Manx English

Manx English
Native toIsle of Man
EthnicityManx
Early forms
Latin (English alphabet)
English Braille, Unified English Braille)
Language codes
ISO 639-3
IETFen-IM
Location of the Isle of Man between Ireland and Great Britain.

Manx English (Manks English), or Anglo-Manx (Anglo-Manks; Manx: Baarle Ghaelgagh), is the historic dialect of English spoken on the Isle of Man, though today in decline. It has many borrowings from Manx, a Goidelic language, and it differs widely from any other variety of English, including dialects from other areas in which Celtic languages are or were spoken, such as Welsh English and Hiberno-English.

Early Anglo-Manx contained words of Gaelic and Old Norse origin, but also came to be influenced by the speech of Liverpool and Lancashire in North West England. The Manx historian and linguist Arthur William Moore noted that the dialect varied slightly from parish to parish but that the same turns of phrase and the same stock of words pervaded the whole island. Moore's A Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx Dialect (Oxford University Press, 1924) and W. Walter Gill's Manx Dialect Words and Phrases (J.W. Arrowsmith, 1934) document the high-water mark of this dialect.

The poet T. E. Brown was one of the first authors to use the Manx dialect in his work.

In the early 20th century, poems and plays in the dialect were written by Cushag, J. J. Kneen, Christopher R. Shimmin and Juan Noa. In the mid-20th century, Kathleen Faragher wrote poetry in the dialect.

Immigration and cultural influences from elsewhere, particularly from Great Britain, have caused the disappearance of the dialect, with the exception of a few words and phrases.


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