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What is Guernésiais?

What is Guernesiais? Guernesiais used to be the primary language that was spoken on Guernsey, one of the British Channel Islands. It is also known as Dguernesiais, Guernsey French, Guernsey Norman French, and Patois, French for dialect. It is now considered to be an endangered language since less than 2% of the population of Guernsey are able to speak Guernesiais fluently, and most of these speakers are over the age of 50. The language is no longer being taught to children, and English has become the dominant language on the island. Some of the reasons for this language change are trade and tourism with Britain, and impacts from WWII, such as the evacuation of Guernsey children to Britain during the German occupation. If you'd like to learn more about the history of Guernesiais, here is a link to Julia Sallabank's BBC article.

This blog is where I will record my progress and challenges in my attempt to learn Guernesiais.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

A Package from Guernsey Part II!




Oh dearie me!  Just received the actual book I ordered from the Société Guernesiais - Guernesiais: A Grammatical Survey by Marie De Garis (1983) (There was a bit of a mix up ealier, read previous post here).


This is definitely the missing piece I've been waiting for!  Just from a quick flip through I think this book combined with the recordings from the BBC Learn A Bit of Guernsey French site I will definitely be able to get a bit of a grasp on this language.  A huge help will also come from my background in studying French (My university major is French and Spanish).  From what I can tell, French is used as a comparison language in most of De Garis' Grammar book.  It's not an extensive grammar but it seems very direct and to the point.  For the pronunciation section I read, De Garis mentions that most sound are pronounced as in French, and then she goes on to explain the exceptions, such as, the 'h' is always aspirated in Guernesiais, and the 'll' sounds like 'y'.  She does not use the IPA (International phonetic alphabet), so this is where the actual recordings will come in handy.  I will be able to read her description of sounds in the Grammar and then find a recording with a similar word to verify the sound :DDD

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