Linguistical Sketch of Manx

by Mark McKay Fall 2004

Introduction

In the Irish Sea nearly equidistant from England, Ireland, and Scotland lies a small island country with a population of 75,000 people called the Isle of Man. Here, a revival of the indigenous language of Manx, or Gaelg Vanninagh, has been underway for the past three decades following the death of the last native speaker, Ned Mandrill, in 1974. Embraced by the commonwealth, this revitalization effort has seen mild success through optional classes in primary education, community education for adults, and its use in government documentation.

History and Classification

Genetically, Manx belongs to the Goidelic branch of the Celtic subfamily of Indo-European. There are (or were) two dialects, north and south, delineated by parish and exhibiting only slight differences. The closest relatives of Manx are Irish and Scots Gaelic, though it has far more similarities to the latter, which will be addressed in various parts of this sketch. Several periods of national occupation have had considerable influence on the spoken language. The first influence was by Latin due to the conversion of the Isle of Man to Christianity beginning in the fifth century, then by the Scandinavian languages as a result of Norse rule beginning in the ninth century. But certainly the most dominant influence has been that of English, as a written language. In the words of Thomas F. O’Rahilly, “…[written Manx] is merely English disguised in a Manx vocabulary. Manx hardly deserved to live. When a language surrenders itself to a foreign idiom, and when all its speakers become bilingual, the penalty is death.” (1952: 114).

Phonetics, Orthography, & Phonology

Phonetics

There is considerable variation in the interpretation of Manx phonemes. Broderick (1984) describes more than sixty, though he notes that several have fallen out of use. For the scope of this paper, we will adhere to using those found most frequently according to the referenced sources. The segment inventory below illustrates fifty-two different sounds: twenty five consonant sounds; two affricate sounds; sixteen vowel sounds, and nine diphthongs. The front unrounded and the back rounded vowels can be either long or short. The only sounds represented in Manx that are not present in Standard English are the velar fricative /ɣ/, the front rounded vowels /y/and /œ/, and the mid-back rounded vowel /o̤/ which Jackson (1955:11) defines as “lying between cardinal /o/ and cardinal /ɔ/ (and nearer the former), but advanced, and partly rounded....distinct from /ɤ/. One final note on vowels: The letter e in the final position is predominately silent, serving only to lengthen the preceding vowel or diphthong as in rollage (rɔlæːɡ) ‘a star’. And one last note on consonants: double consonants are usually found in the middle or at the end of words, but the presence of such does not lengthen the sound.

Segment Inventory

Orthgraphy

Although Runic stones and Ogham inscriptions predate the Latin alphabet on the island, they did not represent written Manx. The first record of Manx as a written language was not until the early seventeenth century when John Phillips, then Bishop of Man, translated the Prayer Book. The Manx alphabet is nearly identical English without the letters x and z, but with the addition of the letter ç. Historically there were two variants of the letter s (s, ſ), though the latter has fallen out of use and exists only in older texts (Kneen 1951:31).

Similar to English, written Manx has variation in the orthographic representation of sounds, making it difficult to accurately transcribe the spoken word as well as problems interpreting the written word. It is common for two or more characters to represent a single sound, for multiple characters (or sets of characters) to represent the same sound, or for one character to represent more than one sound. Examples of each are listed below.

cam, kayt, quaiyl   /k/

çhairn, ushtey, tuittym   /ʧ/

<gh>   noght /χ/   magher   /ɣ/

Phonology

One of the more distinctive features of the Celtic languages is mutation. Whether this is a phonological phenomenon or one of morphology is the subject of another paper. For the purpose of this paper, the mutation of Manx is addressed here in phonology, but includes the morphological aspects as well. Historically, these changes were probably for phonetic reasons, but have since been retained for grammatical purposes.

Lenition

Stated simply, lenition (less commonly called aspiration) is a process of initial consonant mutation which generally transforms stops into fricatives by narrowing but not stopping the passage of air and adding a breathy quality that typifies the Celtic sound. The blue lines in the Phonological Mutation chart below depict the lenition of mutable consonant sounds. The blue columns on the Table of Mutation chart depict the changes to their orthographic structure which Kneen (1951: 41) divides into four classes, the last of which affects vowels by adding an initial /h/. Morphologically, the occurrence of lenition is extensive and complex, affecting nearly every part of speech. A sampling of the most common are outlined in the following paragraphs.

