Cotentinais

Cotentinais (French pronunciation:; le normand du Cotentin) is the variety of the Norman language spoken on the Cotentin Peninsula, in the Manchedepartment of Normandy, France. Together with Cauchois in the east, it is one of the best-preserved mainland forms of Norman. It belongs to the northern group of Norman, spoken north and west of the Joret line, and is closely related to the insular Norman of the Channel Islands (Jèrriais and Guernésiais).

Like Norman generally, Cotentinais descends from the Gallo-Romance speech of Neustria, overlaid from the 10th century with a Norse element left by Scandinavian settlers, which is especially visible in its maritime and rural vocabulary. After the incorporation of continental Normandy into the French crown in 1204 and the later standardisation of French, Norman declined to the status of a spoken patois; a literary revival began in the Cotentin in the later 19th century. The language is today classified as severely endangered, with transmission largely broken and its survival dependent on cultural associations.