But yesterday, at last, peace among the champions of the various forms of the language threatened to break out after a commission of learned experts ruled that all of the systems were valid.
An independent arbitrator is to be appointed to take the three or more forms of the language and create one single official written form.
It may seem like a quirky local tiff to outsiders, but to the 300 or so fluent Cornish speakers it is a deadly serious matter. And in recent years it has become a money issue too.
Funding is available from Whitehall and Europe for the development of the language - but if a common form cannot be agreed the concern is that it could wither again, as it has done in the past.
Jenefer Lowe, development manager for the Cornish Language Partnership, has been refereeing the various factions: "It has been a fierce debate but we hope everyone will be able to get behind this."
Ms Lowe said it was important to agree on an official form that will be used on road signs and in documents and schools.
There has been a fear among some speakers that their form could disappear if one of the others was adopted as the single written form. "The forms will not be lost," said Ms Lowe. "People will be able to speak their preferred dialect."
The Cornish debate has raged for at least four decades. The revival of the language began to gather pace in the 1920s, when a version that came to be known as Unified Cornish was reconstructed borrowing from related Celtic tongues.