I always remember my Dad telling me that he had a guy working with him from Czechoslovakia. He told him his name was Jan(os)…”but we call him John!”, said Dad.

“Why can’t you call him his name, I replied. It’s not hard to remember.” Dad didn’t know. And there you have it, this demeaning of another person’s culture or language. I’ve witnessed it throughout my working life…Ferdinando…too long, call him Fred…then singing along to Fernando by Abba.

image from Jetty Street Press

It’s BRONN WENNILI, stupid!

(for Craig Weatherhill, Delynyer Hendhyscans/Draughtsman of Archeology)

Revered height, capstone of Kernow.

Which ancient Cornish kings lay

Beneath your snaggle-toothed cairns?

What mystical alignment emanates

From your brooding presence?

O Brown Willy…no…stop…stop!

It’s no good…I cannot go on

I’m unable to surmount that name

And give that height the respect it deserves.

As a proper poet how can I write this?

Reset.

Revered height, capstone of Kernow

What is your real name? Is it…

Bronn an Ughella as Cornwall’s ‘highest hill’

Or Bronn Wennili – hill of swallows?

We will never know…we can only surmise.

It’s Brown Willy on the Ordnance Survey

There you have it…a language wiped off the map

The funny name, easy to remember

We can laugh at it…easy to forget

Like the locals who even forgot the original.

The English language…all conquering

Smothered Kernewek, damned it

But it’s not really that, is it? No

For its resistance and called its peak Brown Willy –

After all it’s too hard to say Bron Wenilli –

With that one extra syllable.

How do you say it…Bronn Willy-nilly?

We don’t want words that are too hard to swallow.

But it’s not really that, is it?

It’s about ‘othering’, demeaning another’s language

If it was about how to say it then

Cirencester, Oswaldtwistle and Broadwoodwidger

Are just as hard to say on first sight

And would have been murdered in their beds.

Ashby-de-la-Zouch has been persisted with,

Hyphenated to help things along.

Ask an American to say ‘Worcestershire’

But they’re here as tourists and not colonisers;

Not here to repress the language that dared

To challenge…to fight the imposition

Of a common prayer book

In an uncommon language.

©graylightfoot