Saturday 26 June 2010

New on La Section de la langue Jèrriaise

Fête Nouormande 2008 1
Newly added to the snippets from C19 sources, and as a follow-up to the Chanson Gaspésienne, more North Americana - this time, an extract from travel writing about visiting Saint Helier in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, New York 1858:

Cicerones, who speak a mongrel dialect, will meet you on the quay, and show you where the Royal Hotel invites you, with its bay windows and British Coffee-Room. And with a British coffee-room come British steaks, British muffins (most indigestible of cakes), British chops, and British roast joints. You will hear your host talking what might be French, if it were not an older Norman tongue...

...almost within cannon-shot of France, this little relic of the ancient Norman people - clinging to the Norman tongue and to Norman caps - bade defiance to the navies of France.

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