MANX GRAMMAR
Manx, together with all the other Celtic languages, often changes the initial consonant
of a word. This is called mutation and follows grammatical rules. Thus mutation occurs,
for example, in the adjective following a feminine singular noun, and after ordinal numbers:
mie good but ben vie a good woman;
tree punt three pounds but yn trass phunt the third pound.
Two main types of mutation occur, called lenition and nasalisation, the type depending on the grammatical context, so that the same word may at various
times assume two other forms:
kayt a cat, my chayt my cat, nyn gayt our cat.
booa a cow, my wooa my cow, nyn mooa our cow.
A list of changes may be summarised as follows:
Letter Lenition Nasalisation
b v, w m
c, k ch g
ch h j
d gh gh (n)
f (disappears) v
g gh gh, n'gh
j y n'y
m v, w m
p ph b
qu wh gw
s h, t s
t, th h d
Where a consonant would normally undergo nasalisation, a vowel remains unchanged but prefixes n- after a vowel. Similarly, in a position where a consonant lenites, a vowel may prefix h- after another vowel.
Throughout the centuries the mutations originally came about for phonetic reasons,
but are now mainly determined by grammatical considerations.
NOUNS
There are two genders in Manx, masculine and feminine, though a number of nouns are of indeterminate gender; these may for all
practical purposes be regarded as masculine.
The plural of nouns may be formed in various ways, the most common of which are:
-
by adding -yn: thie house, pl. thieyn
-
by changing final -agh to -ee: imbagh season, pl. imbee
-
by changing -ey to -aghyn: garey garden, pl. garaghyn
-
by changing the root vowel: boayrd table, pl. buird
Several other plural endings occur with less frequency, e.g. -eeyn, -jyn,
-inyn, Some plurals are quite irregular: ben woman, pl. mraane dooinney
man, pl. deiney slieau mountain, pl. sleityn billey tree, pl. biljyn There
are nowadays only two cases in Manx, the nominative and the genitive, the
form of the latter being distinct in only a small number of nouns (mostly
feminine), e.g. blein year, gen. bleeaney, though many more old genitival
forms still survive in a quasi-adjectival capacity: clagh stone, trimmid
y chlagh the weight of the stone, but cleigh cloaie a stone wall (=wall
of stone). In recent times the distinct forms of the genitive case have
been abandoned in all but a score or so of nouns, having been replaced
elsewhere by the nominative. A few datives still survive in crystallised
expressions: cass foot, ry-chosh by foot; beeal mouth, cheu-my-veealloo
in front of me. ARTICLE There is no indefinite article in Manx. The definite
article in the singular is yn (usually found as 'n after a vowel and y
between consonants), the plural being ny. The feminine genitive singular
article is also ny, though this usually only occurs before a noun having
a distinct genitive form: kione ny bleeaney (the) end (of) the year. In
the plural the article is ny for both genders and cases. When the following
noun begins with a vowel it may prefix h, this also applying when ny precedes
a genitive singular feminine noun; the inserted h is often omitted in writing
but not in speech. The following examples may serve to illustrate the articles
in use; it will be seen that lenition takes place in the masculine genitive
singular and feminine nominative singular: yn braar the brother yn chuyr
the sister yn vraarey of the brother ny shayrey of the sister ny braaraghyn
the brothers ny shayraghyn the sisters of the brothers of the sisters ADJECTIVES
With very few exceptions adjectives follow the noun to which they refer
and are lenited in the feminine singular. Apart from a few common adjectives
of one syllable they do not change in the plural: dooinney mie a good man
ben vie a good woman deiney mie good men mraane mie good women slieau ard
a high mountain sleityn ardey high mountains Manx does not differentiate
between the comparative and the superlative forms, the meaning normally
being clear by the context: mraane share better (or best) women ny mraane
share the better or best women Most of the possessive adjectives mutate
the following noun: my hie my house dty hie your house (sg.) e hie his
house e thie her house nyn dhie our (your,their ) house Because of the
ambiguity of nyn dhie, a colloquial alternative developed: yn thie ain
our house, yn thie eu your house, yn thie oc their house (lit. the house
at us, at you, at them respectively), and this construction also became
popular in the singular (e.g yn thie echey his house, the house at him)
Demonstrative adjectives are three in number and follow the article and
noun; they remain unchanged in the plural: yn thalloo shoh this land yn
slieau shid that (distant) mountain yn cronk shen that hill ny sleityn
shid those (distant) mountains PREPOSITIONS Manx, in common with the other
Celtic languages, combines a preposition and following pronoun into one
word: er on, but orrym on me, ort on you (sg.), er on him, urree on her,
orrin on us, erriu on you (pl.), orroo on them. The simple form of the
preposition usually coincides with the masculine singular form, as may
be seen here. Manx also has a number of prepositional phrases, e.g. my-dty-chione
about (concerning) you (lit. about your head). Extra endings may be added
for emphasis: orryms on me, erriuish on you, my-nyn-gionesyn about them.
NUMERALS The numerals from one to ten are: 1 unnane 2 jees 3 tree 4 kiare
5 queig 6 shey 7 shiaght 8 hoght 9 nuy 10 jeih When preceding a noun, one
is un and two is daa, both causing lenition. The teens generally add -jeig:
16 shey jeig. In Manx the score system is used, so after feed twenty, we
have 40 daeed (daa 'eed), 60 tree feed, and so on up to 180 nuy feed, though
keead is normally used for one hundred. The following examples will serve
to show how numbers between the round scores are made: 23 tree as feed,
37 shiaght-jeig as feed (seventeen and twenty), 51 nane jeig as daeed.
