Arrival of boat, Guernsey Credit: Philip de Jersey
Norman languages spoken in the Channel Islands for a thousand years are now severely endangered. Cambridge linguist Mari Jones has been analysing the languages and tracing why they have declined. —Dr Mari Jones - It may come as some surprise that Norman is spoken in the British Isles today. In the British parliament, the use of certain Norman phrases, for example during the passage of Bills between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, is a tradition that dates back to a time just after the Norman Conquest, when Norman French was the official language of government. But on the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Sark, Norman is a native language, albeit now endangered. In fact, Norman has been spoken in the Islands for a thousand years and, despite the fact that the archipelago has been united politically with Great Britain since 1204, until relatively recently most of the inhabitants were Francophone. The presence of English was probably first felt to any significant extent when, in the Middle Ages, military garrisons were established on the Islands to defend them against the French.
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