On 2013-01-11 16:19:56 +0000, Emery Davis said:

On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:33:46 +0000, Derek Turner wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:30:05 +0000, Spider wrote:

Hope you're having a lovely, if chilly, birthday. Keep warm and drink
lots of tea .. and maybe a hot toddy tonight. Brrr it's cold here.

Bouôn annivèrsaithe


Bouon eunnivarsé from south of the Joret line, also! (Only
approximately Jersiais. I've become quite interested in this language
question of late.)

-E

I never learned Jèrriais unfortunately because in my youth it was
considered a sort of pidgin French and the idea was to teach 'proper'
French. And because it's based on old Norman French and has shortened
forms of words (and some very different words) I can't read all of it,
though can usually get the gist. I know a couple of now very old
farmers who speak Jèrriais all the time when they're together but few
people really know it now. When I was a child and even up into the
1970s, one often heard it spoken in the market, especially at week
ends. It doesn't help that a genuine Jersey accent is very strong, too.
Doing some family research i often see where the poor English
enumerator has tried to get a name or address from an ancestor who
probably only spoke Jèrriais. The parish of Grouville often gets
written as Yarwelle and what happens to some of the French surnames is
amazing! I have a Jèrriais-French dictionary which is quite handy at
times. I think children have the option of learning the language as an
'extra' now but I wonder how many bother. However, on a visit to
Normandy some years ago, a very chauvinistic Frenchman practically
adopted me because, among a crowd of English, I was a Jersey woman and
therefore almost Norman!
--
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
www.helpforheroes.org.uk