Olympic shame but no surprise!

[KamaAina]

11. Wiki begs to differ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language#18th-20th_centuries

The Reverend John Bannister stated in 1871 that "The close of the 18th century witnessed the final extinction, as spoken language, of the old Celtic vernacular of Cornwall". However, there is some evidence that Cornish continued, albeit in limited usage by a handful of speakers, through the late 19th century. Matthias Wallis of St Buryan certified in 1859 that his grandmother, Ann Wallis, who had died around 1844, had spoken Cornish well. He also stated that a Jane Barnicoate, who had died c. 1857, could speak Cornish too. J. Gwyn Griffiths commented that "there were Cornish immigrants who spoke the language in the leadmine villages of North Cardiganshire, Mid-Wales, in the 1850s". Mary Kelynack, the Madron born 84-year old who walked up to London to see the Great Exhibition in 1851 and was presented to the Queen, was believed to have been a Cornish speaker. In 1875 six speakers all in their sixties were discovered in Cornwall. John Tremethack, died 1852 at the age of eighty-seven, is believed to have known Cornish and passed some of it on to his daughter. George Badcock, grandfather of Bernard Victor of Mousehole, taught some Cornish to his grandson. The farmer John Davey, who died in 1891 at Boswednack, Zennor, may have been the last person with some traditional knowledge of Cornish. However, other traces survived. Fishermen in West Penwith were counting fish using a rhyme derived from Cornish into the 20th century.

There is good evidence that at least three native speakers outlived John Davey junior: Jacob Care of St Ives (died 1892); Elizabeth Vingoe of Higher Boswarva, Madron (died 1903 and who taught at least some Cornish to her son); and John Mann, who was interviewed in his St Just home by Richard Hall (himself Elizabeth Vingoe's nephew) in 1914, Mann being then 80. He told Hall that, when a child in Boswednack, Zennor, he and several other children always conversed in Cornish while at play together. This would have been around 1840-1850. They would certainly have known Cornish speaker Anne Berryman (1766–1854), also of Boswednack. In 1935 a retired policeman, Mr Therris, reported that when he was a youth in about 1875 he used to go to sea fishing with some Newlyn fishermen who were in the habit of speaking Cornish while on the boat and held conversations which lasted up to ten minutes at a time. The foreman supervising the launching of boats at St Ives in the 1920s would shout "Hunchi boree" which means Heave away now! possibly the last recorded sentence of traditional Cornish.