| Thought readers here might find this interesting.
Will the same happen to the Gaeltachts of Ireland ?
------- Forwarded mail received on 12-Aug-1992 at 15:19:05 -------
From: VBORMC::"GAELIC-L%[email protected]"
"GAELIC Language Bulletin Board"
To: Multiple recipients of <GAELIC-L%[email protected]>
Subj: State of MxG in 1930 -- NB MxG at end incorrect...
((Source tagged in REFER format))
((%0 Newspaper Article))
((%A Anon.))
((%D 1930))
((%T The Dying Manx Language))
((%B Isle of Manx Examiner))
((%P 3c))
((%8 5 September 1930))
(( ))
(( ))
The Dying Manx Language
BEAUTIFUL ANCIENT TONGUE KILLED
BY THE TRIPPERS
It is often said that education and
imagination cannot run in double harness,
and it would now appear that trippers and
tradition cannot exist together in this
island of ours. Poetry and imagination
have been great traits in our national
character, but they grow less and less with
the passing of time and are fast dying out
---and with them, alas, the tongue which
voiced the beautiful thoughts of the old-
time Manx people.
It is not easy to repress feelings of re-
gret that the Manx language is in danger
of becoming utterly extinct, but there is
some solace in the knowledge that the
passing is not unmourned outside the
Island itself. It is the subject of much con-
cern in many places, and only last week
two eminent English newspapers published
interesting articles calling attention to the
probability that, like many other of the
early languages, Manx will disappear be-
fore the masterly refinement and progress
of the Anglo-Saxon race.
The ``Evening News'' in an article which
asserts that trippers have killed our ancient
tongue says:---
``The language of the Isle of Man is
dying. Visitors to the Island this summer
who hoped to hear Manx spoken on all
sides, have been disappointed.
``The simple truth is that, out of 50,000
inhabitants of Man, fewer than 1,000 have
any working knowledge of their native
tongue, and of this number, probably no
more than 100 can lay claim to be really
``Manx'' people able to speak only the
Manx language.
``Those Manx men and women who are
able to talk fluently in the language of the
Island are now elderly, so it is doubtful if
the Manx language will successfully sur-
vive another generation.
MANX ``FOREIGNERS.''
``The story of the Manx tongue is an in-
teresting one. The language was brought to
the shores of Man by Westward-roaming
Celts in pre-Christian days, and it lived
and flourished until the end of the eigh-
teenth century. In 1764, for example, there
were 20,000 inhabitants of the Isle of Man.
And hardly any of them knew anything of
English. Manxmen who left the Island to
join the Navy or foreign-going ships were
regarded as complete foreigners.
``The Manx indeed, were an individual
nation. Their Bibles and Prayerbooks were
printed in their native tongue, their chil-
dren learned Manx in their schools. In
1840 came the last issue of the New Testa-
ment in Manx---and the decline of the
Manx tongue seems to date from that year.
``Towards the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury----by which time there were regular
and rapid steamship sailings between
Man and the mainland---the number of
Manxmen able to speak English had grown
enormously. The number of people able to
speak only Manx had decreased to 190.
BEAUTIFUL NAMES.
``The holiday habit has been the undoing
of the Manx language. Every year, close on
500,000 Englishmen and Scotsmen and
Irishmen holiday there. The native tongue
has been unable to hold out against this
invasion.
``As a spoken language, Manx is in a sad
condition today, yet the Island teems with
evidence of the Manx tongue. Douglas, its
capital takes its name from its situation on
the two rivers, Awin Doo and Awin Glass---
the black and the bright river.
``Practically every farm on the Island is
a ``Balla,'' meaning a place; the mountains
are slieus, and the glens are lhens, the bogs
are curraghs, and the most sophis[i]cated of
Manxmen would never dream of Anglicis-
ing the familiar and beautiful local names.
``But the day when the Manx fisherman
could freely in his native tongue to
the Irish and Scots fishermen is past.
``It is pleasant to think, however, that
the Manx fisherman still raises his laden
nets when the sun has risen over a hill on
the west coast of the Island. The English-
man calls the hill, `the hill of the new day,'
but the Manxman, though he has long for-
gotten how to speak in his own language,
calls it `Cronk ny Irree Laa.'''
