Tony Scott-Warren biographical details

[CTVPROMO]

Bouonjour, tout l'monde,

OK, I'll stick to English from now on... I am 47 years old, male,
married with 3 grown-up children.  I was born in England, but was brought
up and live in Jersey, Channel Islands, which for those who don't know
are located in the Bay of St.Malo (roughly around the top left corner of
France.)  The islands were on the winning side at the Battle of Hastings,
so they look on England as their colony, and not the other way round! :-)

I first became interested in our local language, jerriais, otherwise
known as Jersey Norman-French, through trying to read a weekly column in
our island newspaper.  I began really learning to speak it about 7 years
ago at adult evening class, and am now reasonably fluent.

Jerriais is spoken by fewer than 5,000 people out of an island population
of around 85,000, over half of whom are non-local.  Most of those who
speak it are over 65 years old; there are very few young speakers.
However it is hoped that an initiative similar to that of the Isle of Man
will soon be put in place to introduce voluntary primary school lessons.

In my job as Head of Promotions at Channel Television, I am responsible
for producing all local language programmes for the islands, which means
in effect that in alternate years I make programmes in either jerriais or
dgernesiais (the language of the island of Guernsey).  This amounts to 50
minutes of programming per year, which may not sound very much, but this
takes six to seven months annually to put together as it has to be done
in addition to working a normal 45 hour week!  The programmes have taken
various forms, from short recitations and story-telling to interviews and
basic on-air lessons.  They are always sub-titled in English in order not
to alienate the majority of the audience.  I also take consolation in the
fact that many other endangered languages get no media promotion at all.

I hope through this list to be able to pick up new ideas and associations
which will help me in my aim of keeping my adoptive language alive into
the foreseeable future.

Merci bein des fais, (many thanks)
Tony Scott Warren
Le bouistre d'anglais tchi pale le jerriais
ctvpromo at itl.net