Every entry in Manx Words & Grammar is sourced. The chip beside each word links here, to the book or dataset it came from.
Manx has a smaller written record than Irish, and a break in its spoken transmission: the last traditional native speaker died in 1974. That makes the distinction between a historically attested form [H] and a revived one [R] the most important judgement we make, and it is why two historical dictionaries sit at the top of this list rather than one modern one.
Historical dictionaries and grammars
These decide whether a Manx form is attested. Both dictionaries are public domain and we hold full copies, which is how we check one against the other.
Cregeen, A Dictionary of the Manks Language (1835)
The foundational record of pre-revival Manx, compiled by Archibald Cregeen at a time when educated opinion could not see the point. Public domain. Our primary test of whether a form is historically attested. Read it at the Internet Archive →
Kelly, The Manx Dictionary (Manx Society, 1866)
John Kelly’s triglot dictionary, printed posthumously by the Manx Society. Public domain. Our cross-check on Cregeen, and the book that corrected three of our own entries. It is also where the çh spelling convention first appears. Read it at the Internet Archive →
Kneen, A Grammar of the Manx Language (1931)
The standard historical grammar, with his English-Manx Pronouncing Dictionary of 1938. We have not yet located a scan of the pronouncing dictionary, which is the main reason some entries here still lack a pronunciation.
Modern and open sources
These supply pronunciation, and the living usage the historical record cannot.
Lewin, Aspects of the Historical Phonology of Manx (2020)
Christopher Lewin’s doctoral study for the University of Edinburgh, and the modern authority on Manx sound. Open access. Nearly every pronunciation on these pages that is not from Wiktionary comes from here. Open access at Edinburgh Research Archive →
Wiktionary, Manx entries
Community-built, CC BY-SA. Carries IPA for a modest number of Manx words. We have taken everything it has. Visit →
The Manx Corpus
Over two million words of Manx across 819 documents, from 1610 to the present, with searchable native-speaker audio. Run by the Manx Language Research Group under Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh. We link to it for verification and are seeking clarity on reuse before drawing from it. Visit →
Culture Vannin and LearnManx
The island’s cultural foundation and its learning portal. The best source for the language as it is actually spoken, including native-speaker recordings. Visit →
Consulted, never copied
We check facts against these and cite them, but we do not reproduce their content. A dictionary’s wording, its selection and its example sentences are protected work even where the words themselves are not.
Fargher, English-Manx Dictionary (1979)
The modern standard for revival-era usage. In copyright, so we consult it to verify a fact and never reproduce it.
Fockleyreen
An online aggregation of Phil Kelly’s Manx vocabulary, 130,000+ entries. Useful for fast lookup. It carries no pronunciation, which is worth stating plainly because we expected it to and it does not. Visit →
A note on AI
Entries here are drafted with the help of AI tools and then checked by an editor against the public-domain sources above. Where a source and our draft disagreed, the source won, and on three occasions that meant publishing a correction. See what the dictionaries told us.
Found a mistake? Tell us at contact and we will publish the fix.