The ``Yorkshire Post,'' too, passes some
interesting observations on the subject of
the decay of Manx, in the following
article:---
``The Isle of Man gives us delicious
scenery of cliff and glen and mountain, not
to mention cats and T.E. Brown, yet some
of her visitors are unsatisfied. They are dis-
appointed, it is a little ironical to hear, at
not finding Manx freely spoken by the
natives. For more than half a century the
ancient language has been rapidly declin-
ing, and to-day its death cannot be very far
off. If the visitors ask the reason, only one
answer can be given---the visitors them-
selves. Gradually, as the Isle of Man has
become more and more accessible, English
has necessarily taken the place of Manx.
Thirty years ago there was not a monolin-
guist left, and scarcely a tenth of the in-
habitants used the language at all. Now it
is doubtful if five hundred Manxmen speak
it fluently. Whether this fact is to be re-
gretted involves a question not easy to an-
swer. Much false sentiment is spilt over
the slow but sure decay of the Celtic langu-
ages, of which so far in our group of
islands only Cornish has succumbed. The
death of an ancient language is naturally
a cause for sorrow, but what would Celtic
races gain by an unimpaired survival of
their languages? None of them has de-
veloped with the march of modern civilisa-
tion, which in its beginning left their re-
mote countries largely untouched. In some
of them, to be sure, there is a wealth of
literature, but it has been said with truth
about the Celtic countries---Wales perhaps
excepted---that those who can read cannot
speak the old languages, and those who
speak them cannot read. A new language
it is true, means a break with historical
continuity, but so, in a manner of speaking,
did the discard of chain-mail or the doublet
or the disappearance of the stage coach.
Manxmen are Manxmen still, even if they
speak English. They may not be so in-
tensely Manx in race and character as their
forefathers, but they are more prosperous
now that the Isle of Man has become a
playground for the North of England. And
is prosperity too heavy a price to pay for
the loss of their old way of speech?''
Can we refute the contents of the fore-
going articles? Hardly.
Sad though it be to say it, the Manx lan-
guage is dying out---indeed as a spoken
language it is long since dead. The shrewd
sayings, the dry wise knowledge, the wit
and the soul, and the heart of it has passed
like a shadow decaying and dying as the
subtle poetic atmosphere faded from the
Island, striking the prophetic warning con-
tained in the old proverb, ``Dyn glare, dyn
cheer''---no language, no country.
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% Subject: State of MxG in 1930 -- NB MxG at end incorrect...
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|
| Info on the 11 Celtic languages, which I just sent to the net...
Path: edieng.enet.dec.com!cockburn
From: [email protected] (Craig Cockburn)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic
Subject: Re: Celtic languages
Date: 7 SEP 92 21:42:17 BST
Distribution: world
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Organization: Digital Equipment Co. Ltd., Reading, England
Keywords:
Summary:
-Message-Text-Follows-
In article <[email protected]>, I wrote...
>
>From what I can remember, the list is:
>
>Insular Celtic
>P-Celtic: Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Cumbric(extinct)
>Q-Celtic: Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Manx
>
>Non Insular Celtic (all extinct)
>Gaulish (France)
>Galatian (Spain)
>I think there was another in the middle east
>
Here's the corrected version, from the Cambridge encyclopedia of language.
Goidelic (Q-Celtic)
Scots Gaelic
Irish Gaelic
Manx
(this branch entered the British Isles when a wave of Celts left the
Bordeaux area of France in the 4th century BC. These three languages
descend from "Common Gaelic" and started to become distinct around
the 10th century AD)
Brythonic (P-Celtic)
Cumbrian (extinct)
Welsh
Cornish
Breton (descended mainly from Cornish)
Both the above branches are "insular Celtic". The languages below (all
extinct) are "Continental Celtic"
Celtiberian (Spain) (found in partly decipherable inscriptions in the
north and east of Spain)
Gaulish (France, north Italy, Belgium, north Germany, Netherlands)
Galatian (Balkans, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia)
Galation remained in use until about the 5th century AD.
These three languages are not related in the sense that the three
Gaelics are related. They form three seperate branches in their own right.
The book also mentions a Celtic language called "Leponic" which has
been found in Switzerland on inscriptions from the 2nd century BC. No
mention of Leponic is made in the Indo-European tree given in the book.
|