Part 1.2 Notes about Part 1.1
Ayrn 1.2 Notyn mychione Ayrn 1.1

Letter ‘y’
Pronounced as in English if it’s the first letter and is followed by a vowel:
feer yesh = very nice
gleashtan Yuan = Juan’s car

Elsewhere, ‘y’ is NOT pronounced as in English but rather like the ‘uh’ sound at the end of Standard English ‘baker’. This is the sound in dys, yn, dty, etc., etc.


Combination ‘ey’
Generally like ‘uh’ (like ‘y’ on its own), but sometimes like ‘yuh’:
fogrey (FOHG-ruh) = a notice
moghrey (MORR-uh) = morning
echey (EGG-uh) = at-him
goltaghey (GOLT-akh-uh) = welcoming

shinney (SHIN-yuh) = older

You have to learn which words have ‘-ey’ pronounced like ‘-yuh’.


Long ‘a’
The Manx long ‘a’ sounds like the first part of the Standard English pronunciation of ‘fair’. It is a LONG vowel! It is sometimes written as just ‘a’ (as in ta), but more often as aa:
shamyr (SHAAM-er) = a room
aalin = beautiful


Combination ‘gh’
In the middle or at the ends of words, this is pronounced like ‘ch’ in Scottish ‘loch’. This is the sound which causes some English speakers to say disapprovingly of any language which has it ‘But it’s a very GUTTURAL language...’

Don’t worry about this - be proud of your ‘gh’ and proclaim your pride by hammering (throating?) out this sound (shown as kh’ in the attempts at English phonetics):

fuirraghtyn (FURR-akht-in) = waiting
tannaghtyn (TANN-akht-in) = staying
jough (JAWKH) = drink



There is no need in this course to bother with too many grammatical terms (‘You never explained anything by just giving it a name’). But it does help to know and understand a few of these terms - like a ‘verb’. Roughly, verbs express actions and states. Some examples of parts of verbs are ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘coming’, ‘stays’.

‘Is’ and ‘are’ are parts of the verb ‘to be’. Look at this example:

Juan is at the airport = Ta Juan ec yn phurt-aer.

Ta can mean ‘is’ or ‘are’ - it comes first, unlike English.

Look at another example:

She is tall and beautiful = T’ee toallee as aalin.

Here, Ta ee (=She is) becomes T’ee. The word for ‘she’ comes AFTER the word for ‘is’.

And another example:

How are you? = Kys t’ou?

Kys..? means ‘How...?’ One of the Manx words for ‘you’ is oo.
So, you’d expect ‘You are’ to be written Ta oo. However, this is written T’ou.

To say things like ‘He’s waiting’, Manx is quite similar to English - but with ‘is’ in a different place:

He’s waiting = T’eh fuirraghtyn.

Here, eh means ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘it’, and fuirraghtyn means ‘waiting’.
Ta eh became T’eh (= He is / It is).

Here are some more examples of what is called the present tense (here and now):

She’s coming = T’ee çheet.
The people are coming = Ta’n sleih çheet.
Juan and Kirree go to Douglas = Ta Juan as Kirree goll dys Doolish.
Kirree is staying = Ta Kirree tannaghtyn.
Kirree is going = Ta Kirree goll.
Ealee comes down = Ta Ealee çheet neose.

Manx has just one form of the present tense, so T’ee çheet in English can be ‘She’s coming’ or ‘She comes’. In the same way, Ta’n sleih çheet can be translated as ‘The people come’ or ‘The people are coming’. And Ta Kirree goll can mean ‘Kirree goes’ or ‘Kirree is going’, and so on.

So, to get the present tense of any verb in Manx, you use the verb ‘to be’ along with the appropriate ‘-ing’ word (the verbal noun):

Juan is waiting = Ta Juan fuirraghtyn.


There’s another way of saying ‘It is’ apart from T’eh. This is She (= It is), which is pronounced ‘shay’.

She can be used to say who somebody is or what something is:

I’m Juan Kelly = She mish Juan Kelly (‘It-is I Juan Kelly’)

Mish is the emphatic form of mee, which means ‘I’ or ‘me’. So mish means ‘I’ or ‘me’. Another way of saying the same thing is:

I’m Juan Kelly = Ta mish Juan Kelly.

The question form of She is Nee...? pronounced ‘n’yay’ and meaning ‘Is it...?

Are you Juan Kelly? = Nee uss Juan Kelly? (‘Is-it you Juan Kelly?’)

Uss is the emphatic form of oo meaning ‘you’.

Like other Celtic languages, Manx does not feel the need for separate words for ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. You answer questions in the affirmative (‘Yes’) or negative (‘No’) using parts of the same verb the questioner used - like that game where you have to avoid saying ‘Yes’ and ‘No’:

Are you Juan Kelly? = Is-it you Juan Kelly? = Nee uss Juan Kelly?
Yes, I’m Juan Kelly = It-is, it-is I Juan Kelly = She, she mish Juan Kelly.


Here is another strong Celtic feature which Manx has: there’s no need for a verb ‘to have’. Instead of ‘Juan has a notice’ we have ‘There is a notice at Juan’:

Juan has a notice = Ta fogrey ec Juan (= ‘There-is a notice at Juan’)

Notice, by the way, that Manx has words for ‘the’ but not for ‘a’ and ‘an’.
Fogrey means ‘notice’ or ‘a notice’.

Echey (pronounced ‘Egg-a’) means ‘at-him’ or ‘at-it’, so:

He has a notice = Ta fogrey echey.
Echey featured in the story as:

..yn ven echey = his wife (=’..the woman at-him’)

Note also: your room = yn çhamyr ayd (‘the room at-you’)

And: She has black hair and brown eyes = Ta folt doo as sooillyn dhone eck (= There-are hair black and eyes brown at-her)

And: You had a long trip = Va turrys liauyr ayd (‘There-was a trip long at-you’)


On grammatical terms again, nouns can be thought of as names for things, living and non-living, abstract and non-abstract. Examples of nouns are: ‘airport’, ‘people’, ‘plane’, ‘morning’, ‘hair’, ‘eyes’, etc., etc.

Adjectives are words we used to describe what things are like. Examples of adjectives are ‘good’, ‘tall’, ‘beautiful’, ‘long’, ‘black’, ‘brown’, etc., etc.

In English, adjectives come before nouns. We say ‘Good morning’ and ‘A long trip’. In Manx, adjectives almost always come AFTER nouns:

Good morning = Moghrey mie.
Black hair and brown eyes = Folt doo as sooillyn dhone.
A long trip = Turrys liauyr.


Manx again shows its Celtic credentials by having letter changes at the beginnings of words. These letter changes are called mutations, which is merely another word for ‘changes’. You can see a few of these changes in the story.

The basic word for ‘airport’ is purt-aer. After ec yn (=at the) this changes:

..at the airport = ..ec yn phurt-aer.

We use mutations to show possession or association:

Juan’s car = Gleashtan Yuan (= The Car of Juan).


If you like something, it’s ‘good with-you’ in Manx:

I like... = S’mie lhiam...(= Is good with-me..)

Would you like a drink? = By vie lhiat jough? (= Would-be good with-you a drink?)