Manx studies

Old Middle Modern/Late... Cumbric  10 th , 11 th century, very little material which causes difficulties in exact dating Cornish 600-800 800-1200 Plant names in Leiden MS, 9 th c. glosses; 1100 Vocabularium Cornicum 1200-1575 1380 three-day drama cycle Ordinalia (Origo Mundi); poetry; 1450 rhyming poetry; translations; 1504 Beunas Meriasek 1575-1800 1611 play Gwreans an Bys (Origo Mundi); language in decline, no longer means of communication, no Bible

This thesis examines the revival and subsequent development of traditional music in the Isle of Man from the 1970s until the present day. Together with dance and the Gaelic language, the revival of Manx traditional music has contributed to the reevaluation of a Manx identity based upon traditional values and symbolism. Drawing on individual
interviews, a comprehensive survey and primary source material, this thesis investigates the motivations, influences and ideology behind the revival. Issues of nationalism, individual and communal identities, Celticism, authenticity and the formation of cultural boundaries are all addressed in an analysis of the revivalist ideology, which has
consequently dictated the standard repertoire and musical style of today.

The structure of the study is based upon a theoretical model of musical revivalism designed by Tamara E. Livingston (1999:69):
1. an individual or small group of “core revivalists”
2. revival informants and/or original sources (e.g. historical sound recordings)
3. a revivalist ideology and discourse
4. a group of followers which form the basis of a revivalist community
5. revivalist activities (organizations, festivals, competitions)
6. non-profit and/or commercial enterprises catering to the revivalist market.

Livingston’s model has been employed to ascertain whether the Manx music movement corresponds with the modern conception of the term ‘revival’ and therefore with the typical characteristics as documented in other cases. This thesis aims to render new concepts that can be added to contemporary theory on musical revivalism.

Final (post-viva) research masters dissertation, Aberystwyth University, 2016. A published version with significant revisions and additions is envisaged.

The present thesis provides a linguistic overview of the revived variety of Manx Gaelic, the Celtic language of the Isle of Man currently spoken by a few hundred people who have learnt it as a second language, and a small number of children raised bilingually. The introductory chapter presents an overview of the recent history and current situation of Revived Manx; the academic literature on both varieties of Manx; the study of language revival in general; and the ideological issues surrounding the terminology of language ‘revival’ and of language ‘death’. In Chapter 2 an overview is given of the linguistic features of Revived Manx (RM) with comparisons to the traditional variety (Traditional Manx, TM), with sections on phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, and lexis, idiom and style. In Chapter 3 RM is placed in the wider context of the phenomenon of language variety, with particular focus on comparisons with Revived Hebrew (and the problems with such comparisons); the concept of interlanguage; language revival as language contact; and existing language ideologies prevalent in the RM community. Finally consideration is given to the future prospects of the language, and recommendations are made concerning ideological clarification and corpus planning.

Pre-publication draft.

Zusammenfassung:

Dieser Artikel betrachtet die Entwicklung der theoretischen und ideologischen Standpunkte, die einem großen Teil der wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zum Thema des Manx-Gälischen vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute zugrunde liegen. Vorgeschlagen wird, dass in Diskussionen des Manx die Annahme herrscht, die Sprache sei ein zerfallener, anglisierter bzw. kreolisierter Dialekt, was in O’Rahillys bekannter Erklärung dargelegt wird: ‘Manx hardly deserved to live’. O’Rahillys Ansichten haben zu unterschiedlichen Graden die Auffassung nachfolgender Wissenschaftler von der Sprache beeinflusst, so sehr sie auch seine rhetorischen Exzesse verwerfen mögen. Der Artikel untersucht die Behauptungen dieser Wissenschaftler und stellt die generelle Ansicht bezüglich kontaktinduzierten Sprachwandels im Manx-Gälischen infrage. Kritisch betrachtet wird auch Williams’ Theorie eines mittelalterlichen nordisch-gälischen Patois als Grundlage des späteren Manx angesichts Trudgills Ideen zur soziolinguistischen Typologie.

