Les Pages Jèrriaises is a collection of thousands of pages in and about
JèrriaisJèrriais is the form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. It has been in decline over the past century as English has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration...
posted on the internet. It was created and is maintained by
Geraint Jennings- Biography :Geraint Jennings was born in Saint Helier in 1966. He was educated at Victoria College Preparatory and Christ's Hospital. He graduated from University College, Oxford with a Master of Arts in Modern Languages. Further studies include a Licenciate Diploma in TESOL from Trinity College,...
. It is the largest collection of
NormanNorman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. Norman can be classified as one of the northern Oïl languages along with Picard and Walloon...
materials on the internet. It has also been praised in Normandy as an example of how a Norman dialect has managed to modernize itself. Les Pages Jèrriaises have also featured prominently in a national newspaper.
Les Pages Jèrriaises are divided into sections containing vocabulary (usually with English, and sometimes French, translation), grammar, authors, poems, songs, texts and articles, information on
JerseyJersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...
and its parishes, a
FAQFrequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...
, an introduction to Jèrriais, and quizzes and games, all in Jèrriais. It contains a repository of old Jèrriais texts (such as poems, stories, and articles), published and made available to the general public.
Les Pages Jèrriaises are sometimes used as a supplement to Jèrriais teaching material in classrooms on Jersey, and is also used as a resource by Jèrriais learners abroad, as well as to connect Jèrriais speakers who have left the island. They have been used as a source for Jèrriais-related research by individuals outside of Jersey, including Tony Le Sauteur's pages on the history of Jèrriais in
QuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
.
History
Les Pages Jèrriaises, commissioned by
La Société JersiaiseLa Société Jersiaise is a scholarly society in Jersey which was founded in 1873, it promotes and encourages:* The study of the history, the archaeology, the natural history, the language and many other subjects of interest in the Island of Jersey...
, were initially created by Geraint Jennings, and had achieved media notice by 1996. In 1999, a local contest was created to celebrate the addition of the 1,000th page.