Senator Philip Ozouf, who has a special responsibility for digital, finance and competition, said that time was running out to preserve Jersey’s native language, which according to estimates from the L’Office du Jèrriais is now spoken fluently by only about 1,000 Islanders.
The Senator has held talks with Education Minister Rod Bryans and Tony Scott-Warren, the Jèrriais language officer, about his plan, and if it is agreed, he wants to include the project as part of a digital strategy which he is due to publish in the next few weeks.
According to the UNESCO Atlas of World Languages in Danger, Jèrriais is classified as ‘severely endangered’, and experts predict that by the end of the century more than half of the world’s languages will be extinct.
