Geoffrey K. Pullum makes an interesting post on the the future of Cornish on Language Log.

A timely follow up to our earlier discussion. I’m sure Scott won’t like this news. “Cornish is dead, stone dead” and Irish “will be dead in thirty years.” Thankfully there are people who will continue to fight for their survival. We can only hope that it is not in vain, because most of us won’t live long enough to see what happens one way or another.

I can relate to his observation of that “almost every story they (“The Economist”) do on language is goofy.” I’ve done very few newspaper and magazine interviews on any subject, from Hawaiian language to music and technology, where the author didn’t seriously distorted something I said because of their lack of knowledge in that field. I’ve gotten calls from colleagues who disagreed with something that they read in those stories, and in nearly every case what has printed was a clear misrepresentation of the facts that I stated. It’s enough to make you want to stop giving inteviews.

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