“Several Tired Children Howling.”
(An introduction to Manx Mutation.)


Phil Kelly

Yn Oaseir Gaelgagh
Unnid Gaelgagh
Rheynn Ynsee
Ellan Vannin

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+44 1624 878640 Tel

Abstract

Because of the historical accident of the introduction of the Manx spelling system in what is an essentially English form, it is unusually suited to a system of mnemonics to aid English speaking learners. This workshop uses one method to outline the basic principles of the Manx language mutation system. Informal trials have proved successful in achieving an increased awareness and confidence in the usage of mutation by both teenage and adult learners.

Introduction

Manx shares with the other Celtic languages a system of initial consonant mutations and although it appears to be the simplest of all the Celtic systems mastery of it can still present a major hurdle to learners.

Quotes from two papers from last year’s conference referring to the teaching of Irish, that is to say; “Teaching the Initial Mutations in Modern Irish.” Séamas Ó Direáin and “If We Drill Them, Will They Learn Them?” Sheila Scott, Harold Kenny, highlighted for me the need for a fresh look, and perhaps a change of method, in the teaching of some elements of mutation.

Mutations can often mask even a well known word from both learners and more advanced speakers, particularly so in Manx, whereby the small numbers and physical dispersion of speakers means that conversations are not necessarily an everyday occurrence.
“Word-initial mutations are a major impediment to oral comprehension. It is clear that some adjustment in normal teaching techniques is appropriate to address the mutation problem.” Scott/Kenny

As in oral comprehension so to in any written examples of Manx, in that written Manx is not a commonplace method of communication outside the contrived environment of classroom lessons.
“In handling even the simplest written grammatical tasks, with all the time in the world allowed for completing the task at hand - as opposed to the "real-time" pressures of normal conversation - students are often completely at a loss in deciding whether to lenite, to voice, to nasalize or simply to leave alone the initial consonant of a given word. Students often try random solutions.”
Ó Direáin 

Teaching mutation
What then is the position for the learning of Manx? Hitherto, the introduction of mutation has been a loosely structured if not haphazard affair, most instructors remain enthusiastic amateurs rather than trained linguists. This approach has served us well until the present time, but we should now, perhaps, be making a more concerted effort to increase the standard and standardisation of usage. One of the main difficulties is that Manx language transmission is no longer from native speakers. Every Manx language speaker is now a second, if not third language speaker. Knowledge of mutation now has to be consciously learned rather than simply and naturally acquired.

Spelling
“The Manx spelling is based on phonology, the words are written as they are pronounced. The etymology of the words is often obscured and hidden by this system of spelling; but the spoken sound is preserved.” Rev. W. Mackenzie.

The Manx alphabet is identical with English except that x and z are missing. In modern Manx the cedilla is placed under the dental çh to distinguish it from the guttural ch.

“Simplification of the mutational system, and loss of various tense/mode distinctions may have repercussions for the field of language death for it is possible that such a variety may represent the pre-terminal phase of some dying languages.” Broderick.

This apparent lack of sophistication in the Manx system may well be symptomatic of a language that is often describe as “on the road to death” but which I prefer to regard as being a natural development and having a ‘plain elegance and neatness of execution’ of its own.

As in any learning situation there is no “one size fits all” solution, nor is there any such thing as a new learning method. The technique outlined here is aimed at adult beginners attending night classes of perhaps two hours duration per week and who need additional support systems to explain and aid the recall of letter changes and the circumstances in which they are applied.

The method
Those attending the workshop will see the basic Manx system demonstrated in “powerpoint” format and be invited to participate in some statistical collecting and analysis of results obtained from other participants to ascertain for themselves the effectiveness or otherwise of the presentation. The workshop simulates a mixed ability class of adult beginners and therefore assumes no previous knowledge of the language or of grammatical terms and so would not be suitable for those students who prefer the conventional grammatical approach. This is yet another problem facing instructors of mixed ability adult learners, some of whom may have a somewhat inflexible if not fixed approach to learning.

