What The Fact… WTF for December 26th. Dolly Pentreath, assumed to be the last fluent speaker of ancient Cornish, died in her home in Mousehole, England, on Dec. 26, 1777, taking the language with her into extinction. Her defiant last words were, “Me ne vidn cewsel Sawznek!”—“I don’t want to speak English!” The 85-year-old fishmonger had a reputation for cursing people out in long streams of incomprehensible profanity during moments of anger. When Daines Barrington, an English linguist, came to Mousehole looking for the legendary guardian of Cornish, Pentreath unleashed upon him, “in an angry tone of voice of two or three minutes,” a torrent of linguistic abuse in her expiring tongue. When one day a man knocked over her fish basket in the marketplace, she pronounced him “Kronek hager du!”—“An ugly black toad!” #cornishlanguage #ancientcornish #cornish #worldhistory #languagesoftheworld #historyofengland #england https://www.instagram.com/p/CX98Hd2rjIZ/?utm_medium=tumblr
