Sercquiais
| Sercquiais | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Sark |
|
Native speakers
|
20 (2014) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-hcf |
Sercquiais also known as Sarkese or Sark-French (Lé Sèrtchais) is the Norman dialect of the Channel Island of Sark (Bailiwick of Guernsey). In the island it is sometimes known, slightly disparagingly, as the "patois", a French term meaning "regional language".
Sarkese is in fact a descendant of the 16th century Jèrriais used by the original colonists, 40 families mostly from Saint Ouen, Jersey, who settled the then uninhabited island, although influenced in the interim by Dgèrnésiais (Guernsey dialect). It is still spoken by older inhabitants of the island. Although the lexis is heavily anglicised, the phonology retains features lost in Jèrriais since the 16th century. Most of the local placenames are in Sarkese. In former times, there may have been two subdialects of Sercquiais. It is also closely related to the Auregnais (Alderney) dialect, as well as Continental Norman.
It has suffered greatly in recent years due to a large influx of tax exiles from England who have moved to the island, as well as official neglect.
Relatively little Sercquiais has been transcribed, and as there is no widely accepted form, it has received a certain amount of stigma as a result. A ruler of Sark, Dame Sibyl Hathaway, who was a speaker herself, claimed that it could "never be written down", and this myth has continued in the years since then.
The earliest published text in Sercquiais so far identified is the Parable of the Sower (Parabol du smeaux) from the Gospel of Matthew. Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, linguist, visited the Channel Islands in September 1862 in order to transcribe samples of the insular language varieties, which he subsequently published in 1863:
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