden.’
Om niet te hoeven slapen
‘Dat heeft een dubbele betekenis. Enerzijds haat ik het gebrek aan nachtrust als ik weer eens een stuk af moet krijgen, anderzijds geniet ik juist van dat nachtelijke werken. Overdag is er voortdurend onrust: je hoort het verkeer, je moet boodschappen doen, je wordt gebeld, er zijn brieven te beantwoorden. Als het duister wordt, komt de stad langzaam tot rust en kan ik me concentreren: er zijn geen uitvluchten meer. Slapen is ook een metafoor voor stilstand: ik wil het leven niet ongemerkt voorbij laten trekken.’
Dit artikel verscheen in juli 2003 in het tijdschrift ‘Oorsprong’ van Muziekgroep Nederland.
#ComponistDesVaderlands #DownTheRabbitHole #MaykeNas #TheaDerks #WillemJeths
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Enjoying some more great music from #ZyniC. If you love 80's style synthpop, check it out! https://www.youtube.com/@zynicmusicofficia #synthpop #music #FediMusic
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Enjoying some more great music from #ZyniC. If you love 80's style synthpop, check it out! https://www.youtube.com/@zynicmusicofficia #synthpop #music #FediMusic
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Enjoying some more great music from #ZyniC. If you love 80's style synthpop, check it out! https://www.youtube.com/@zynicmusicofficia #synthpop #music #FediMusic