Manx

About Manx

Manx Gaelic (Gaelg) is a language from the Isle of Man. It is mostly only used by the minority of the Manx population who can speak it amongst themselves. A minority of road signs are bilingual, but most place names are in Manx or derive from the language. The language is rarely heard in public except in formal situations such as Tynwald Day and on radio shows for Manx speakers. Manx, in common with Scottish Gaelic, is closely related to Irish, and shares most of its vocabulary and grammar with these languages. Whilst it shares common grammatical features with Welsh, Cornish and Breton it shares very little common vocabulary with these languages. There is one Manx medium primary school in the Isle of Man, and most children on the Isle of Man learn some Manx in primary school. Provision for Manx in secondary school is limited, the number of speakers being far higher in schools with strong community links and the highest academic achievement. All native speakers are bilingual (or multilingual).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.