Richard Gendall

Professor Richard Roscow Morris "Dick" Gendall (12 April 1924 – 12 September 2017) was a British expert on the Cornish language. He was the third of four children and the only son of the Reverend Philip Parsons Gendall and Mary EB Hand. His father was a minister who worked in a number of parishes around Cornwall. In his own words, he started learning Cornish at the age of four. Following National Service in the Royal Navy during World War II, he studied linguistics and music in the University of Leeds. Then he began to learn Cornish from R. Morton Nance and A.S.D. Smith but he was disappointed that the language was not being spoken. He began a campaign to revive Cornish as a spoken language. In 1952 he founded the Cornish language magazine An Lef (The Voice), but resigned the editorship after a year to E.G.R Hooper. He also founded the learners' magazine Hedhyu which lasted from 1956 - 1961. Through his efforts Kesva an Taves Kernewek (the Cornish Language Board) was established in 1967.

He was the founder of "Modern Cornish"/Curnoack Nowedga, which split off during the 1980s. Whereas Ken George mainly went to Medieval Cornish as the inspiration for his revival, Gendall went to the last surviving records of Cornish, such as John and Nicholas Boson, in the eighteenth-century. He taught at the University of Exeter.

He was also a folk musician, and made several recordings with Brenda Wootton (e.g. Crowdy Crawn), as well as a poet and writer in Cornish itself under the bardic name of "Gelvinak".

Gendall founded Teere ha Tavaz, an organisation which seeks to promote the Cornish language in its Modern Cornish or Curnoack Nowedga variety. It is also a small publisher on, and in, the Cornish language.

He died in Liskeard, Cornwall in September 2017 at the age of 93.

For many years he taught French and Spanish at Helston Grammar School.