on a stone in the
Manx Museum written in Primitive Irish and which reads DOVAIDONA MAQI DROATA, "Of Dovaido, son of Droata" (Brown-haired William) ") on
Cronk ny Arrey Laa ("Hill of the Day Watch"). The Manx language has had a substantial influence on the island's
toponymy and nomenclature. Manx is a
Goidelic language, closely related to
Irish and
Scottish Gaelic. On the whole it is partially
mutually intelligible with these, and native speakers of one find it easy to gain passive, and even spoken, competency in the other two. It has been suggested that a little-documented
Brythonic language (i.e. related to modern
Welsh,
Cornish and
Breton) may have been spoken on the Isle of Man before the arrival of Christian missionaries from Ireland in the early Middle Ages. However, there is little surviving evidence about the language spoken on the island at that time. Manx (like Irish and Scottish Gaelic) is descended from
Primitive Irish. The island either lends its name to or takes its name from
Manannán, the Brythonic and Gaelic sea god who is said in myth to have once ruled the island. Primitive Irish is first attested in
Ogham inscriptions from the 4th century AD. These writings have been found throughout Ireland and the west coast of
Great Britain. Primitive Irish transitioned into
Old Irish through the 5th century. Old Irish, dating from the 6th century, used the
Latin script and is attested mainly in
marginalia to Latin manuscripts, but there are no extant examples from the Isle of Man. Latin was used for ecclesiastical records from the establishment of Christianity in the Isle of Man in the 5th century AD. Many words concerning religion, writing and record keeping entered Manx at this time. The Isle of Man was conquered by Norse
Vikings in the 9th century. Though there is some evidence in the form of
runic inscriptions that
Norse was used by some of these settlers, the Vikings who settled around the
Irish Sea and West Coast of Scotland soon became Gaelic-speaking
Norse–Gaels. During the 9th century AD, the Gaelic of the inhabitants of the Isle of Man, like those of Scotland and the North of Ireland, may have been significantly influenced by Norse speakers. While Norse had very little impact on the Manx language overall, a small number of modern place names on the Isle of Man are Norse in origin, e.g.
Laxey (Laksaa) and
Ramsey (Rhumsaa). Other Norse legacies in Manx include
loanwords and
personal names. By the 10th century, it is supposed that
Middle Irish had emerged and was spoken throughout Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. The island came under Scottish rule in 1266, and alternated between Scottish and English rule until finally becoming the feudal possession of the
Stanley family in 1405. It is likely that until that point, except for scholarly knowledge of
Latin and courtly use of
Anglo-Norman, Manx was the only language spoken on the island. Since the establishment of the Stanleys on the Isle of Man, first Anglo-Norman and later the
English language have been the chief external factors in the development of Manx, until the 20th century, when Manx speakers became able to access Irish and Scottish Gaelic media.
17th to 19th centuries Manx had diverged considerably from the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland between 1400 and 1900. The 17th century
Plantation of Ulster, the decline of Irish in
Leinster and the extinction of
Galloway Gaelic led to the geographic isolation of Manx from other dialects of Gaelic. The development of a separate
orthography also led Manx to diverge from Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Since the language was used by so few people, it had low linguistic "
prestige", and parents tended not to teach Manx to their children, thinking it would be useless to them compared with English.
Revival Following the decline in the use of Manx during the 19th century, (The Manx Language Society) was founded in 1899. By the mid-20th century, only a few elderly
native speakers remained (the last of them,
Ned Maddrell, died 27 December 1974), but by then a scholarly revival had begun and a few people had started teaching it in schools. The Manx Language Unit was formed in 1992, consisting of three members and headed by Manx Language Officer
Brian Stowell, a language activist and fluent speaker, "which was put in charge of all aspects of Manx language teaching and accreditation in schools." This led to an increased interest in studying the Manx language and encouraged a renewed sense of ethnic identity. The revival of Manx was aided by the recording work done in the 20th century by researchers. Most notably, the
Irish Folklore Commission was sent in with recording equipment in 1948 by
Éamon de Valera. Also important in preserving the Manx language was work conducted by the late Brian Stowell, who is considered personally responsible for the current revival of the Manx language.
Culture Vannin employs a Manx Language Development Officer () to encourage and facilitate the use of the language. In 2009,
UNESCO's ''
Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger'' declared Manx an
extinct language, despite the presence of hundreds of speakers on the Isle of Man. Historian and linguist
Jennifer Kewley Draskau reacted to this declaration, saying that saying that "Unesco ought to know better than to declare Manx a dead language. There are hundreds of speakers of Manx and while people are able to have productive conversations in the language then it is very much alive and well." Since then, UNESCO's classification of the language has changed to "critically endangered". In the 2011 census, 1,823 out of 80,398 Isle of Man residents, or 2.27% of the population, claimed to have knowledge of Manx, an increase of 134 people from the 2001 census. These individuals were spread roughly uniformly over the island: in
Douglas 566 people professed an ability to speak, read or write Manx; 179 in
Peel, 146 in
Onchan, and 149 in Ramsey.
Estimated number of speakers by year == Status ==