Experience has shown that the acquisition of vocabulary is a relatively straightforward procedure but that mutation is the major hurdle in the teaching of Manx. Either the subject is ignored and students learn by a system akin to osmosis, or the subject is discussed in such depth that students either give up at its very mention, become paralysed into inaction for fear of making a mistake, or they are happy to press on regardless of any grammatical conventions. Of these, my preference would tend to lean toward the latter approach, but clearly the striking of some balance between the extremes would be desirable.

“It is not unusual for third-level students of Irish in their third year of university Irish classes to have persistent and pervasive problems in internalizing the system of rules underlying the operation of lenition ("aspiration") and voicing/nasalization ("eclipsis") in both their spoken and their written Irish.” Ó Direáin

The learning of mutation often suffers from the overload syndrome in that much has been written but little learned, and as Ó Direáin states;
“Adding to the students' frustration, perhaps, is the fact that reference materials on the grammar though often quite comprehensive in their treatment of initial mutations, often present the student with ad hoc lists of rules for initial mutations and of the lexical and grammatical items which trigger the operation of the rules.”

The system.
For the Manx system the rules for aspiration of letters is presented in the following way;

Several tired children howling
Big muddy van
Car key chain
Dark giant ghost
Poor photograph
Quiet whistle
Jolly youth
Fox ox

The students are required to:-

• Recall the phrase.
  
• Note the initial consonant(s).
  
• Know that the last word shows the letter changes of all previous words.
  

S, T, ÇH - H
C, K - CH
D, G - GH
P - PH
QU - WH
B, M - V
J - Y
F -

* This is not a comprehensive list of aspiration changes sh, sl, sn, str being omissions but it is more than sufficient to enable learners to master most circumstances of Manx mutation in the early stages.

“I believe that through such an approach complex information can be presented to adult learners of Irish in a relatively comprehensible and comprehensive way which might aid them not only in internalizing the rules of initial mutation but also in applying those rules in the appropriate grammatical contexts.” Ó Direáin

For students knowing firstly how to aspirate and then applying the knowledge of aspiration is necessarily a gradual process, but can be visualised below as being of two types, One - Un and Two - Daa. Type one having no changes for the dentals.

* These do not mutate in Type 1    [ Just, Don't, Take, Çhanges ]

Nasalisation
Moving on to nasalisation a similar system of of mnemonics has proved to be useful.

Type 3 nasalisation

Farmer > Vet
Teacher > Doctor > Nurse
Painter > Baker > Mechanic
ÇHief > Judge > New York
Crown, King, Queen > Governor > New Guinea

Verbs

Knowledge of nasalisation is required for the operation of the verbal system and again may be visualised in the table below. It is convenient for learners of the system to regard types 1 and type 2 as belonging to group A for aspiration, and nasalisation as being of type N and then to visualise the following chart. Initial vowels take the prefix indicated.

Types A and N

It is interesting to note the findings of recent work done on the learning of the different forms of mutation. Is this result true for mutation in languages other than Irish?
“A preliminary analysis of our results suggests that in general, lenited sounds (voicing change of the voiceless consonants) are more easily recognised than eclipsed sounds (nasalization).”
Sheila Scott/Harold Kenny

Conclusion
It is clear that any amount of mnemonics and visual clues are no substitute for actual conversation and the natural process of language acquisition. However, in languages such as Manx where there is not, as yet, a sufficient pool of speakers such as those that can be found in Gaeltacht areas, we must try our best to assist the learner by every means possible. Is this then a solution to the problems of learning initial letter mutation? In a word, no! But it is perhaps a useful tool to assist learners in the daunting task they set themselves whilst travelling the long and tortuous road to fluency

References

1 Sheila Scott/Harold Kenny, “If We Drill Them, Will They Learn Them?”
Conference paper NAACLT 2000, Limerick .
2 Séamas Ó Direáin, “Teaching the Initial Mutations in Modern Irish.”
Conference paper NAACLT 2000, Limerick .
3 George Broderick, “Language Decline and Language Revival in the Isle of Man.”
Ned Maddrell Memorial Lecture Douglas 1996

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