Manx (Gaelg) is a Goidelic Celtic language of the Isle of Man. It is a cousin of Irish and Scottish Gaelic, not a dialect of either, and it has its own alphabet conventions, its own grammar, and its own history. Manx Words & Grammar will be Rosmerta Publishing’s sourced reference to it.
Status: in preparation. The reference below is being compiled and checked entry by entry. This page will grow into the full resource; nothing is published here until it can be traced to a named source.
Where the language stands
Manx was spoken across the Isle of Man for more than a thousand years. Its last traditional native speaker, Ned Maddrell, died in 1974, and in 2009 UNESCO listed the language as extinct.
That listing did not hold. Children at the Bunscoill Ghaelgagh, the island’s Manx-medium school, were being taught in the language at the time, and UNESCO moved Manx off the extinct list. The revival it belongs to had been building for a long while: Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh, the Manx Language Society, was founded in 1899, and enthusiasts recorded the last traditional speakers before they died. Manx today is a language rebuilt from dictionaries, recordings, and refusal, and it is spoken again.
What we are building
A reference to the language, section by section, in the same shape as our Irish resource. The sections in preparation are:
- The Manx alphabet and pronunciation
- Greetings and courtesies
- Numbers and counting
- Days, months, and telling time
- Family and people
- Colours
- Initial mutations, word order, and the two verbs of being
Each entry will carry the Manx form, its pronunciation in the International Phonetic Alphabet, a plain English approximation, its meaning, and the source it is attested in. Manx spelling is a poor guide to Manx sound, so the pronunciation is not optional detail here. It is the point.
How every entry is sourced
Manx has a gap that Irish does not. Because the chain of native speakers broke in 1974, some of what is in use today was reconstructed or standardised during the revival rather than carried forward unbroken. Pretending otherwise would be dishonest, so we mark it. Every entry is tagged [H] if it is historically attested in the record, or [R] if it is a revived or modern standard form.
The distinction is not academic hair-splitting. The everyday greeting failt ort, “welcome,” is a good example: the spelling is old, but Cregeen in 1835 records failt only in the sense of “hired.” The welcome sense appears in modern sources, so we tag it [R] rather than quietly presenting it as ancient.
The sources we work from:
- Cregeen, A Dictionary of the Manks Language (1835). The foundational record of pre-revival Manx, and public domain. Our primary test of whether a form is historically attested.
- Kelly, The Manx Dictionary (Manx Society, 1866). Public domain, and our cross-check on Cregeen, particularly in the English to Manx direction.
- Kneen, A Grammar of the Manx Language (1931), with his English-Manx Pronouncing Dictionary (1938). The standard historical grammar.
- Lewin, Aspects of the Historical Phonology of Manx (2020). An open-access doctoral study from the University of Edinburgh, and the modern authority on Manx sound.
- Culture Vannin and LearnManx. The island’s cultural foundation, and the best source for the language as it is actually spoken, including native-speaker recordings.
A first look at the entries
These are already through the process. Each was checked against Cregeen’s 1835 dictionary for attestation, with the pronunciation sourced separately.
| Manx | Pronunciation | English | Attested in | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| moghrey mie | /ˌmoxərə ˈmai/ | good morning | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| oie vie | /əi ˈvai/ | good night | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| nane | /nɛːn/ | one (counting) | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| jees | /d͡ʒiːs/ | two (counting) | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| tree | /triː/ | three | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| moir | /morʲ/ | mother | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| ayr | /ɛːr/ | father | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| shuyr | /ʃuːr/ | sister | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| lheeah | /lʲiə/ | grey | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
| Jedoonee | /dʒeˈduːni/ | Sunday | Cregeen 1835 | [H] |
Reading on Manx
The reference is still being built, but the story around it is worth having now.
- The Language That Came Back From the Dead. The last native speaker died in 1974 and UNESCO called Manx extinct. The children of the island had other ideas.
- Gyn Chengey, Gyn Cheer. Without a language, without a country. How Manx nearly died, and what almost went into the ground with it.
- Manx and Irish: Two Branches of One Tree. Neither is a dialect of the other. What the two languages share, and what sets them apart.
While you wait
Our Irish resource is considerably further along, and the two languages are close enough that time spent in one is rarely wasted on the other. See Irish Words & Grammar, or The Celtic Languages for how Manx sits in the wider family.
From our writing on Irish:
- Irish-Language Communities Keeping the Tongue Alive in 2026. The Gaeltacht, the Gaelscoileanna, and the people holding the line.
- The Manuscripts That Saved Irish Mythology. The scribes and the books that carried the oldest vernacular literature in western Europe through.
- The Irish Calendar: Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasadh. The four festivals that divide the Irish year.