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Guernsey English


Channel Island English refers to Alderney English, Guernsey English and Jersey English and similar dialects of English found in the other Channel Islands.

Alderney English is the variety of English spoken by some residents of Alderney.

In technical terms it is difficult to identify it as a separate dialect - due to Alderney's small size and proportionately large turnover of immigration and emigration (particularly to/from Guernsey, with which it is closely associated at a governmental level) and the UK, very many people speak the English of their place of origin, while many people who have been educated or undergone vocational training in Guernsey in their youth, naturally acquire a way of speaking that is close to Guernsey English. It's almost not an exaggeration to suggest that Alderney English comprises 2000 idiolects which cluster into a few groups. (There are approximately 2000 residents).

Alderney English in the 21st century therefore corresponds quite closely to standard English with a tendency towards mild archaism due to the population demographic in which the over-50s are the largest group.

Its distinguishing feature are a small but significant number of loan words from Guernésiais a(the variety of Norman spoken on the neighbouring island of Guernsey), Legal French (which was the language of legislation before the Second World War) and a very much smaller number of words that have come down from Auregnais (now a dead language, with only one or two rememberers still alive).

Examples of words used in Alderney that appear neither in standard English nor in Guernsey English are Impôt (where it means 'rubbish tip/recycling centre and not 'tax' as elsewhere) and the pronunciation of certain local surnames, Dupont and Simon as [dipõ] and [symõ] respectively, rather than the standard Parisian pronunciation. The historic influence, such as remains today, of Auregnais on Alderney English is very hard to discern, since with the notable exception of such words, Guernésiais and Auregnais differed only slightly.


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