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Guernsey French speakers have offered up a number of romantic phrases in our native language for use this Valentine's Day.
It's one of a number of initiatives to continue the drive to save the language which have recently included a bi-lingual welcome sign at Guernsey Airport.
The language.gg website contains a number of the translations including:
The translations are also available on Warro! the Guernsey language taster app, which was developed by the Digital Greenhouse Guernsey and fluent Guernesiais speaker Yan Marquis, whose work was sponsored by Cherry Godfrey.
Mr Marquis said there is clearly an appetite for learning the language through the use of digital technologies and the app has been proving popular, especially ahead of 14 February:
"looking to the future, it is very exciting to be working in partnership with local digital agency Indulge, the Digital Greenhouse and the Guernsey Language Commission to develop a full standalone app with greater functionality and much increased language content.
"However, in the shorter term and ahead of Valentine’s Day, we have already added some ‘romantic’ phrases to Warro! as these have been requested by users."
Other initiatives to encourage the use of Guernsey French include the addition of the new welcome sign at Guernsey Airport:
The Guernsey Language Commission has also recently formed a company with charitable status "with the aim of seeking sponsorship to finance the creation of teaching materials". Mr Marquis said "developing the standalone language app is our current project" but he has more plans for the future:
"Ideally we are looking for a sponsor to finance this next stage of the project in its entirety, but we are also exploring the option of seeking individual sponsors for particular sections, i.e. a travel company might wish to finance a section about travel, or retail company to finance a section about shopping; however, a sponsor need not necessarily have a connection with a particular component / topic in order to finance its development."
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