Can’t tell Kernewek from Cymraeg? You must be Tesco
There must have been red faces all round in Tesco’s boardroom yesterday.
In a bid to ingratiate themselves with the residents of Helston in Cornwall (and thus extract more revenue from their bank accounts. Ed), Tesco bosses decided the store needed bilingual signage.
So signage in the vernacular was duly installed, according to The Guardian.
However, the signs were in the wrong vernacular as signage in Cymraeg (Welsh) was installed, instead of in Kernewek (Cornish).
There are about 400 to 500 advanced speakers of Kernewek with between 2,500 and 5,000 people having some basic ability in the language. More than 100,000 people expressed their main national identity, ethnicity or main language as Cornish in the 2021 census.
The Cornish people are a recognised national minority under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, meaning they share the same status as the Welsh, Irish and Scots within the UK.
The company has since apologised for the cock-up and removed the signs.