Category: Manx (Gaelg)

Cennin Pedr

By Simon

Daffodils / Cennin Pedr / Narcissi

Yesterday was St David’s Day (Dydd Gŵyl Dewi), a day when many Welsh people wear daffodils (cennin Pedr) in honour of their patron saint. The daffodil (cenhinen Bedr) is one of the national symbols of Wales, along with the leek (cenhinen), and the Welsh name for daffodil means “Peter’s leek”. The leek has been a Welsh symbol for many centuries and features prominently in traditional Welsh dishes such as cawl cennin (leek soup). The daffodil became popular as a national symbol during the 19th century, especially among women.

The names for daffodil in Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic are similar: lus an chromchinn, lus ny cam-ching and lus a’ chrom-chinn, which mean “bent-headed plant”. Alternative names in Manx include lus ny n’guiy (goose plant) and lus yn arree (Spring plant).

The English word daffodil is thought to comes from the Middle English affodill (asphodel), from the Middle Lation affodillus, from the Latin asphodelus, from the Greek asphodelos, the origin of which is unknown. The initial d perhaps came from a merging of the Dutch definite article de with affodil (Source).

According to Plutarch the Latin name for daffodil, narcissus, comes from the Greek ναρκαώ [narkao] (to numb), which is also the root of narcosis, as the plant which produces numbness or palsy (Source). Although other sources claim that the narcissus was named after Νάρκισσος [Narkissos], the character in Greek myths.

The daffodil or narcissus is a symbol of vanity in the West, while in China it’s a symbol of wealth and good fortune.

Leaght y Ghaaue

By Simon

Last night I went to a fascinating lecture in Manx about Venice which covered the city’s history, architecture, transport and much more. It was given by Bob Carswell, a Manx speaker, translator, poet and broadcaster who regularly talks with great enthusiasm about a wide range of topics on his radio programme, Claare ny Gael.

The type of language used and the information discussed was university level, and while I didn’t understand every word, and got a bit lost when he was explaining some of the technicalities of how the city was built, I was able to understand most of the lecture.

One thing he mentioned was the many different terms there are in Venice for streets, lanes, alleyways, etc, including via (street), calle (a walkway between two buildings), calleta (a narrower calle), salizada (a broader calle), ruga (a calle with lots of shops -from French, rue), rio (small canal), rio terrà / terà (filled-in canal), fondamenta (a walkway that runs along a rio or the lagoon), and sotoportego (a covered walkway through a building).

There are also quite a few terms used in street names in English – street, road, lane, alley, passage, close, drive, place, green, croft, way, grove, gardens, end, crescent, bank, and so on.

Is the same true in other languages?

Y Cooish

By Simon

I’m currently in the Isle of Man for the Cooish, a festival of Manx language and traditional music from the Isle of Man, Ireland and Scotland. Last night I went to an excellent concert in Peel which included the Arrane son Mannin (Song for Man) competition, and there’s a lecture in Manx (Leaght y Ghaaue) this evening.

Yesterday I met a Manx-speaking friend on the boat coming over and we talked Manx throughout the crossing. Well actually she did most of the talking and I contributed to the conversation whenever I could. It was the longest conversation I’ve ever had in Manx and I was pleased to find that I could understand almost everything, and even got the jokes.

My Manx tends to get mixed up with Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and even Welsh sometimes, but my friend is fluent in Irish, and speaks some Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, so this didn’t matter so much. We did try to stick to Manx most of the time though.

One of the things we were discussing was false friends between the Gaelic languages. For example, daoine means people in Irish, while in Manx dooiney means men, and the word for people is sleih, mooinjer or pobble. In Scottish Gaelic people is poball or sluagh, and men is daoine.

We also tried to translate Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody into Manx, though couldn’t remember all the words in English and weren’t sure of the Manx equivalents of some of the words we could remember.

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.