Guernésiais

Current status

• L'Assembllaïe d'Guernesiais, an association for speakers of the language founded in 1957, has published a periodical. Les Ravigoteurs, another association, has published a storybook and cassette for children.
• Forest School hosts an annual speaking contest of the island's primary school children.
• The annual Eisteddfod provides an opportunity for performances in the language, and radio and newspaper outlets furnish regular media output.
• There is some teaching of the language in voluntary classes in schools in Guernsey.
• Evening classes are available, as of 2013.
• Lunchtime classes are offered at the Guernsey Museum, as of 2013.
• Along with Jèrriais, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Manx and Scots, Guernésiais is recognised as a regional language by the British and Irish governments within the framework of the British–Irish Council.
• BBC Radio Guernsey and the Guernsey Press both feature occasional lessons, the latter with sometimes misleading phonetics.
• A Guernésiais language development officer was appointed.

History

• Guernsey poet George Métivier – nicknamed the Guernsey Burns, was the first to produce a dictionary of the Norman language in the Channel Islands, the Dictionnaire Franco-Normand. This established the first standard orthography – later modified and modernised. Among his poetical works are Rimes Guernesiaises published in 1831.
• Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte published the Gospel of Matthew by George Métivier in Dgèrnésiais in London in 1863 as part of his philological research.
• Like Métivier, Tam Lenfestey published poetry in Guernsey newspapers and in book form.
• Denys Corbet described himself as the Draïn Rimeux, but literary production continued. Corbet is best known for his poems, especially the epic L'Touar de Guernesy, a picaresque tour of the parishes of Guernsey. As editor of the French-language newspaper Le Bailliage, he also wrote feuilletons in Dgèrnésiais under the pen name Badlagoule. In 2009 the island held a special exhibition in the Forest Parish on Corbet and his work acknowledging the centenary of his death and unveiling a contemporary portrait painting of the artist by Christian Corbet a cousin to Denys Corbet.
• Thomas Martin translated into Guernésiais the Bible, the plays of William Shakespeare, twelve plays by Pierre Corneille, three plays by Thomas Corneille, twenty seven plays by Molière, twenty plays by Voltaire and The Spanish Student by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• Thomas Henry Mahy wrote Dires et Pensées du Courtil Poussin, a regular column in La Gazette Officielle de Guernesey, from 1916. A collection was published in booklet form in 1922. He was still publishing occasional pieces of poetry and prose by the start of the 1930s.
• Thomas Alfred Grut published Des lures guernesiaises in 1927, once again a collection of newspaper columns. He also translated some of the Jèrriais stories of Philippe Le Sueur Mourant into Dgèrnésiais.
• Marjorie Ozanne wrote stories, published in the Guernsey Evening Press between 1949 and 1965. Some earlier pieces can be found in La Gazette de Guernesey in the 1920s.
• Ken Hill translated many of Marjorie Ozanne's short stories and poems into English with the Guernsey accent of the early 20th century. The work was published by the Guernsey society.
• Métivier's dictionary was superseded by Marie de Garis' Dictiounnaire Angllais-Guernésiais; first edition published in 1967, supplements 1969 and 1973, third edition 1982.
• When the Channel Islands were invaded by Germany in World War II, Dgèrnésiais experienced a minor revival. Many Guernsey people did not always wish the occupying forces to understand what they were saying, especially as some of the soldiers had knowledge of English.
• Victor Hugo includes the odd word of Dgèrnésiais in some of his Channel Island novels. Hugo's novel Toilers of the Sea, is credited with introducing the Guernesiais word for octopus pieuvre into the French language.
• A collection of short stories P'tites Lures Guernésiaises by various writers was published in 2006.

  Bible translations

• George Métivier translated the Gospel of Matthew into Guernésiais and it was published in London in 1863. This is now online.
• Thomas Martin translated the whole Bible into Guernésiais and this has never been published.

  Phonology

Verbs

Examples