Category: Manx (Gaelg)

Word of the day – skeet

By Simon

Skeet, which apparently comes from Old Icelandic, is a word you’re likely to hear frequently in the Isle of Man. It’s means gossip, more or less. People will ask you, “Got any skeet (at you)?” and will try to find out all about who you’ve seen, where they were and what they were doing, who they were with, and so on. The holder of any juicy skeet will try and keep as much of it to themselves for as long as they can to build up the suspense.

You can also have a skeet (look) at something, for example if you’ve brought something new people will ask for a skeet at it, and having a skeet at the neighbours from behind your net curtains is a common practice.

In Manx the word skeet means sneak or news, and jollys-skeet is a voyeur.

Other meanings of skeet include:

– clay targets used in trapshooting – known as clay pigeons in the UK
– a poker hand consisting of a 9, a 5, a 2, and two other cards lower than 9.
– loud, disruptive and poorly educated person of low social status (in Newfoundland slang)
– to squirt

More Manx

By Simon

I spoke quite a lot of Manx yesterday and heard even more at a regular get-together of Manx speakers which happens on Tuesday afternoons in Douglas. About nine or ten people turned up and we spoke in Manx for an hour or so. I occasionally lapsed into English, Welsh or Irish when I couldn’t think of how to say things in Manx, but the others all stuck to Manx and were speaking it fluently. This was the first time I’d heard so many people speaking Manx so well, and I understood a lot of what they said, and managed to work out the meanings of some unfamiliar words from the context.

When I chat with people who are fluent in a language I’m learning my level of language tends to improve. This is partly because I can adapt the things they say for my own purposes, and also because I feel the need to speak the language as well as possible. When I speak to non-fluent learners in languages I know well I try to adjust and simplify what I say so they can understand me. This is a useful exercise because it forces you to explain things simply and clearly and to practise alternative ways of saying things.

Have you had similar experiences?

Manx language

By Simon

I’m on the Isle of Man at the moment doing some research for my dissertation on the revival of the Manx (Gaelic) language. I’m staying in Douglas (Doolish), the island’s capital, and plan to explore other parts of the island – it’s partly a holiday for me as well as a way to collect data.

One of the things I’m investigating is the use of Manx in public. On the ferry from Liverpool they used the Manx for good morning, moghrey mie, a few times in announcements, though that was the only Manx I heard yesterday. I also found some leaflets with collections of useful Manx phrases at the ferry terminal, including some with translations in French, German and Spanish.

When exploring Douglas today I noticed quite a few English/Manx bilingual street signs, and that most government departments, and some shops and other businesses have English and Manx names. So the public visibility of the language is quite high, but you only hear it spoken at certain times and in certain places, which is similar to the situation with Irish in Dublin. For example, today I sat in on a Manx conversation class that takes place every Tuesday lunchtime in a local pub. It was the first time I’d heard live Manx conversation, and somewhat to my surprise, I could understand almost everything they said, which is encouraging. My knowledge of Irish and Scottish Gaelic certainly helps.

Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the Manx medium primary school and talking to some of the teachers. I discovered today that most of the kids there only speak Manx in the school – outside school and at home the speak mainly or entirely in English, except in a few Manx-speaking families. I’ll find out more about this tomorrow.

Eeee ee

By Simon

The title of this post is not a typo, but is in fact the third person singular feminine form of the future tense of the verb to eat (ee [i:]) in Manx, or in other words means “She will eat”. I came across it while reading about the Manx language the other day and as well as grabbing my attention, it also made me wonder whether there are many other words or phrases with so many vowels in sequence in Manx or other languages.

Here are few other Manx phrases I put together containing many e’s:

  • Eeee ee eeym – She will eat butter
  • T’ee gee eeym bwee – She’s eating yellow butter
  • Eeee ee nhee erbee – she’ll eat anything
  • O Yee! Eeee ee eeym bwee eeagh lhee – Oh God! She’ll eat edible yellow butter with her
  • Dee mee eeym bwee – I ate yellow butter
  • Eeym eeym bwee – I’ll eat yellow butter
  • Bee’m gee ee bwee lhee – I’ll be eating yellow butter with her

As double letters are quite common in Manx, I’m sure other sentences containing lots of o’s or a’s could be constructed, for example: Soo coo doo lhoo (The black dog sucked a pole).

Can you think of any similarly vowel-rich sentences in other languages?

Studies

By Simon

I handed in my last essay today, so that’s pretty much the end of the taught part of my course and I can now concentrate on my dissertation. It’s a great relief to get all the assignments out of the way after spending what seems like ages on them. Fortunately I don’t have any exams this semester. The course seems to have gone really quickly and I’ve learned a lot of interesting and useful things. The areas I’ve found most interesting have been phonetics, bilingualism and speech and language disorders.

I plan to spend the last two weeks of June on the Isle of Man gathering information for my dissertation, learning some more Manx, and having a bit of a holiday. The last time I was on the island was about 30 years ago when I went there on a day trip from primary school, and I’m looking forward to going back. I’ve started making contact with a number of Manx speakers and hope to meet as many of them as possible when I’m on the island.

Are there any Manx speakers or learners who read this blog?

