Manx Words & Grammar
Fockleyr as Grammeydys ny Gaelgey
Manx Words & Grammar is Rosmerta Publishing’s free, growing reference to Manx Gaelic (Gaelg), the Goidelic language of the Isle of Man: its alphabet and sounds, its grammar, and its everyday vocabulary, with every entry traced to a named source.
Gyn chengey, gyn cheer.
Manx proverb
Without a language, without a country.
What this is
A sourced reference to a language whose unbroken chain of native speakers ended in 1974, when Ned Maddrell died. Manx is spoken again today, but some of what is in use was reconstructed after that break. So every entry here is tagged: [H] for a form attested in the historical record, [R] for a revived or modern standard form. We do not present a modern coinage as ancient.
Manx spelling is an unreliable guide to Manx sound, so every entry carries a pronunciation from a named source, or an honest blank where none exists yet. We do not infer pronunciation from spelling.
- The Manx alphabet and pronunciation The 24 letters, and no Ogham. The detail is in how Manx spelling works.
- Greetings and courtesies Good morning, good night, thank you, and how to welcome someone.
- Numbers and counting One to twenty and beyond, and why counting aloud differs from counting things.
- Days and time The seven day names, all sharing the prefix Je-, meaning “day of”.
- Family and people Mother, father, household and kin, including three words that are not what they look like.
- Colours The colour words, including the two attested forms of purple.
What is new
All six vocabulary sections are now live. The alphabet and pronunciation guide is sourced throughout to Christopher Lewin’s 2020 study of Manx phonology, and every vocabulary entry is checked against Cregeen’s dictionary of 1835 and Kelly’s of 1866.
Checking the second dictionary corrected three entries we had published: the words for husband and grandfather, and the tag on failt ort, “welcome”, which we had wrongly marked as a modern revival. Read what the dictionaries told us.
Sixteen entries still have no sourced pronunciation and are marked as such. Neither Cregeen nor Kelly records pronunciation, and Wiktionary is exhausted. We are pursuing Kneen’s Pronouncing Dictionary of 1938 and the native-speaker recordings held in the Manx Corpus.
Where to go next
Every source behind these pages is listed in the Manx bibliography, with its copyright status. Irish came first, because it is closest to our own bone: see Irish Words & Grammar. For how the two fit into the wider family, and why we do this at all, see The Celtic Languages.