This thesis elucidates some of the hitherto poorly understood aspects of the diachronic development of Manx phonology. By tracing phonological changes from earlier varieties of Gaelic, and within the attested period of written and recorded Manx, it frames these developments within the wider contexts of Gaelic dialectology and historical linguistics. Manx provides an important source for understanding the linguistic development of the Gaelic languages. A lack of systematic treatments and reliable datasets for the language, however, has obscured this fact and led to its neglect within Gaelic studies.

The thesis focuses, in particular, on the development of the language’s prosody, suprasegmental features, vowel system and sonorants, the latter having a particular bearing on vowels. Five principal methodologies are deployed to investigate these topics:

• Re-evaluation of existing descriptions and datasets provided by previous scholarship, especially those collected by Rhŷs in the 1880s and 1890s, and material from the last generation of speakers presented by Broderick in his Handbook of Late Spoken Manx.
• Interpretation of the evidence of the two main Manx orthographies and non-standard variations thereof.
• Analyses based, as far as possible, on the whole attested lexis of the language, making use of Cregeen’s and Kelly’s dictionaries.
• Quantitative approaches to all of these sources of data where appropriate.
• Instrumental phonetic analysis of recordings of the terminal speakers of Manx.

Chapter one places Manx in its historical and dialectological context, reviews previous scholarship, discusses the primary sources, and introduces the interpretative difficulties of the orthographies.

Chapter two examines developments in the short and long vowels, and the impact of the consonant system on vowel changes.

Chapter three examines the development of the vowels ao(i) /əː/ and ua(i) /uə̯/ in Manx. The written evidence, description and recorded data are complex, and some scholars have claimed that these vowels fell together with one another and with other vowels. It will be shown that these vowels in fact remained contrastive for the most part in Late Manx.

Chapter four investigates developments in the sonorant consonants, especially the R, L and N phones. Changes in vowels preceding historically tense sonorants are also examined, as well as the origins and spread of the phenomenon of preocclusion.

Chapter five examines suprasegmental and prosodic features including stress shift, unstressed long vowel shortening, and the conditioning factors for these.

Chapter six provides concluding remarks assessing the thesis’ contribution to current scholarship, and the prospects for future research.

[This doctoral thesis was completed in the University of Edinburgh with supervision from Dr William Lamb (Celtic and Scottish Studies) and Dr Pavel Iosad (Linguistics and English Language). I am grateful to the AHRC Centre for Doctoral Training in the Celtic Languages for funding the research.]
 

This bibliography aims to include all academic published works (books, articles, chapters, reviews) on the Manx Gaelic language and its literature and history to date, and also as many unpublished theses and dissertations as are known to the compiler. Works are included where the main focus is on Manx, or where Manx is one of the primary topics, or is named in the title. There is also a select list of publications which discuss or mention Manx in passing, with indication of the sections or pages in which the relevant passages may be found. Certain adjacent topics such as place-names, and the Gaelic language in the Isle of Man in the medieval period, are not as yet included in the bibliography.

The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, the oldest motorcycle road racing event in the world, remains one of the most controversial in motorsport with a total of 240 competitors killed whilst participating in the event. Many of these fatalities are marked by roadside memorials created by the bereaved as they begin mourning the loss of their loved one. While many of these tributes are temporary lasting a matter of weeks, others develop into more permanent memorials. This paper provides an overview of these memorials alongside a discussion of some of the motivations which lead the bereaved to create these monuments.

Journal of Celtic Linguistics (2016), 17, 147–239

While accounts of the syntax of the element usually called the 'verbal noun' are available for different periods of Irish and Scottish Gaelic, as well as the Brythonic languages, the details of verbal noun constructions in Manx have never been fully described. Thomson (1952: 285-89) deals cursorily with the topic, and touches on various aspects in his grammar of Early Manx (Thomson 1953: 51-4, 62-9), in two lectures (Thomson 1969, 1986) and in commentaries on Manx texts (Thomson 1981, 1998). The matter is also discussed briefly by Broderick (2010: 345-46). Many of their ideas and suggestions will be explored in depth here.

