The enemies sometimes appear for the most unsuspected places. That is what the German soldiers who occupied the islands of the Channel, on the Canal de la Mancha learned in the summer of 1940. The campaign promised them happy and in fact it extended for several years, but shortly after putting the first foot on the island of Jersey, Nazi officers realized that they would have to deal with an unexpected enemy: a language that their interpreters did not understand.
And that was a luck for the locals.
In a place on the Channel of La Mancha … There is Jersey, the largest of the islands of the channel, an archipelago located very close to the French coast but is administratively linked to London. In fact, dependencies of the British crown, autonomous territories, self -governor and strictly are not part of the United Kingdom, but are linked to their crown. It is estimated that in 2001 there were about 150,000 people distributed in two dancers in the archipelago: that of Guernsey and Jersey, where more than 100,000 live.
An island, its own language. Jersey not only stands out for his geography, status and history. It also does it at the linguistic level: on the island you speak English, French … and the jerseyes (jarrias), a language related to the Normand and that, the island authorities claim, has a rich history of more than a thousand years. His first written record dates in fact the 12th century, with the poet Wace, and on the island they presume his literary legacy of the late eighteenth century. The Jerseyés caught even the prestigious French writer Víctor Hugo, who rescued one of his words, octopus (Octopus) in his novel ‘Los Workers del Mar’, of 1866.
“A Language of Peasants”. The history of the Jersejés is not exactly simple. Despite his age and the enormous roots he has had on the island, there was a time in which he considered a vulgar and stigmatized language, which has irremediably marked his base of speakers. “In 40 and 50 if you went to school the Jerseyés was prohibited. It was considered a language of peasants, spoken only by poor people. That was the attitude of all teachers, even those who spoke Jerseyes,” he tells BBC François Le Maistre, a man of almost 90 years who explains that in his home, as a child, only the island language was used.
… And a weapon in front of the Nazis. Interestingly and despite his stigmatization, the sweater played a relevant role during World War II. The Canal Islands hold the sad honor of being the only “British” islands that endured the occupation of German troops during World War II. The Nazis arrived in Jersey between June and July 1940 (with the battle of England as a backdrop) and remained in the archipelago until May 1945.
The authorities evacuated 30,000 people from the channel islands before the arrival of the Germans, but even so when Führer’s troops landed in Jersey they met thousands of locals (the archipelago added in total 104,000 residents) with a disturbing peculiarity, especially for the Nazis: they spoke a seemingly unintelligible language, even for the Francophone Germans. Not even the collaborative interpreters understood at all.
What devils are they saying? “The articles in Jerseés published at the beginning of the occupation managed to transmit resistance messages,” says BBC Geraint Jennings, linguist and expert in the island language. “The texts openly said that it was better to speak Jerseés so that ‘certain people’ could not understand it, that is, the Germans! Of course they soon realized and took drastic measures with censorship, but the sweater continued to be used as a secret language to transmit messages during the rest of the contest.”
In the island’s passive resistance strategy, that language related to Normando became a valuable piece. Its complexity, even for the ears of the German soldiers who spoke French or the collaborative interpreters, made the sweater a key tool for exchanging information, drawing clandestine plans or even, recalls the English chain, mocking the Nazis.
“Everyone spoke”. “During those years everyone spoke Jerseyés simply because, unfortunately of the Germans, it was not possible for them to understand our language,” recalls Le Maistre. Perhaps it sounds strange, but it is that within the jersey itself different dialect varieties of the language were used: despite the fact that the island is small, a good part of the islanders were related to their own communities, which favored surprising wealth of expressions, words and even accents, distinctive marks of groups of speakers.
In other channel islands, such as Guernesey, Sark and Alderney also had their own languages, some already missing. A dream for linguists, a nightmare for German soldiers who walked through Jersey.
A tongue in retreat. That does not mean that the sweater was immune to war. His starting point was already delicate. Although in the 30s the mother tongue of most people born on the island remained, it was minorized and stigmatized. To this was added “the great social break” that, laments Jennings, caused the German occupation: the families evacuated to England with their children ended up adopting English as the main language, as happened to the islanders who enrolled in the Armed Forces and then returned home.
This rupture is added that tourism and the island’s financial sector, key pieces in its economy, contributed to boost English as a communication vehicle.
And what is the situation now? Complicated. There are reasons for optimism, but also for concern. In recent years the language has managed to claim, with institutions expressly dedicated to its promotion and greater sensitivity by local institutions. In February 2019, in fact, the island authorities declared him co -official language in the Assembly with English and French. Who today lands at the island’s airfield is also with a message that welcomes him in the language: “Seyiz Les Beinv’nus à Jerri”.
That is the positive part. The refusal is that the current health of the sweater is far away (very far) from the one in the 1930s, when it was the cradle language of most of its population. There are studies that estimate that in 2002 only 15% of the islanders included some words of language. Others raise that data to 30%. The BBC chain ensures that there are only 500 native speakers capable of expressing fluently in the tongue that took the Germans out of their boxes.
Images | Mike Beales (Flickr) 1 and 2
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