Manx counts on a base of ten up to twenty, then switches to counting in scores. The numbers below are all attested in Cregeen’s dictionary of 1835, which puts them on the historical side of the language rather than the revived side.
Every entry below carries its pronunciation in the International Phonetic Alphabet, a plain English approximation, and the source it is attested in. [H] marks a form attested in the historical record; [R] marks a revived or modern standard form. Manx spelling is an unreliable guide to Manx sound, so the pronunciation is not decoration here. See Manx Words & Grammar for the method.
Counting aloud, and counting things
Manx makes a distinction English does not. The form you use to count aloud is not always the form you use in front of a noun. Counting: nane (one), jees (two). With a noun: un or unnane (one), daa (two). Cregeen records the rule directly: un is “always used before substantives”, as in un laa, one day. From three upward the distinction disappears.
One to ten
| # | Counting | With a noun | Pronunciation | English approximation | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | nane | un / unnane | /nɛːn/ · un /ˈun/ · unnane /uˈnɛːn/ | “nairn” (open e) · un = “oon” | [H] |
| 2 | jees | daa | /d͡ʒiːs/ · daa /dɛː/ | “jeess” · daa = “dair” | [H] |
| 3 | tree | — | /triː/ | “tree” (tapped r) | [H] |
| 4 | kiare | — | /kʲɛːr/ | “kyair” | [H] |
| 5 | queig | — | /kweɡʲ/ | “kweg” | [H] |
| 6 | shey | — | /ʃeː/ | “shay” | [H] |
| 7 | shiaght | — | /ʃaxt/ | “shakht” (ch as in loch) | [H] |
| 8 | hoght | — | /hoxt/ | “hokht” (ch as in loch) | [H] |
| 9 | nuy | — | /nəːi/ | “nuh-ee” | [H] |
| 10 | jeih | — | /d͡ʒei/ | “jay” | [H] |
Eleven to twenty, and beyond
The teens are built by adding -jeig, the equivalent of English “-teen”:
- 11 nane-jeig · 12 daa-yeig · 13 tree-jeig · 14 kiare-jeig · 15 queig-jeig
- 16 shey-jeig · 17 shiaght-jeig · 18 hoght-jeig · 19 nuy-jeig
- 20 feed (/fiːdʲ/, “feedj”), which Cregeen glosses as “twenty, a score” [H]
- 100 keead (/kʲiəd/, “kyeed”) [H] · 1000 milley (/milʲə/, “MIL-yuh”), also jeih keead, ten hundred
Note daa-yeig for twelve rather than the expected jees-jeig. The counting form gives way to the noun form, and the initial of jeig softens.
A note on the evidence
Most of these are clean headwords in Cregeen. Two are not, and it is worth being straight about which. Jees and keead survive in his compounds rather than as bare entries: Jees-as-feed (twenty-two), Un Cheead (one hundred), Yn Cheeadoo (the hundredth). The sense is firm even though the headword line is damaged in the scan. Tree (three) likewise appears through the personal form Troor and the mutated E Hree (his three) and Ad ny Dhree (the three).
⚠️ Still open: the base-twenty higher numbers need confirming against Kneen’s Grammar of the Manx Language (1931), which we do not yet hold.