Pride of Guernsey: Yan Marquis

‘Yan personifies Guernesiais,’ said his nominator Hayley North.

‘From the moment I met him at my first lesson, he inspired me to love our native language and the culture that it brings with it and I immediately became more involved.

‘He has worked with rare language experts, volunteered his time to represent our language abroad and been a huge influence in ensuring the Language Commission came into being as well as writing for the Guernsey Press and writing books to help learners.

‘As a teacher he works with limited resources, no formal framework for teaching the language, and extremely varied groups of students, yet his enthusiasm is never dimmed.

‘As kind as he is talented, his humour makes lessons fun and relevant and keeps people coming back for more. He is the only person we go to for translations, for lessons. People don’t recognise how much work he does. Yan is so understated and carries this great responsibility for our native language so lightly and it is about time he was recognised for his unmatched commitment to the cause.’

Yan began learning the language when he was 18 and began teaching in 2003.

‘I could see that its survival was threatened even back then, and I realised that on a personal level, one way of "saving" a language is by learning and speaking it,’ he said. ‘If I had to decide on the best thing, it would probably be that after one lesson students leave being able to speak a little of their island language.’