This paper focuses particularly on the way pronominal objects of verbal nouns are expressed (whether by means of a possessive proclitic or as an object personal pronoun), and how this is related to the changing analysis of the verbal noun in Manx (and to varying extents the other Celtic languages), from a noun to a non-finite verb. The shift is examined in terms of reanalysis and grammaticalization, with particular reference to the common cross-linguistic phenomenon of the development of verbal nouns into infinitives and other non-finite verbal elements.

https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/uwp/jcl/2016/00000017/00000001/art00005

Pre-publication draft. Published version: https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/zcph/62/1/article-p45.xml

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Artikel umfasst eine Ausgabe und englische Übersetzung des zweitältesten bekannten manx-gälischen Prosatextes, einer handgeschriebenen Predigt aus dem Jahre 1696 von John Woods (von 1696 bis zu seinem Tod im Jahre 1739 Pfarrer von Malew im südlichen Teil der Insel Man), sowie eine historische und linguistische Einführung und Anmerkungen. Die Predigt ist vor allem deshalb von Interesse, da sie gewissermaßen als „fehlendes Glied‟, der Sprache und Orthographie bezüglich, zwischen dem Früh-Manx des von Bischof John Phillips übersetzten Book of Common Prayer der anglikanischen Kirche und dem klassischen Manx der gedruckten religiösen Texte des 18. Jahrhunderts gelten kann, und auch aufgrund der Einsicht, die sie zum Gebrauch und der Überlieferung des Phillips-Manuskripts und des Predigtkorpus gibt.

Draft of paper published in Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 77 (summer 2019), special issue 'Sir John Rhys studies', based on paper delivered at the John Rhys conference at Aberystwyth University, February 2015. Journal available here: http://www.cmcspublications.com/publications.html

Abstract

The purpose of the present article is to provide a concise account and assessment of John Rhys’s pioneering fieldwork on the Manx language in the 1880s and 90s, and the continuing importance of his descriptions of Manx phonology, grammar, dialectal variation, and sociolinguistic situation. A brief description of the Manx- related materials in the Rhys papers in the National Library of Wales will also be given.

The small, simple Christian chapels, known locally as keeills, which litter the landscape of the Isle of Man have become a defining feature of Manx archaeological discourse. Initial research by local antiquarians during the early twentieth century identified some 170 sites, surveyed surface remains and „excavated‟ a considerable number. The quality of these investigations can at best be described as variable and the methodology formulaic; its focus being the search for artefactual dating evidence that would push the establishment of the keeill, and therefore the foundation of Manx Christianity, back to the arrival of Christianity in Britain. More recent analyses, however, suggest that the period of keeill construction began in the late ninth or early tenth century AD; with a terminus ad quem in the late thirteenth century when an ecclesiastical system centred on the parish church was established. This re-dating of the keeill phenomena places its foundation close to, indeed, probably within the period of Scandinavian settlement (c.900AD). Christocentric perspectives have, and continue, to influence conceptions of this relationship with an intrinsic perception of pagan belief systems as weak and ineffectual, with the movement towards conversion seen as inevitable. It is the intention of this paper to propose that the keeill phenomena can be regarded as the response of an extant native Christian tradition to the ideological turmoil brought by an influx of pagan settlers, of Scandinavian heritage, to the Isle of Man. It will highlight that the response to this collision of dogmas was not prejudiced to Christianity, but was manifest in overt expressions of paganism also seen in the burial traditions of settlers.