The Lenition of verbs occurs when inflected for active voice imperfect or conditional tense/aspect, as in voyllin (moyll) ‘I used to praise’. Verbs are also lenited after the particle my, ‘if’, and after the simple relative particle ny as expressed or understood. The past tense and conditional by of the verb she also causes lenition to the subsequent word as in by vie lliam (mie).

The lenition of nouns can occur following possessive adjectives, articles, numbers, prepositions, or other nouns as well as within compound words, the most common occurrences being the first two. The possessive adjectives ‘my’, ‘your’, and ‘his’, respectively my, dty, and e, lenite the first letter of the following word (or words in the case of adjective and noun), as in e chabbyl (cabbyl) ‘his horse’ and my henn ghooinney (shenn dooinney) ‘my old man’. Lenition following the article yn signals nominative feminine singular or genitive masculine singular nouns as in yn ven (ben). There is an exception to the rule of articles in that t, d, ch, j, s, and sh do not cause lenition in this case, as in mac yn dooinney ‘the man’s son’. Somewhat more complicated is the case of compound words, where the initial consonant of the second word is lenited as in shenn-voir (moir) ‘a grandmother’, except when the last letter of the first word is t, d, ch, or j, and the first letter of the second word is t, d, ch, j, n, l, s,orsh, as in shenn-dooinney ‘an old man’. Similarly, the numerals un and daa (alone or when preceding other number) lenite as in un cheayrt (keayrt) ‘occasion’, but fail to lenite following t, d, ch, or j.

The lenition of adjectives appears when in agreement with nominative feminine singular nouns as in mac yn _er vooar (fer mooar); following the intensifiers ro ‘too’ and feer ‘very’ as in cabbyl feer vie (mie) ‘very good horse’.

Eclipsis

The process of eclipsis (sometimes known as nasalization) is the replacement of an initial consonant with a neighboring sound (place or manner of articulation) with voiceless sounds becoming voiced and voiced sounds becoming nasalized. The red lines and columns represent eclipsis in the mutation chart above. Application of eclipsis is less complex, occurring in only two practical environments. First is the plural possessive adjective nyn, ‘ours, yours, or their’ as in nun maatey (baatey). The second occurs with verbs following specific particles that express negation or doubt, as in cha drog eh (trog) ‘not shall rise he’. There is one other instance of eclipsis, that of the demonstrative article, but it is used only in literature.

Broad & Slender Vowels

Certain Manx consonants (t, d, l, r, n) can be construed as either broad or slender, depending on the preceding vowel. Those that follow a, o, u or y are considered broad, while those that follow i or e are considered slender. This distinction is important in the morphology and the processes of attenuation and broadening described in the next section.

Stress Patterns

With a short list of exceptions, most native words of Manx place primary stress on the root syllable, typically the first syllable. The exceptions to this rule will maintain their stress on the second syllable regardless of further suffixation. In the case of compound words, the head takes primary accent, usually in the second position, while the secondary accent falls on the first word. Loan words typically retain the stress from the language to which they are native.

Morphology & Syntax

The morphology of Manx is relatively transparent, with a clear distinction of morpheme boundaries and limited (and waning) morphology and can thus be classified as an isolating language. However, the presence of broad and slender vowels and the processes of attenuation and broadening explained below create a form of ablaut which is more in line with that of a fusional morphology. Word order is relatively fixed, and like the other Celtic languages, is predominately Verb - Subject - Object. Exceptions where the subject precedes the verb include interrogative phrases, relative phrases, and relative pronouns.

Attenuation & Broadening

Attenuation is the process of making a broad consonant slender by changing or omitting the preceding vowel, one function of which is the formation of certain plural nouns, as in cabbyl/cabbil (horse/horses). Broadening is the reverse process, making a slender consonant broad, sometimes utilized to indicate verbal aspect as in bwoaill/bwoalley ‘strike/striking’.

