Language
English is the only language spoken by a majority of the population, while Guernésiais, the Norman language of the island, is currently spoken fluently by 2% of the population (according to 2001 census). However, 14% of the population claim some understanding of the language and it is taught in a few Island schools. Until the early twentieth century French was the only official language. Family and place names reflect this linguistic heritage. The island's loss of the language reflects a significant anglicisation of its culture and mindset, partly brought on by a large number of tax exiles from England. Portuguese is taught in a few schools and is spoken by around 2% of the population.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Guernsey
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“This is of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear,—hoo-hoo-ooooo, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I do not speak with any fondness but the language of coolest history, when I say that Boston commands attention as the town which was appointed in the destiny of nations to lead the civilization of North America.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive ... and impoverished.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)