A significant amount of scholarship pertaining to Manx Gaelic language and literature was published in 2018 and 2019. The bulk of it is the work of George Broderick, returning to his long-standing research interests in the Manx of the final generations of native speakers, and the collection of Manx folksongs. Classical Manx Data and analysis concerning initial mutation in the Classical Manx of 18thcentury texts such as the Bible, particularly in the nominal system, is reproduced in a new format with commentary by George Broderick, 'Initial Consonant Replacement in Classical Manx' ,

Paper presented at the 16th International Congress of Celtic Studies, Bangor University, July 2019. It is hoped to develop this study further with a larger sample from the Bible corpus. Thanks to AHRC Centre for Doctoral Training in the Celtic Languages for funding.

ABSTRACT:

This paper will examine the genesis and development of the Manx Bible translation, and seek to evaluate the extent to which the text (or texts) can be taken as representative of spontaneous spoken usage and contemporary linguistic variation in eighteenth-century Manx.

The first installment of the Bible (the gospel of Matthew) was published in 1748 and the final section of the Old Testament appeared in 1772. The task of translation was shared among the island’s Anglican clergy, who were generally native speakers of Manx, with an editorial team overseeing the work and seeking to standardize orthography and terminology, but seemingly less so morphology and syntax.

Substantial sections of the manuscript drafts of the translation survive and are preserved in the Manx National Heritage Library in Douglas (MS 5690C). The present study will investigate two samples from this manuscript corpus, from both the Old and New Testaments, as well as an earlier printed edition of St Matthew's Gospel, examining the editorial emendations on four dimensions: grammatical conservatism, closeness to the English text, idiomaticity, and verbosity.

Especially when the manuscript corpus is taken into account, it will be concluded that the language of the Manx Bible translation provides reasonably reliable testimony to contemporary spoken usage, if analysed judiciously. Indeed, Manx texts may offer one of the best insights available into the linguistic development of a vernacular Gaelic variety in the Early Modern period, unobscured by the inherent conservatism of a long-established pre-existing literary tradition.

In this article the role of different ideological viewpoints concerning corpus development within the Manx revival movement in the second half of the twentieth century is explored. In particular, the work of two prominent figures is examined: the Celtic scholar Robert L. Thomson, who published extensively especially on Manx language and literature, and also contributed to the revival, particularly as editor of several pedagogical resources and as a member of the translation committee Coonceil ny Gaelgey, and Douglas Fargher, a tireless activist and compiler of an English-Manx Dictionary (1979). Broadly speaking, Thomson was of a more preservationist bent, cautious in adapting the native resources of the language and wary of straying too far from attested usage of the traditional language, while Fargher was more radical and open especially to borrowing from Irish and Scottish sources. Both were concerned, in somewhat different ways, to remove perceived impurities or corruptions from the language, and were influenced by the assumptions of existing scholarship. A close reading of the work of these scholar-activists sheds light on the tensions within the revival movement regarding its response to the trauma of language death and the questions of legitimacy and authenticity in the revived variety. Particular space is devoted to an analysis of the preface of Fargher's dictionary, as well as certain features of the body of the work itself, since this volume is probably the most widely consulted guide to the use of the language today. Finally, it is argued that the Manx language movement today would benefit from a reassessment and discussion of the ideological currents of the past and present, and a judicious evaluation of both the strengths and weaknesses of existing reference works.

Final published version available open access at https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/scp/2/1/article-p97.xml

This thesis examines the revival and subsequent development of traditional music in the Isle of Man from the 1970s until the present day. Together with dance and the Gaelic language, the revival ofManx traditional music has contributed to the reevaluation of a Manx identity based upon traditional values and symbolism. Drawing on individual interviews, a comprehensive survey and primary source material, this thesis investigates the motivations, influences and ideology behind the revival. Issues of nationalism, individual and communal identities, Celticism, authenticity and the formation of cultural boundaries are all addressed in an analysis of the revivalist ideology, which has consequently dictated the standard repertoire and musical style of today. The structure of the study is based upon a theoretical model ofmusical revivalism designed by Tamara E. Livingston (1999:69): 1. an individual or small group of "core revivalists" 2. revival informants and/or original sources ...

