dolly pentreath & ChesteN Marchant

Last native speaker & last monoglot speaker of the Cornish Language

1685 – 1777

Suggested by Sue Liddicoat and Rachael McLean 

Chesten Marchant (C16th) suggested by Colin Allen 

Sue writes,
“Dolly Pentreath was one of the last people to speak cornish as their mother tongue. Like many people in Newlyn then, she had a very poor and harsh life, but people came from London to see and hear her. Learning her story has inspired people like myself to take an interest in cornish identity, language and the meaning of place names we use everyday. Learning about her at school made me proud of Cornwall and West Penwith.” 

Rachael adds, “Dolly was a fluent speaker of Kernewek, our native language. True to her identity, passionate about keeping the Cornish heritage alive, she promoted the Cornish language which represents our uniqueness. Molly’s legacy was to leave documented speech for us to learn from today.” 

Colin writes,
“Chesten Marchant was the last named monoglot Cornish speaker and is a significant name in the story of the Cornish language, its decline and revival. She died in 1676 at  Gwithian.  William Scawen, writing in the 1680s, states that Marchant had only a "slight" understanding of English.” 

From Wikipedia:
Identifying the last native speaker of Cornish has been a subject of academic interest since the 18th century. The view that  Dolly Pentreath was the last native speaker has been challenged by records of other candidates. It is probably impossible to establish who the "last native speaker" was and there is difficulty with the term "last native speaker", which is open to interpretation. Some scholars prefer to use "last monoglot speaker", for a person whose only language was Cornish, "last native speaker", for a person who may have been bilingual in English and Cornish and, "last person with traditional knowledge", for someone who had knowledge of Cornish that had been handed down.