After 60 the larger element precedes, e.g. 148 shiaght feed as hoght, 229
daa cheead nuy as feed. 1,000 thousane. Ordinal numerals are formed by
adding -oo to numbers after three (the ordinals 1st to 3rd are irregular).
All cause lenition, and many are themselves lenited after yn: yn nah hie
the second house, yn wheiggoo chronk the fifth hill. ADVERBS Derived adverbs
are made by putting dy before the relevant adjective: tappee quick, dy
tappee quickly. Both adverbs and adjectives form their comparative / superlative
identically, i.e. by prefixing s' preceded by the word ny: ny s'tappee
quicker, quickest, more quickly, most quickly. There are many irregular
forms, especially for high-frequency monosyllabic adjectives and adverbs,
e.g. mie good, ny share better, best. When an adjective is attributive
ny is omitted: yn thie sloo the smaller / smallest house. PRONOUNS Like
most European languages, Manx uses two different pronouns for you; oo for
the familiar singular form and shiu in all other situations. However one
form of each pronoun serves as both subject and object: honnick eh eh he
saw him. WORD ORDER The most striking difference between the Celtic languages
and English is that in the former the verb is normally the first word in
the sentence unless preceded by a negative or some other particle: t'eh
cloie 'sy gharey he is playing in the garden (lit. is he ...). For questions,
unlike English, it is the verb which undergoes change, not the word order.
As already mentioned, most adjectives follow the noun they describe, and
a demonstrative adjective will follow any others: yn kayt doo shen that
black cat (= the cat black that). When an adverb is used with any tense
of the verb ve to be followed by a verb-noun (e.g. I am running as opposed
to I ran), it is usually placed between the finite verb and the verb-noun:
t'ad dy kinjagh ginsh dou they are always telling me. When any part of
the sentence is to be given special emphasis it is placed first: jea haink
ee dy chur shilley orrym yesterday it was that she came to visit me. VERBS
As in English, verbs in the past, future and conditional tenses have two
forms, e.g. I ran, I was running, and the continuous form is obtained by
using the appropriate part of the irregular verb ve be with what is called
the verb-noun, roughly corresponding to the English gerund. The present
tense has only a continuous form, and this is used even when a momentary
or habitual action is concerned: ta mee goll shagh'ee gagh laa I pass her
every day (= I am going past her ...). The non-continuous form in the other
tenses is formed by inflecting and/or mutating the verbal stem; so from
the stem cum hold we can say chum mee I held, cummyn I shall hold, chummin
I would hold. If an inflexion is added for the I form, a different inflexion
is used for all the other persons singular and plural, the appropriate
pronoun being used to distinguish between them: cummee eh, shiu, ad he,
you, they will hold. As an alternative to this system, the appropriate
part of the irregular verb jannoo do may be used with the verb-noun, the
meaning being exactly the same: nee'm cummal I shall hold, yinnin cummal
I would hold, nee shiu / yinnagh shiu cummal you will / would hold. This
alternative even applies to the imperative: cum or jean cummal hold. In
regular verbs the absolute and dependent are often identical (e.g. in the
past tense, chum eh he held, chum eh? did he hold?) or only distinguished
by a different inflexion (e.g. in the future, chummee eh he will hold,
gum eh? will he hold?), whereas the irregular verbs, of which there are
ten, often have apparently unrelated absolute and dependent forms (e.g.
va mee I was, row mee? was I? honnick shin we saw, vaik shin? did we see?
It is by using separate forms for the statement and the question that Manx
is able to keep to its usual verb first word order, but when the two forms
are identical only the intonation of the voice can distinguish statement
from question, and it is most often in the past tense that this applies.
Whilst no difference of meaning exists between the inflected tense form
and the periphrastic form comprising jannoo in its appropriate tense and
the verb-noun, the former is met with more often in the past tense than
in the future or conditional and in the ten irregular verbs more readily
than in the regular verbs. As its use in the spoken language requires considerable
practice, it is usually replaced by the periphrastic forms colloquially,
especially in late native speaker Manx, where inflected forms, though always
understood, were seldom used. Manx also has a number of verbal phrases,
and often uses them in places where English has a simple verb, e.g. I like
is rendered by the phrase s'mie lhiam (=is good with me). The verb s' is
actually related to the English is but is limited in use to this type of
verbal phrase and when an adjective is given special emphasis at the beginning
of the sentence or is in the comparative / superlative form. The present
tense s' also serves as the future, whilst by (b' before a vowel) is both
past tense and conditional: by vie lhee she liked / would like (= was /
would be good with her). The object of the English sentence then becomes
the subject of the Manx: s'olk lesh fuirraghtyn he does not like waiting
(= is bad with him waiting, i.e. waiting is bad with him). S' combines
with the pronoun eh he, it to form she, and this may be used at the beginning
of a sentence immediately before any noun, pronoun, non-derived adverb
or verb requiring special emphasis; in this context it is not tied to any
particular tense, and the tense of the sentence is indicated by the main
verb: she dty naunt loayr rhym it was your aunt who spoke to me (= it is
your aunt [who] spoke with me); she mairagh ragh shin it is tomorrow we
would go. Selected extracts from: Outline of Manx Language and Literature
Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh ISBN 1 870029 04 6