Editing Cornish language (section)

== Classification ==
Cornish is a [[Southwestern Brittonic languages|Southwestern Brittonic]] language,<ref>{{cite book |last=Schrijver |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Schrijver |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/33209243 |title=Studies in British Celtic historical phonology |date=1995 |publisher=Rodopi |isbn=9051838204 |location=Amsterdam |pages=12 |oclc=33209243}}</ref> a branch of the [[Insular Celtic languages|Insular Celtic]] section of the [[Celtic languages|Celtic language family]], which is a sub-family of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] language family.<ref>{{cite web |title=Glottolog 4.4 - Cornish |url=https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/corn1251 |access-date=21 September 2021 |website=[[Glottolog]]}}</ref> Brittonic also includes [[Welsh language|Welsh]], [[Breton language|Breton]], [[Cumbric]] and possibly [[Pictish]], the last two of which are [[extinct language|extinct]]. [[Scottish Gaelic]], [[Irish language|Irish]] and [[Manx language|Manx]] are part of the separate [[Goidelic languages|Goidelic]] branch of Insular Celtic.

[[Joseph Loth]] viewed Cornish and Breton as being two dialects of the same language, claiming that "Middle Cornish is without doubt closer to Breton as a whole than the modern Breton dialect of [[Quiberon]] [{{lang|br|Kiberen}}] is to that of [[Saint-Pol-de-Léon]] [{{lang|br|Kastell-Paol}}]."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Williams |first=Nicholas J. A. |title=The Preterite in Cornish |journal=Cornish Studies |date=2010 |volume=18 |series=Second Series |page=201 |doi=10.1386/corn.18.1.179_1}}</ref> Also, [[Kenneth H. Jackson|Kenneth Jackson]] argued that it is almost certain that Cornish and Breton would have been mutually intelligible as long as Cornish was a living language, and that Cornish and Breton are especially closely related to each other and less closely related to Welsh.{{sfn|Jackson|1953|p=12}}