Available on open-access at link above. A late-medieval Welsh poem in honour of the Anglesey saint Mechyll contains features drawn from two other cults, those of the Breton St Malo and the Manx St Maughold. This article surveys the evidence for the interpenetration of these three cults in medieval Man and Anglesey. It describes first the contents of the Welsh poem and the other evidence for the cult of Mechyll. It demonstrates that Mechyll was identified with Malo under his Latin name, Machutus, though the identification itself is unhistorical. The question of the name of Malo-Machutus, the spread of his cult and the hagiography associated with him are then surveyed. It is shown that St Maughold of Man was likewise associated with Machutus, and that much the same thing happened at the Scottish church of Lesmahagow, originally dedicated to St Féchín. The place of Maughold in the Lives of St Patrick is then discussed, confirming that Maughold of Man was the saint associated by Muirchú (c.700) with Patrick’s adversary Mac Cuill. The final question raised is the name of Maughold himself. Though it is unlikely that Maughold and Mechyll were really the same historical individual, the possibility is acknowledged.

Paper delivered at Teangeolaíocht na Gaeilge conference, Maynooth University, 2015.

In this paper I argue that the use of the substantive verb with noun predicate (Irish *tá sé fear) is an internal development in Manx, rather than a symptom of the language's 'creolized' nature or 'simplification' (Ó Sé 1991: 170, Williams 1994: 738-740). In no period of Manx does the substantive verb supplant the copula and substantive verb + preposition constructions; rather the different constructions co-exist (indeed some Manx copula constructions are more conservative than Scottish Gaelic), their distribution apparently determined by the semantics of permanence v. transience, tense, syntactic complexity etc. Evidence from corpora of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Manx will be used to illustrate this distribution. I argue that the emergence of the substantive verb + noun predicate construction is to be explained by 1) the lack of an augmented past / conditional form of the copula (Scottish Gaelic b' e) 2) the lack of the development of the clefted construction with the preposition 'in' (Scottish Gaelic is e tidsear a tha annam) 3) emergence of substantive verb to clarify tense of copula (e.g. she dooinney mie v'eh 'he was a good man'), which then leads to v'eh / t'eh dooinney mie 'he was / is a good man' as the unfocused equivalent.

A new complete edition of the Manx Gaelic translation of the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer, except for the Psalter, setting the text of the 1765 and 1777 editions alongside the English original. The earlier partial translation found in MNH MS 13221/1/1 is also edited here for the first time.

Introduction from my book Lioar-lhaih Ghaelgagh: Original Manx Prose 1821–1907. This is a reader of Manx Gaelic texts with extensive linguistic and historical notes, intended for advanced students of the language. The volume comprises two parts: pieces originally published in newspapers in the mid-nineteenth century, many of a political or satirical nature; and the original stories and reminiscences of Edward Faragher (Ned Beg Hom Ruy) (1831–1908). The texts are presented in normalized orthography. This is the most significant collection of original secular prose in the language, and an important source for Manx idiom and vocabulary, especially in domains not covered in other texts, which are mostly translated devotional literature. The book is available in bookshops in the Isle of Man, and also directly from the publisher:

https://www.culturevannin.im/publication_302533.html

The study focuses on trends in population and minority language use in Anglesey in North Wales, the Isle of Man and the Isle of Skye in Western Scotland. Quantitative data relating to population and language use are drawn from the records of the National Census for the period 1891 to 2011. Data for each of the chosen regions are considered first of all within a local context. Trends that are identified are then compared, one with another, across the selected regions in different ways. In conclusion, an attempt is made to place the results of the study in the context of writings by leading scholars in the field of minority language research such as Fishman, Dorian, Crystal and May.

The current edition, in which the Manx text is set alongside the English of the Authorized Version, from which it was translated, forms part of a corpus of digitalized texts of the Classical Period (1700-1850) prepared primarily to support the study of the Manx language of that age.

