SWF - SPARGO GIVES HIS BLESSING!!

by Language Correspondent Adelaide Lilicrap

The Single (sometimes 'standard') Written Form (SWF) of Kernewek or Cornish has been the subject of controversy right from the very start. For some years, proponents of competing versions of the Cornish Language have been pitted against one another in a life or death struggle to see their own version prevail. The arrival of the SWF is seen by some to be nothing other than a poor political fudge, engineered by a politically correct Committee, whose product has all the effectiveness of any other "committee horse" with 5 legs and two tails, but no head.

However, the internationally acclaimed Relubbus Philological Institute has now thrown its considerable weight behind the SWF and enjoys the full backing of the Greater Relubbus Urban Council (GRUC). In fact, Council workers have already been seen out changing street signage throughout Relubbus.

The picture on the left shows a Council worker, Mr Ezekiel Trevains (57) putting the finishing touches to a controversial SWF road instruction. The word is pronounced 'Stop', but is spelt in accordance with the directions of the hard-working SWF Committee.

Reaction has not been mixed. Mr Tommy Polkinghorne (45) Leader of the Revised Late Cornish with smart West Penwith pronunciation faction (2 speakers - Tommy and Mrs Polkinghorne) declared the SWF "a bleddy disaster or 'dezastre', as they would spell it".

Mr Pol Jago (39), a fully qualified hairdresser and Druid and Leader of the Unrevised Unified Proper Cornish faction (7 speakers, of whom 2 are fluent!) stated huffily, "I aren't even gwain to comment!".

The Leaders of the 38 other Cornish language variants all criticised the SWF and swore to keep their own variant of the language alive - to their very deaths.

In the face of this onslaught from the language community, GRUC Leader, Mr Billy Spargo (92) was grim-faced and unrepentant. "Ow the 'ell ken we 'ave a viable language in Cornwall, when all they language boys duh do is squabble about oo's version is right. I duh say to they - Quit squabblin an git workin together. Git be'ind this 'ere SWF and mak' un work!!"

Prinz Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein, on a State visit to Relubbus, joined Billy Spargo on the steps of the magnificent Council building in Boswedden Lane and, in his own special way, which met with stunned and probably highly confused silence, added his voice to the call for unity in the Cornish language movement "If we had various forms of ze language in Liechtenstein had, had we never ze economic success had!"

After some hesitation, the assembled crowd applauded enthusiastically, before all three of them dispersed. On Spargo's instructions, Language teaching has now been halted in all 450 Kernewek Institutes throughout Relubbus so that the 1400 language teachers (representatives of the 38 competing versions) can agree one form to teach.

They are being locked up in the Relubbus Methodist Central Hall with no food or water and just the one toilet roll so as to focus their minds. They will be released only once they have achieved complete agreement.

Diary notes for Readers. We are frequently asked what is coming up next by our readers, in particular by five persistent folk, who, apparently speaking from the cramped confines of a telephone box, describe themselves as 'Cornish MPs'. The Roundup will be investigating their claim to be "representing Cornwall".

For the present, the members of the Roundup's 24 person Editorial Council working with Mr Sylvanus Penhaul are content for it to be known that the next three items - in order - will be a work from the great 'Odgo, the tale of the Lamorna Bus Shelter fiasco and the 'English' Heritage story's unexpected, but pleasing, outcome.