Vel Gaelgeyryn erbee lhaih yn blog shoh?

When is a language extinct?

By Simon

The recent publication of UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger has generated quite a few new stories and discussion.

The Atlas has a list of 2,500 endangered languages ranked according to five different levels: unsafe (607), definitely endangered (632), severely endangered (502), critically endangered (538) and extinct (200). Of these languages, 199 have fewer than 10 speakers, and 178 have between 10 and 50 speakers. The Atlas is apparently available online, although I can only find information about endangered languages in Africa.

Among the extinct languages it mentions Manx and Cornish, which has stirred up a lot of comment, especially among those who speak these languages and are learning them. For example, the website iomtoday.co.im tells us that the ‘Manx language is very much alive’ and there are articles on Manx and Cornish on the BBC site.

The comments on the iomtoday site are interesting and seem to agree that Manx is nobody’s first language, which I believe is true. One commenter points out that Manx is dead because “there are no longer any monoglot Manx speakers, or even speakers with Manx as a first language”. I’m not sure why it’s essential for there to be monoglot speakers of a language for it to be considered living. There are very few, if any, monoglot speakers of Welsh, Irish or Scottish Gaelic over the age of 5 or so, but there are plenty of people who speak them as their first language.

My dissertation will be a study of the revival of Manx, and this will give me a better idea of the current state of the language.

Word of the day – poc

By Simon

In Welsh a poc (/pok/) or pocyn (/’pokɪn/), is a kiss, however this word is rarely used in everyday speech. The more common word for kiss is cusan (/’kɪsan/) or sws (/sʊs/) and ‘to kiss’ is cusanu.

When I came across the word poc while looking for something else in the dictionary, it immediately reminded me of the Irish word for kiss – póg (/po:g/) and I assumed that they came from the same root. At first I thought the root was a ancient Celtic word, but have since discovered, via MacBain’s Dictionary, that both words come from the Latin pâcem, “the kiss of peace”, a part of the Mass.

There are similar words for kiss in the other Celtic languages: pòg in Scottish Gaelic, paag in Manx and pok in Breton.

Celtic connections

By Simon

Apart from the odd word here and there, the vocabularies of the two living branches of the Celtic language family, Brythonic (British) and Goidelic (Gaelic), appear to bear little resemblance to each other. So far I’ve only found two words that are exactly the same in Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic: blas (taste/flavour) and glas (blue/green).

To some extent, differences in spelling disguise connections between the languages, but even taking those differences into account, only about 2% of the words appear to be related.

Here are a few other related words I’ve found:

Gaeilge
(Irish) 		Gàidhlig
(Gaelic) 		Gaelg
(Manx)		 Cymraeg
(Welsh) 		Kernewek
(Cornish)		 Brezhoneg
(Breton)		 English
capall (each) cabbyl ceffyl (margh) (marc’h) horse
gabhar gobhar goayr gafr gaver gavr goat
cath cat kayt cat kath kazh cat
cú cù coo cu ki ki dog
abhainn abhainn awin afon avon (stêr) river
muir muir mooir môr mor mor sea
agus agus as a/ac/ag hag ha/hag and
aimsir aimsir emshir amser amzer time
ainm ainm ennym enw hanow anv name
airgead airgead argid arian arghans arc’hant silver
anáil anail ennal anadl anal anal breath

Note: cú actually means hound in Irish – dog is madra. Sea is also farraige is Irish, fairge is Scottish Gaelic, and faarkey in Manx.

To find more connections between the Celtic languages, you need to go back to their earlier forms. For example, the word for true in Welsh is gwir, in Irish it’s fíor, and in Scottish Gaelic it’s fìor. These words are all thought to originate from the reconstructed form, wir or weri. Then at some point the initial w become gw in Welsh and f in the Gaelic languages.

A good place to find connections between the Celtic languages is McBain’s Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language.

Ynsee Gaelg (Learn Manx)

By Simon

Ynsee Gaelg is a new site I found this week that contains Manx language lessons, games, stories, news and information about the language. The lessons are available at three levels: Toshiaghteyr (Beginners), Meanagh (Intermediate) and Ard (Advanced) and include sound files for all the phrases and texts, something that’s lacking from other online Manx lessons. The stories and news are in English or Manx.

I’m impressed with this site – it contains a lot of useful, well-presented content, and also looks good. Now if I can just find a bit of time amongst my other activities, I’ll use it to learn some more Manx.

I find Manx texts quite difficult to read due to lack of familiarity with the spelling system. If I read the texts aloud however, I can often understand them better.

Language maintenance

By Simon

This week I’ve been trying out yet another language learning and maintenance strategy. Instead of spending most of the day listening to online radio in one language or other, as I’ve been doing up to now, I’ve started listening to lots of lessons in the languages I’m focusing on at the moment (Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Spanish). At the same time I’m converting the lessons I have on tape to mp3 format. Once I’ve done that, I copy them to my mp3 player.

I bought myself a new mp3 player for my birthday and am filling it with language lessons, podcasts and audiobooks. It can also display images, so I might try to make some virtual flash cards for it. Usually I don’t bother with flashcards as they’re quite cumbersome to carry around. This is no longer an issue.