'Manuscripts of the Manx Bible: linguistic features and editorial choices'

Paper delivered at Celtic Students' Conference, University of Edinburgh, March 2019, bilingual script. English abstract below.

Bheir am pàipear seo sùil air mar a thàing eadar-theangachadh a’ Bhìobaill gu Gàidhlig Mhanainn gu bith, agus thèid measadh a dhèanamh air dè cho faisg ’s a tha na teagsaichean seo air cleachdadh agus caochlaideachd nàdarra a’ chànain anns an ochdamh linn deug.

Chlò-bhuaileadh an earrann as tràithe den Bhìoball Mhanainneach (soisgeul Mhata) ann an 1748 agus nochd a’ phàirt mu dheireadh den t-Seann Tiomnadh ann an 1772 (grunn bhliadhnaichean mus do chuireadh crìoch air an eadar-theangachadh gu Gàidhlig na h-Alba).

Chaidh obair an eadar-theangachaidh a roinn air a’ chuid as fheàrr de shagartan Anglacanach an eilein, aig an robh Gàidhlig Mhanainn bho thùs mar bu trice aig an àm. Bha buidheann deasachaidh a’ cumail sùil air a’ phròiseact agus a’ feuchainn ri litreachadh agus briathrachas a chunbhalachadh, ach cha do rinneadh sin chun na h-aon ìre le gràmar agus cruthan nam facal, mas fhìor.

Tha pàirtean susbainteach de dhreachdan an eadar-theangachaidh a’ mairsinn ann an làmh-sgrìobhainnean ann an leabharlann Taigh-tasgaidh Mhanainn.

Bheirear sùil air sampall den chorpas seo de làmh-sgrìobhainnean, agus sinn a’ beachdachadh air na h atharrachaidhean a rinneadh leis an luchd-deasachaidh a-rèir ceithir slatan-tomhais: glèidhteachas gràmarach, faisge air a’ bhun-teagsa Bheurla, snas cainnte, agus lìonmhorachd fhaclan.


This paper will examine how the Manx Gaelic translation of the Bible came into being, and will assess how close these texts are to the natural variation of the vernacular language in the eighteenth century.
The earliest portion of the Manx Bible (the gospel of Matthew) was printed in 1748, and the final part of the Old Testament was published in 1772 (a number of years before the Scottish Gaelic translation was completed).

The work of translation was divided among most of the island’s Anglican clergy, who generally were native Manx speakers at the time. An editorial team oversaw the project and sought to regularize spelling and terminology (e.g. technical terminology relating to Jewish sacrificial rituals), but this was not done to the same extent with grammar and morphology, it would seem.

Substantial sections of the translators’ drafts survive in manuscript in the archive of the Manx Museum.

A sample of this corpus will be examined, assessing the emendations made by the editors on four dimensions: grammatical conservatism, closeness to the English text (AV), idiomaticity, and verbosity (wordiness).

Birro, Renan M. (2017). Cumming, Kermode e o nacionalismo manx: um balanço da erudição sobre Sigurðr Fáfnisbani nas cruzes de pedra da Ilha de Man, Calamus - Journal of Argentinian Society for Medieval Studies 1 (1), 2017, pp.169-196. ISSN 2545-627X. www.saemed.org

This thesis examines the revival and subsequent development of traditional music in the Isle of Man from the 1970s until the present day. Together with dance and the Gaelic language, the revival ofManx traditional music has contributed to the reevaluation of a Manx identity based upon traditional values and symbolism. Drawing on individual interviews, a comprehensive survey and primary source material, this thesis investigates the motivations, influences and ideology behind the revival. Issues of nationalism, individual and communal identities, Celticism, authenticity and the formation of cultural boundaries are all addressed in an analysis of the revivalist ideology, which has consequently dictated the standard repertoire and musical style of today. The structure of the study is based upon a theoretical model ofmusical revivalism designed by Tamara E. Livingston (1999:69): 1. an individual or small group of "core revivalists" 2. revival informants and/or original sources ...

