Last night I went to a great concert in St John’s (Balley Keeill Eoin) at which all the modern Celtic languages were sung and/or spoken, as well as English and French. It was wonderful to hear them all, and I even understood odd bits of the Cornish and Breton, the only Celtic languages I haven’t got round to studying yet.
I think it was the first time I’ve heard Breton spoken and sung live – I have heard recordings before though. I thought that it sounds kind of similar to French, but when you listen closely you realise that it isn’t French at all.
I spoke to various people in Manx, English, Welsh, French and a bit of Irish, and joined in with songs in Manx and Scottish Gaelic at the session in Peel (Purt ny hInshey) after the concert.
An Irish group called Guidewires will be playing in Peel tonight, supported by a Manx group called Scammylt, and before that there’s a talk on Welsh poetry by Mererid Hopwood.
Tomorrow I’m off to Gleann Cholm Cille in Donegal for a week of Irish language and music at Oideas Gael’s Irish Language and Culture Summer School.
Simon – this sounds like a great experience. I’d be interested to know what the status of Manx is now, in terms of numbers of speakers, visibility of the language on the island etc. Also, are any children learning it natively again?
Enjoy your summer school!
stormboy – there is quite a bit of Manx to be seen around the Isle of Man on town and street names, most of which are bilingual, the names of businesses and government departments, and on things like bus and train timetables.
Accorrding to the last census 1,689 (2.2% of the population) have some knowledge of Manx, and maybe a few hundred speak it fluently. There is a Manx medium primary school and some Manx medium provision at nursery and secondary level. A few families have or are raised their children with Manx as their first language.
There are more details in my dissertation