Manx

Why Manx drifted from the other Gaelics

Manx descends from Primitive Irish, like Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and speakers of one can pick up the others without much trouble. Between 1400 and 1900 it grew apart. The Plantation of Ulster, the retreat of Irish in Leinster and the extinction of Galloway Gaelic cut it off from the rest of the Gaelic world, and a spelling of its own finished the job.

What English spelling did to it

The orthography rests on Elizabethan English and some Middle Welsh, the work of people schooled in English rather than in Classical Gaelic. It is only partly phonemic and unreadable to users of Irish or Scottish Gaelic spelling. Manx uses 24 letters, the Latin alphabet without x and z. The Bible published as one book in 1775, Yn Vible Casherick, fixed the spelling, which has changed little since. T. F. O'Rahilly judged it in 1932 neither traditional nor phonetic.

When English took over the island

Schools founded in the 17th century were required to teach in English. The churchmen Thomas Wilson and Mark Hildesley pushed back, printing the first Manx book and the New Testament of 1767, but by the late 18th century almost every school taught in English. Henry Jenner estimated in 1874 that about 30% of islanders habitually spoke Manx, 12,340 of 41,084. The census put speakers at 9.1% in 1901 and 1.1% in 1921.

Who kept the language alive

Yn Çheshaght Ghailckagh, the Manx Language Society, was founded in 1899. The Irish Folklore Commission recorded native speakers in 1948, and those recordings, with the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer in Manx, made the revival easier. A Manx Language Unit was set up in 1992, and Manx is now an optional subject in every primary and secondary school. At the Bunscoill Ghaelgagh in St John's, 67 children were taught almost entirely in Manx in September 2016. UNESCO listed Manx as extinct in 2009, then changed the entry to critically endangered.