Chaidh an òraid seo a thoirt seachad aig Fèis Blas ann an Inbhir Nis anns an Dùbhlachd 2019. / Lecture delivered at Blas Festival, Inverness, December 2019.

Anns an òraid seo, bheir Gille-chrìost MacGill’Eòin seachad beachdachadh air cor na Gàidhlig san latha an-diugh bho shealladh pearsanta – mar neach-iomairt agus rannsachaidh, mar Mhanainneach a tha a’ fuireach ann an Alba, mar neach-ionnsachaidh agus mar ‘neach-labhairt ùr’, agus mar Ghàidheal, ma dh’fhaodte, de sheòrsa air choreigin. A bheil leasachadh na Gàidhlig agus an còmhradh mun cuairt air a’ dèanamh feum, no a’ falach staing a tha a’ sìor-fhàs nas doirbhe sheachnadh? Chan eil teagamh nach eil suidheachadh na Gàidhlig mar chànan coimhearsnachd uabhasach cugallach, ach tha neart fhathast ann am beairteas cànanach is cultarail nan Gàidheal agus anns an dualchas aca a thaobh ar-a-mach an aghaidh fòirneart. Mar chuideigin à dùthaich Ghàidhealach a chaill a cànan dùthchasach cha mhòr gu h-iomlan mar chainnt àbhaisteach an t-sluaigh eadar an naoidheamh linn deug is an fhicheadamh linn, ach far am facas ath-bheòthachadh nach bu bheag o chionn nam beagan deicheadan a dh’fhalbh, bidh Gille-chrìost cuideachd a’ gabhail beachd air na leasanan a th’ ann do Ghàidheil na h-Alba bhon Eilean Mhanainneach.

Tha Gille-chrìost MacGill’Eòin air PhD a chrìochnachadh aig Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann far a bheil e air a bhith a’ sgrùdadh eachdraidh chànanach Gàidhlig Mhanainn a thaobh fuaimneachadh agus dòighean-litreachaidh. Bidh e cuideachd a’ dèanamh rannsachadh air cuspairean a thaobh sòisea-chànanachas agus ath-bheòthachadh cànain.

In this lecture, Christopher Lewin will explore the present-day situation of Gaelic from a personal perspective – as an activist and a researcher, as a Manxman who lives in Scotland, as a learner and ‘new speaker’, and as a Gael, perhaps, of some sort. Are Gaelic development, and the discourse surrounding it, fit for purpose, or hiding a crisis which is becoming ever more difficult to ignore? There is no doubt that the position of Gaelic as a community language is extremely fragile, but there is strength still in the linguistic and cultural richness of the Gaelic community and in their tradition of resistance to oppression. As someone who hales from a Gaelic nation which lost its native language completely as the spoken vernacular of the people between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but where a significant revival has taken place in recent decades, Christopher will also consider the potential lessons of the Manx situation for Scottish Gaeldom.

Christopher Lewin is a doctoral graduand at the University of Edinburgh, where he has written a thesis examining the linguistic history of Manx Gaelic in terms of pronunciation and orthography. He also researches topics pertaining to sociolinguistics and language revitalization.

Text of the selection of 28 Psalms, plus a few hymns, put into Manx verse in 1761 by Robert Radcliff and Matthias Curghey, edited from the 1777 edition of the Manx Book of Common Prayer, with variants from the first 1769 edition. In this revised edition (February 2019), the Manx is set alongside the text of the metrical psalms of Tate & Brady, from which they were translated.

Introduction to linguistics at an inter-disciplinary Welsh-medium conference, with a focus on similarities between syntactic changes in Welsh and Manx with regard to the 'verbal noun'.

