IF Islanders see the word ‘Grève’ most will think ‘beach’. They may also bid someone farewell with a cheery ‘À bétôt’. Some may also describe their broken bike or phone as ‘foutu’.
If they do, they are speaking – either consciously or unconsciously – Jèrriais and are using words that are unique to the Island.
Gone are the days when people learned Jèrriais before they learned English, although that was only a couple of generations ago. However, while the number of native speakers has declined, the number of people learning it has increased, as has people’s exposure to words, through signs, business names and marketing.
This week, one of the leading academics of the language, Cambridge professor Mari Jones, has been in the Island to discover how some people in modern Jersey are using the language to reinforce its identity and the authenticity and provenance of their business or organisation.
Professor Jones’s work, which is funded by the Jersey Community Foundation, will culminate in an academic paper which will be published by the Sociéte Jersiaise and within Cambridge University.
Working on Jèrriais for over 20 years, Professor Jones is a linguist who is interested in big languages that are spoken alongside small languages. She is Welsh and Welsh-speaking, which sparked her interest and discovered Jèrriais as part of her studies at Cambridge, where she is a fellow of Peterhouse College and professor of French linguistics and language change.
She said: “When I started looking at Jèrriais in the late 90s, there had not been much research done on it since the 50s, so there was a definite gap. I came to Jersey, I learned Jèrriais and I started speaking with the native speakers to analyse the structure of the language.
“This week’s research comes out of that: there were a lot more native speakers here 20 years ago, but the language was much less visible in what we call the linguistic landscape of Jersey.
“Back then, you didn’t see any Jèrriais around at all. Now, what we see, unfortunately, is far fewer native speakers, but the language has become far, far more visible.
“So, what I’m doing in this project is meeting businesses, invididuals and organisations that have embraced Jèrriais, such as Pêtchi at Liberty Wharf, and florist Flieurs, which are both Jèrriais names.
“I’ve also met with, among many people, the Ballet d’ Jèrri and Jersey Post, who have the language on their stamps, to ask: why now, when the language has got its fewest native speakers, are you deciding to use Jèrriais?”
Professor Jones said she had found that it was far from lip service or a token gesture.
She said: “It has been extremely interesting in that, for example, when I was talking to Pêtchi, they told me ‘we are a local business and we take pride in the fact that we don’t import our fish. We use local fish and local produce so, for us, having a Jèrriais name promotes ‘islandness’.’
“They also told me it promotes community pride, sustainability as well authenticity, which is all wrapped up in the connotations of Jèrriais.
She continued: “It was the same for Flieurs, who were keen to emphasise their use of local flowers. Jersey Post wanted to stress that they are a community post office and using Jèrriais was a perfect way to emphasise that. The Coop use the language on their doors in the same way, reflecting their ethos as a company.
“It is extremely interesting that the language is still felt to have those connotations, even if many people in the Island don’t speak it.”
Recognising that there is a big difference between using Jèrriais words and speaking it, Professor Jones said that these touchpoints helped to normalise the language.
She said: “I recently judged the Eisteddfod so heard lots of young people speaking Jèrriais, which they had learned at school. One way to show these children that the language is worth learning is when they see it outside the classroom.
“If they just see it as is a language of the classroom, that doesn’t go anywhere; but if they go to a Jersey Trees for Life site and see a welcome sign in Jèrriais and know what it means, that gives it important context.
“Of course, teaching the language is essential because it gives the learners a basis of their knowledge, but it is then important to show how the language is used in the community. When people don’t even have to think about including Jèrriais because everybody is used to seeing it, that’s a major win for the language.”
During her two-decade-long association with Jèrriais, Professor Jones has seen its teaching evolve from a “trailblazing” team of the L’Office du Jèrriais, which was founded in 1999, to the current Jèrriais Teaching Service, after extra funding was found from 2015.
“That was a fantastic move forward, which allowed teaching not only to cover early years to secondary education but also all the events and festivals that the team take part in,” she said.
“What I’ve seen this week is the community taking ownership of the language more and more, which I think is due to the slow build up since the founding of L’Office du Jèrriais – the years of hard work are starting to come to fruition.
“You have a lot of people now who have been through Jèrriais education and are now starting to use it in their lives. I met [ITV weather presenter] Lily Carter this week, who told me she had learned Jèrriais at primary school and when she joined ITV, the broadcaster was very interested in making each region special for their audience.
“So, Lily decided to use Jèrriais in her weather broadcasts. She had that awareness of the language because she had learnt it at school, as well as having it in her family heritage.”
Why does Professor Jones think that Jèrriais is important to the Island?
“Jèrriais is a language not spoken anywhere else but Jersey and therefore it can do things for Jersey that no other language can do. The culture of Jèrriais permeates Jersey, and even if you don’t speak – or you don’t think you speak any Jèrriais – you probably do.
“I was talking the other day to somebody who is completely anglophone but said that when he goes surfing, he calls his friends ‘morv’, which I discovered comes from ‘man vyi’ or ‘my old friend’. That is part of Jèrriais that a lot of people will understand in Jersey but not elsewhere. You cannot be in Jersey without having a latent knowledge of Jèrriais.
“If you are French, you will hear the word ‘grève’ and think it means ‘strike’ – but everyone in Jersey will give it a completely different meaning, and that is unique to the Island.
“Also, some people will say that Jèrriais isn’t really a written language, but that is not true. It has centuries of literary heritage behind it and if the language goes, then that is all lost.
“What people don’t realise is there was a blossoming of literature in Jèrriais around the 19th century which actually sparked a resurgence of Norman literature in Normandy. So, people think Jersey is influenced by Normandy but Jersey and Jèrriais have also influenced Normandy.”
Like ‘grève’ meaning ‘beach’ and ‘Les Quennevais’ meaning ‘hemp fields’, Professor Jones said the language helped to bring the landscape alive.
She said: “Jèrriais is embroidered into the fabric of Jersey; it much more than a means of communication. You have a literary heritage and a cultural heritage. Jersey is the way it is largely because of the language that fashioned it.”
She added that everyone who she had met this week had not incorporated Jèrriais in their branding or marketing to gain a competitive advantage but simply because of a genuine fondness for the Island and its language.
She said: “They told me that it is just a sense of wanting to show that we are part of a community; we are not something that could equally be in the UK. I have regularly heard words such as ‘sustainable’, ‘ethical’, ‘natural’, ‘local’, ‘homegrown’, ‘distinctive’ and ‘authentic’.”
Professor Jones added: “Jersey is not like the UK, nor would it want to be, and it’s not like France, nor would it want to be. So, this language shows that it is distinctive. From my point of view, it is Jersey’s USP. What Jersey has that distinguishes it from places like the Isle of Wight is its Norman heritage.
“Jersey might have the trappings of the UK, with its zebra crossings, post boxes and British shops, but you only need to see a road name out of town to discover how different it is. And it is not English, nor is it French; it is Norman.”
With the numbers of native speakers declining, Professor Jones said she was heartened by the number of child and adult learners whom she had met at the recent Eisteddfod.
She said: “Native speakers may become fewer, but they will be replaced by adult learners. You get that in many minority language communities: in the Isle of Man, for example, where most Manx speakers are learners. In Wales, there are still a lot of native speakers, but you also have a very high number of adult learners.
“It doesn’t matter how you learned Jèrriais, whether it was at your mother’s knee or whether it was in the classroom. The important thing is to speak it because everybody is the same. There is no hierarchy that some are better than others. They are all Jèrriais speakers and I would just encourage everybody to speak the language.”
- Professor Jones said that anyone who wished to learn more about incorporating Jèrriais into their business or other activities can contact s.parker@jeron.je
