Part 4.2 Notes about Part 4.1
Ayrn 4.2 Notyn mychione Ayrn 4.1

Make it soft!
Consonants in the middle of Manx words are often softened in speech, which may puzzle you if you’re relying on the spelling. You can sometimes here this trend in people speaking English with a Manx accent - ‘paper’ comes out like ‘paber’.
Change the ‘e’ to ‘y’ and we get the Manx word for ‘paper’: pabyr.

The Manx for ‘a cup’ is cappan, which is pronounced KAVV-an. The double ‘p’ would have first been softened to ‘b’, and then the ‘b’ was softened (when talking) to give a ‘v’ sound.

Another example of this softening of consonants in the middle is found in gobbag, which is ‘dogfish’ in English. This is pronounced GOVV-ag.

There are other examples in Part 4.1:

shickyr (SHIGG-er) = certain
shickyrys (SHIGG-er-iss) = certainty

Combinations ‘ea’ and ‘eay’ again - and ‘ey’ again
We saw previously that some Manx words with ‘ea’ and ‘eay’ in them came from Irish words where these letter combinations are spelled ‘ua’ (like Scottish Gaelic too). Another Gaelic letter combination, ‘ao’, gave us some more Manx words with ‘ea’ and ‘eay’ (and other combinations) in them, for instance:
geay (GEE-a / gay) = wind (Irish and Scottish Gaelic: gaoth)

These ‘ao’ words were (and are) pronounced in about three different ways throughout the Gaelic speaking world, and people will point out that geay can be pronounced differently from the pronounciations given above.

Sometimes the Gaelic ‘ao’ ended up as ‘ey’ in Manx, which for these words only is often pronounced like the long ‘uh’ or ‘ur’ sound in Standard English ‘further’ (forget the ‘r’), or like ‘eu’ in French ‘feu’. Here are a couple of examples:
keyrrey (KEER-a / KUR-a) = a sheep
seyr (seer / sur) = free

Don’t worry about it! Pick the simplest pronunciation which makes you understood and stick to it.


goll = going: dy gholl = to go

Being technical, ‘going’ is a verbal noun and ‘to go’ is an infinitive. As always, giving things names doesn’t explain anything, but it’s useful to have the names.

In Manx, to get an infinitive and put dy (sometimes y) in front of it. A slight snag is you have to alter (mutate) the first letter of the verbal noun, following rules you’ll find elsewhere. Here are some more examples:

Verbal noun Infinitive
lhie = lying (down) dy lhie = to lie down (Can’t change letter ‘l’!)
fuirraghtyn = waiting dy ‘uirraghtyn = to wait
çheet = coming dy heet = to come
------------------------ dy ve = to be
cadley = sleeping dy chadley = to sleep

‘With’
Manx has a couple of words meaning ‘with’: lesh and marish.
Definitely, marish means ‘in company with’, but, sometimes, lesh is used in this sense as well. If we’re hitting someone with something, we use lesh, never marish:

Ealee and Juan are going with Kirree = Ta Ealee as Juan goll marish Kirree.
It was done with a stone = V’eh jeant lesh clagh.

See how useful these words are:

Ealee is coming with-me = Ta Ealee çheet marym.
Is Kirree going with-you? = Vel Kirree goll mayrt?
No, she’s going with-him = Cha nel, t’ee goll marish.
Onnee is walking with-her = Ta Onnee shooyl maree.
Çhalse went walking with-us = Ren Çhalse goll shooyl marin.
Did Çhalse go walking with-you? = Ren Çhalse goll shooyl meriu?
No, he went walking with-them = Cha ren, ren eh goll shooyl maroo.

Notice how marish means ‘with-him’ as well as just ‘with’ - it means ‘with-it’ as well. You get a similar thing with all the combinations of prepositions (words like ‘with’) with personal pronouns (words like ‘him’) - the masculine form means three things:
lesh = with, with-him, with-it.

To show ownership, we use lesh:
The book is his = He owns the books = S’lhiam yn lioar (‘Is with-me the book’)
There’s another way of saying ‘The book is his’ where we tend to use the emphatic (stressed) form of ‘with-him’:
The book is his = He owns the book = Ta’n lioar leshyn (‘The book is with-him’)

Here are some more examples:

The house is mine = I own the house = Ta’n thie lhiams (‘The house is with-me’)
The dog is yours = Ta’n moddey lhiats.
Is the cat hers? = Vel y kayt lheeish? No, it’s ours = Cha nel, t’eh lhienyn.
You own the house = Ta’n thie lhiuish.
Is the house theirs? = Vel y thie lhieusyn? Yes = Ta.

Just in case you thought these are the basic (non-emphatic) forms of ‘with-X’, here’s the full story in mind-numbing detail:

lhiam = with-me lhiams = with-me
lhiat = with-you lhiats = with-you
lesh = with him/it leshyn = with him/it
lhee = with her/it lheeish = with her/it
lhien = with us lhienyn = with us
lhiu = with you lhiuish = with you
lhieu = with them lhieusyn = with them

The commonest way in Manx to make nouns plural (more than one of anything) is to add -yn to the singular:
thie = a house thieyn = houses

This doesn’t work if the noun ends in -ey (or with some other endings).
The usual plural is in -aghyn if the noun ends in -ey:
meeiley = a mile meeilaghyn = miles

All nouns stay in the singular after daa (= ‘two’) and you get letter changes:
thie = a house daa hie = two houses

Nouns like ‘pound’, ‘day’, ‘minute’ are called nouns of measure. In Manx, you can leave these in the singular after numbers:
tree laa = three days
tree kilomeadar jeig = thirteen kilometres