Gwna’r papur hwn gymhariaeth rhwng prosesau tebyg o newid iaith ym Manaweg y ddeunawfed ganrif a’r Gymraeg heddiw o ran dadansoddiad yr elfen gystrawennol a elwir yn draddodiadol yn ‘ferfenw’. Hyd y gellir, defnyddir iaith hygyrch nad yw’n rhy dechnegol i esbonio diddordeb a phwysigrwydd y pwnc i gynulleidfa gyffredinol. Ni thrafodir yn fanwl theorïau ieithyddol penodol felly.
Mae’n glir mai enw go iawn oedd y ‘berfenw’ yn wreiddiol, a bod brawddeg fel “rwy’n taro’r ci” wedi golygu ar un adeg rywbeth fel “rwy yn y trawiad o’r ci”, hynny yw “wrthi’n cyflawni trawiad o’r ci”, ond go brin y byddai siaradwyr Cymraeg heddiw’n ei deall yn y ffordd hon. Casgliad y rhan fwyaf o ieithyddion cyfoes yw mai berf yn hytrach nag enw yw’r ‘berfenw’ yma. Ers canrifoedd yn yr ieithoedd Celtaidd mae’r berfenw wedi bod yn graddol golli ei ‘enwolrwydd’ ac yn mynd yn fwyfwy berfol. Gweler, er enghraifft, yr amrywiaeth rhwng ‘fy ngweld’, ‘fy ngweld i’ a ‘gweld fi’ – ac mae’n debyg mai’r opsiwn olaf aiff â hi yn y pen draw. Noder nad dylanwad uniongyrchol y Saesneg yn unig sydd wrth wraidd hyn, gan fod yr un newid yn digwydd gydag enwau go iawn, e.e. ‘ffrind fi’, er nad oes posib dweud *friend me yn yr iaith fain.
Mae amrywiaeth debyg iawn i’w gweld yn y Fanaweg (iaith Aeleg Ynys Manaw sydd nawr yn farw yn ei hymgnawdoliad traddodiadol), yn enwedig yn nhestunau’r ddeunawfed ganrif, lle y gellir gweld y newid ar droed. Mae hyd at chwe ffordd i fynegi gwrthrych rhagenwol ‘berfenw’ yn y Beibl Manaweg a gwblhawyd ym 1772. Tybed a yw’r un patrymau’n ymddangos yn y datblygiad Cymraeg? A beth yw rôl cysylltiad iaith, tafodiaith, oedran, rhywedd a chywair (lefel ffurfioldeb), yn ogystal â ffactorau ieithyddol mewnol, yn y newid?

This paper will deal with the themes of grenze / raum in the English language sense of the terms border/boundary and space/room. It deals with these concepts through the study of one individual, namely the Reverend Thomas Edward Brown. Popular in his lifetime, he is now little read, though celebrated still as the "Manx National Poet" of the Isle of Man. One of the themes already comes through here, Brown crossing the border between being a poet and a national one. Despite his granted status, he has crossed another boundary, from poet back to individual, one of those many Victorian writers whose biography is now considered more important than their bibliography. Brown crossed into many spaces, some were there for him, some he created himself, others were "gifted" him, and some lost to him. In the end, Brown was canonised (and as will be seen no idle word here) as the national poet of the Isle of Man. It led to the literal creation of a room in 1934, dedicated to his life and poetry in the newly built extension to the Manx Museum founded in 1922.

Manx National Heritage MS 09608/45 is a collection of 17 psalms (or fragments of psalms), plus a Christmas Hymn, an Easter Hymn, and a variety of doxologies, versified for singing, following the English model of Tate & Brady.1 The collection is mostly a subset of those pieces found in the 1769 Manx Prayer Book edited in Wheeler (2019), but there are a few verses in the ms. that are absent in 1769. The ms. is edited for the first time, set alongside the matching items from the 1769 collection, and Tate & Brady's English originals.

Bilingual (Welsh / English) conference presentation about Sir John Rhŷs's pioneering linguistic fieldwork in the Isle of Man in the 1880s and 90s, and its enduring importance today.

Association of Celtic Students Conference, Edinburgh, March 2018.