Nouns

There are generally two types of nouns in Manx: proper and common. Proper nouns, as in English, include names of people and places and are always capitalized. Common nouns, however, are separated into five subcategories; ordinary, collective, definite, indefinite, and abstract. The last of these also contains Verbal Nouns. Like Irish, there are five declensions are grouped by gender and word ending, the later often further divided by broadness. The order of the noun phrase is Article - Noun - Adjective - Demonstrative. Notice that the article is retained with the demonstrative present.

Gender

Gender of Nouns in Manx are determined for grammatical use only but the distinction of gender is in a state of flux. Over the years Manx has transitioned from a three class system (masculine, feminine, neuter) to a two class system, but even that is waning. Modern Manx shows an increasing tendency towards masculine nouns. Subsequently, feminine nouns are words relating to female persons and things as well as geographic names such as mannin ‘[isle of] Man’. For living creatures, gender is distinguished in one of two ways. The first is compounding one or both forms as in fer-obbee ‘a wizard’, ben obbee ‘a witch’; and jee ‘a god’, or ben-jee ‘a goddess’. The second method is to have a different word for each gender as in ayr ‘father’ and moir ‘mother’.

Number

There are two numbers in Manx nouns, singular and plural. The plural can be formed by two methods. The first method is by suffix of which there are seven groups, six of those ending in the plural definite article yn, as in dorryn (dorrys) ‘door’, and baljyn(balley) ‘town’. The seventh group of the first method is ee as in cleighee(cleigh) ‘dyke’. The second method is the aforementioned attenuation as in cabbyl/cabbil (horse/horses). There are also several nouns with irregular plurals such as mranne (ben) ‘woman’.

Case

Another move toward isolating morphology is the elimination of case markings. According to Kelley, Manx at one time had six cases, nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, vocative, and ablative, inflected from the Nominative singular (1859). However, as long as 200 years ago, before the English language invaded the island, only three cases were utilized, nominative, genitive, and dative. The Manx that is taught in schools and governmental certification classes carries only one class which is labeled nominative-accusative (Stowell 2004).

Pronouns

Manx has an elaborate pronoun system with eight different classes: personal, reflexive, pronominal, relative, demonstrative, partive, interrogative, and reciprocal, the first five of which are explined below.

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns follow the noun, and indicate first, second, and third person and singular and plural. The second person plural is used to show respect. The third person singular is marked for gender. There is an emphatic form of the personal pronouns which is equivalent to the English ‘self’, but the action is not reflexive, as en the English ‘I will do it myself’. The reflexive pronouns are formed by adding -hene to the personal pronouns.

The relative pronoun ny ‘who, which, that’ follows the subject and precedes verb. Similarly, the subject of a relative phrase may precede the verb to show emphasis, but a personal pronoun is added where the subject would be. Since this is a distinct change in word order, the pronoun is often omitted, but the negative relative particle is nagh is required.

Relative Pronouns

The relative pronoun ny ‘who, which, that’ follows the subject and precedes verb. Similarly, the subject of a relative phrase may precede the verb to show emphasis, but a personal pronoun is added where the subject would be. Since this is a distinct change in word order, the pronoun is often omitted, but the negative relative particle is nagh is required.

Interrogative Pronouns

The interrogative and relative pronouns can combine with demonstrative pronouns or with each other to form compound relatives such as quoi-erbee ‘whoever’, shen ny ‘that which’ and shen nagh ‘that which…not’. Interrogative pronouns precede the verb in questions such as:

Articles

There is no indefinite article in Manx. The definite article precedes the noun and is differentiated by number but not gender. For singular nouns, it is yn (‘n if following a vowel, y if between two consonants), and for plural nouns, it is ny.

Adjectives

The three types of adjectives are qualitative, quantitative, and demonstrative. Historically adjectives agreed in gender, number, and case as the noun it modified, but the elimination of the case system, the tendency toward masculine nouns, and an increasing tendency away from number agreement has simplified the use of adjective significantly. Adjectives predominantly follow the noun, with a few exceptions such as shenn ven ‘an old woman’. Morphologically, the plural is generally formed by suffixing ey to the stem as in mooarey (mooar) ‘big’. The comparative-superlative form is formed similarly by suffixing ey and prefixing s’, sometimes accompanied by modification as ins’gilley (gail) ‘bright’, though there are irregulars that may omit one or more of the changes.

