My Manx Gaelic learning adventures

After learning Irish and Scottish Gaelic, I decided to have a go at Manx, to complete the set, so to speak. I'm also interested in seeing the similarities and differences between these three languages.

I started my studies of Manx with Eurotalk's Talk Now! Manx. This is a course on CD-Rom that teaches you basic words and phrases, which are introducted in association with pictures. When you click on the pictures you can hear and see the words and phrases spoken by both male and female speakers. There are also various games you can play that test you on the words. This seems to me to be quite an effective and enjoyable way to learn the basics of a language. The topics covered by this course include food, colours, part of the body, numbers, time, shopping and countries.

One great thing about the Talk Now! courses is that you can change the help/interface language. For example, instead of having English translations of the words and phrases, I can change them to Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh or over 70 other languages. This is a good way to see similiarities and differences between languages and to brush up my knowledge of those languages.

I have also got Brian Stowell's Manx courses: Abbyr Shen! (Say that!) and Bun-Choorse Gaelgagh (Basic Manx Course), and have worked my way through the both.

Abbyr Shen! was originally made for broadcast by Manx Radio. It consists of three audio cassettes and a booklet containing a complete transcript of the recordings. Each lesson introduces new vocabulary and grammar, includes examples of usage, and finishes with a short conversation. The course is narrated by Doug Fargher and his is the only voice you hear on the cassettes.

Bun-Choorse Gaelgagh consists of a textbook and four audio cassettes. There are 62 short lessons, each of which features a short conversation with explanations of the new vocabulary and grammar. The course is narrated by Brian Stowell, and you also hear three other Manx speakers on the cassettes: Peggy Carswell, Dave Fisher and Fiona McArdle.

Many lessons in Manx are available at www.gaelg.iofm.net and I plan to have a look at them soon. All the lessons from that course, together with a further 138 lessons in the same style, are in fact online, though there is no audio, unfortunately.

So far I'm finding Manx fairly straightforward: much of the vocabulary and grammar is similar to the other Gaelic languages and the pronunciation isn't too difficult. The spelling is a bit inconsistent and takes a while to get used to though.

In June 2006 in Glencolmcille, Donegal, Ireland, there were a number of Manx speakers at the féile cholmcille, a festival of Gaelic music and culture featuring performers from Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland. Unfortunately I wasn't aware that this event was happening until I arrived in Glencolmcille, by which time it was almost over. So I missed some talks on the Manx language and culture, and some Manx lessons, but I did hear the excellent Manx band skeeal playing - they sing in Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Irish, and some of the members speak Manx fluently. You can hear a few of their tunes on MySpace.

Information about Manx Gaelic

Manx Gaelic language courses, dictionaries, etc.

Other languages I've studied:

Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, Esperanto, French, Hungarian, Gaelic (Irish), Gaelic (Manx), Gaelic (Scottish), German, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Taiwanese, Turkish, Welsh