I'm Julie and I want to tell you my story about my connection with Cornwall ~ Kernow, and its language heritage - and I invite you to join me.

I haven't always known that there was a Cornish language.

I haven't always known that I was Cornish.

I haven't always known about the connection between the language, the dialect and the natural environment.

I have been making discoveries - and these are some of the things I would like to share with you.

My interest in language and identity has been life-long. As a child, I was born and lived in Cornwall. Within two years my family had sold our small farm in East Cornwall and had emigrated to live in South Africa, where we lived on another farm, Sunshine Farm. As I had no memories of Cornwall, I thought of myself as a South African child, living in a Cornish family. I had no sense of my own connection with Cornwall at that point. The search for my own sense of belonging, of identity, started here.

Years later, I found myself back in Cornwall - and drawn to study socio-linguistics with Ken MacKinnon, later to become Professor MacKinnon - and the Professor MacKinnon who organized the research that led to the recognition of the Cornish language as a Regional or Minority Language in 2002. The language was described by Professor MacKinnon at that time as 'an identity language'.

My connection with Professor MacKinnon held firm for decades and he firmly supported my work here. I believe that it was Professor MacKinnon's work that resulted in the recognition of the Cornish people, by the UK government, as being on a par with the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh in April 2014.

Lostwithiel is a great love of mine. It has given me a home for over thirty years. For the past twenty-five years, I have been busy creating a home for the Cornish language, the Cornish dialect and Cornish literature here in one of our former Cornish capitals. I think it is important that Cornish culture is available to people in a context where it can be accessed on a par with other languages and cultures, so I have taught our Cornish culture here alongside English, French and Italian to both locals and interested visitors.