This is a back’long episode from the with-out-a-doubt, ‘hilarious’ public schoolboy, David Mitchell’s, BBC funded ‘David Mitchell’s Soapbox’.
This series was a chance for the floppy-fringed posh boy to spout exactly what he’d been brought up to think, in a ‘funny way’!
In this episode he takes on Gaelic but within ridicules the Cornish language in the most disgusting fashion.
The uninformed buffoon’s tirade includes the idea that “campaigning to put it (Cornish) on road signs is completely lunatic”, apparently unaware that the majority of our place-names are actually Cornish!
There is a Cornwall Council policy of making English road signs bilingual – so unfortunately for Mr Mitchell and although it has nothing to do with him, it is at no extra cost to the Cornish tax-payer and these signs are only replaced as needed.
Mitchell’s drivel is smug, Victorian in thinking and at best, slightly fascistic.
Oh, those days at school when he went to Latinland to hear those Latins speaking Latin. He must remember them well…
Mitchell might do well to remember that in a time when Cornish (not English) was spoken by virtually the entire population of Cornwall, three Cornishmen were saving the English language (such as it was) from extinction. But for they, David Mitchell would be speaking Norman French and probably wouldn’t be called ‘David Mitchell’ either.
To be honest, I’ve never found this clown funny (nor, for that matter, his mine-shaft nosed counter-part) and this just confirmed my conviction.
An Helghyer 
December 21st, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Clever as always but is a language just communication…probably a lot more. You may have missed the point of language and identity. roots and wings to use well worn phrase Ever want a tour of Gaelic identity from the inside, let me know.
December 22nd, 2012 at 12:55 am
Presumably this post is addressed to Mr Mitchell..?
February 10th, 2013 at 12:32 am
Cornish is not a dead language. It is alive and listed by the UN as extant, but seriously endangered. It is included on the European Charter for the Protection of National and Minority Languages. Don’t show your prejudice and complete ignorance, Mr Mitchell, and don’t ever broadcast such insulting tripe to the nation. In any case, the vast majority of Cornish place-names ARE in Cornish. Often corrupted by English, which necessitates restoration in pure form. And this costs not a penny. The advisory panel is voluntary, and when street signs are replaced, they replaced in bilingual form which costs nothing extra. Thousands are now in place, with a great many more to come.