This evening was a delight. It was a great pleasure to
welcome Roy Kennaugh of Kirk Michael Heritage Trust as our speaker and to have
one of our largest gatherings to enjoy an excellent power point presentation on
Manx Dialect.
Roy suggested that dialect comes second to the Manx
language, itself but it serves a very useful purpose in keeping some of the
language alive and in common usage.
How did the language develop? The first settlers were
Celts with Irish Gaelic. Roy pointed out that Manx Gaelic is similar to both
Irish and Scottish Gaelic with a level of understanding between speakers of
these variations.
There was a steady decline in Manx speakers in the
19th century. English became the dominant tongue but with the Manx
variations we know as dialect.
Dialect was defined as ‘a regionally and socially
defined variety of a language which differs in vocal tone, pronunciation and
grammar. One example was, ‘Ther’s a fine car at him!’ (He’s got a nice
car!)
A 1960’s survey in Andreas and Ronague showed that Manx
dialect was influenced by N and NW
Midland dialect plus Manx Gaelic. This survey expressed a concern that Manx
Gaelic would die, closely followed by Manx dialect. Thanks to vigorous action by
a few, including the establishment of a Manx –speaking school, neither concern
is now true. A nation that loses its language loses its identity. We certainly
ran it close – Traa dy Liooar (Time enough) very nearly
wasn’t!
A lot of investigation into Manx Gaelic and dialect had
been conducted in Cronk y Voddey. This was chosen as a relatively stable farming
community. Roy was one of the researchers and was able to speak of his findings.
The age range of 40 speakers ranged from 8 to 89 years. The nucleus of the
network of speakers was community events such as the famous ploughing
match.
Roy then entered into a more detailed examination of the
structure of Manx dialect. Examples included the loss of g in ing, (runnin’),
loss of t in words, firs(t), devoicing of z to sound like an s, loss of middle
consonants – li’l for little and so on.
We were then treated to Win’ Collister reciting, ‘Goin’
to Tynwald’ in dialect. This was treated to terrific applause.
Roy moved on to some of the conclusions of his study. No
great surprises in that older people knew more Manx, (probably less true now
that so many children are learning and being taught in Manx.) People with a
strong sense of national identity used more Manx and males knew more words than
women.
Some of the vocabulary such as long tail came from
elsewhere, in this case, seafarers. The audience joined in a kind of quiz,
trading words and meanings such as cushag, bonnag and lesser known ones. This
was a lot of fun and was very animated.
Whilst we had refreshments, we watched a dialect play
from Kirk Michael. This was a good exemplar of the use of dialect in
conversation.
We built up a large vocabulary between us with Roy
jotting down one’s he’d missed. A great evening!
