Culture and Languages
The two dominant cultures are English on the north shore of the Channel, French on the south. However, there are also a number of minority languages that are or were found on the shores and islands of the English Channel, which are listed here, with the Channel's name following them.
- Celtic Languages
- Breton - "Mor Breizh" (Sea of Brittany)
- Cornish - "Mor Bretannek"
- Germanic languages
- English
- Dutch - "het Kanaal" (the Channel)
- German - "der Ärmelkanal" (the Sleeve Channel)
Dutch previously had a larger range, and extended into parts of modern-day France. For more information, please see French Flemish.
- Romance languages
- French - "La Manche"
- Gallo - "Manche", "Grand-Mè", "Mè Bertone"
- Norman, including the Channel Island vernaculars:
- Anglo-Norman (extinct, but fossilised in certain English law phrases)
- Auregnais (extinct)
- Cotentinais - "Maunche"
- Guernesiais - "Ch'nal"
- Jèrriais - "Ch'na"
- Sercquais
- Picard
Most other languages tend towards variants of the French and English forms, but notably Welsh has "Môr Udd".
Read more about this topic: English Channel
Famous quotes containing the words culture and/or languages:
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)