Adverbs

Adverbs usually occupy the final position and are usually formed by adding dy- to adjectives. The preposition is omitted if the adverb is preceded by another adverb.

Ta’n scollag g’ynsaghey dy-mie.       
Is’the boy learns (VN) with-good

‘The boy learns well.’

Verbs

Verbs in Manx have two conjugations. The first consists of verbs beginning with a consonant as in moyll ‘praise’; the second of verbs beginning with a vowel as in ee ‘eat’. There are ten irregular verbs including the copula. Historically, there were four moods (indicative, imperative, conditional, cubjunctive); three tenses (past, present, future); and three aspects (perfective, imperfective, aorist). Like the other elements of the language, verbs have been simplified significantly in modern Manx though the expanded use of jannoo ‘doing/making’ as an auxiliary.

Verbal Noun

The majority of verbal nouns are formed by adding ey, agh, al, ail, or eil to the base, comparable to the ‘-ing’ ending in English, as in moylley (moyll) ‘praise’ and bwoalley (bwoaill) ‘striking’. The verbal noun is used in many functions including the English equivalents of the infinitive, the present participle, and the perfect tense.

Regular Verbs

There are two forms of the verb for each tense. Independent is the form used in the affirmative (ta, va, bee, veagh). The dependent form is used in the interrogative and after cha, naghand some other particles (vel, nel, row, bee, beagh). The base is inflected for three tenses, past, future, and conditional, while the remaining tense are realized as compounds with the verbal noun, the verb ve, and the personal pronoun. The following first person singular paradigm of the verb caill ‘to lose’ illustrates the morphology of regular verbs.

Paradigm of Manx Verbs for the First Person Singular

Ve and She

There are two verbs comparable to ‘to be’ in English, ve and she. The former is one of the ten irregular verbs in Manx. It is the most commonly used verb in Manx as it functions as the copula and is often used as an auxiliary. The verb she is an another form of ‘to be’, with three primary functions: to express identity, for classification, and to shift the emphasis of a sentence. In declarative sentences, it is common for the verb she to be omitted. Examples of each are listed below.

Passive Construction

Manx does not have simple or compound passive construction. Rather, in verbs that have agents the agent is removed and the patient or oblique is promoted to subject with the past participle.

Negation

There are two particles used to negate Manx verbs. For declarative sentences, the particle is cha (chan before vowel initial verbs). For negative interrogative sentences, the relative pronoun nagh is used.

Prepositions

Generally, the sixteen simple prepositions precede the words they govern. Certain nouns become part of the preposition as the last example below illustrates.

Semantics

Numbers

There are two notable aspects concerning numbers in Manx. First is the utilization of the score system, based on units of 20 for counting, thus feed is 20, daa-eed is 40 (note the lenition of f) and shey-feed is 120. More peculiar is that the numbers 2, 20, 100, and 1000 always elicit the singular form of nouns as the following table illustrates.

Yes/No

Since there are no words for yes and now in Manx, the affirmative reply to a question is simply to restate the original verb. For negation, the negative particle cha is added to the original verb.

Absent Verbs

There are several English verbs absent from Manx such as ‘to have’ and ‘to own’. As such, the verb ta is used idiomatically with the prepositions ec ‘at’, and lesh, The object becomes the subject with a literal translation ‘____ is at me’ and ‘____ is with me’ as in the examples below.

Works Cited

Broderick, George. 1984. Handbook of Late Spoken Manx: grammar and text. Tübingen, Germany:  Niemeyer,

Jackson, Kenneth Hurlstone. 1955. Contributions to the study of Manx phonology. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.

Kelley, John. 1859. A practical grammar of the antient Gaelic, or language of the Isle of Man, usually called Manks. Douglas, Isle of Man:  The Manx Society.

Kneen, John Joseph. 1931. A grammar of the Manx language . London: Oxford university press.

O'Rahilly, Thomas F. 1972. Irish dialects past and present; with chapters on Scottish and Manx. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Stowell, Brian. 2004. General Certificate in Manx, Douglas, Isle of Man: Department of Education. <<http://homepages.enterprise.net/kelly/FRONT/TCG/ref.html>>