R2 Nouns

Let’s have a bird’s eye view of nouns in Manx first of all.

In English, we refer to things as ‘it’ with very few exceptions. One of these is often the word (noun) ‘boat’, which is thought of as ‘she’ (feminine). People talk of ‘boarding her’ rather than ‘boarding it’ when they are talking about going on to a boat. So, you can think of the English noun ‘boat’ as being feminine.

Manx nouns are either masculine or feminine. There has been a tendency for all Manx nouns to be treated as masculine.

‘The’ in Manx is ‘yn’ or ‘y’ if we’re referring to one thing, etc., and ‘ny’ if we’re talking about more than one thing. That is, the singular form of ‘the’ is ‘yn’ or ‘y’ and the plural form is ‘ny’.

In English, it’s usually easy to make the plurals of nouns - just add ‘s’:
Singular: ‘car’ - Plural ‘cars’.
But sometimes we can’t do this:
Singular: ‘man’ - Plural - ‘men’.

In Manx, there is a bigger range of making plurals of nouns than in English. THe commonest way to make a plural noun in Manx. is to add ‘-yn’.

Manx has moved towards just one case: the nominative-accusative. To try and explain what we mean by ‘nominative’ and accusative’, let’s look at examples in English.
In the sentence ‘The man fed the dog’, ‘man’ is in the nominative case (the man is carrying out the action) and ‘dog’ is in the accusative case (the dog’s on the receiving end). English is a nice, easy language in this respect, so the nouns ‘man’ and ‘dog’ don’t change much.
If we have something like ‘the man’s dog’, ‘man’s’ is in the genitive case.
And if we had ‘the dog’s dinner’, ‘dog’s’ is in the genitive. We could also write these expressions as ‘the dog of the man’ and ‘the dinner of the dog’ (which is how they appear in Gaelic), but it doesn’t sound very English.

The farther we go back in history, the more Manx resembles Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Way back, almost all Manx nouns would have had special genitive forms (‘of’ forms). Some Manx nouns kept their special genitive forms. For example, the Manx noun ‘moir’ (‘mother’) has the genitive form ‘mayrey’ meaning ‘of mother’. An example of ‘mayrey’ in action is the set phrase:

çhengey ny mayrey = the tongue of the mother (the mother tongue)

In later Manx, the genitive case was hardly ever used, except for set phrases.
The strongest survival of the genitive has been as adjectives.


Masculine and Feminine Nouns - a question of gender

Manx has moved away from Common Gaelic as regards gender of nouns to the extent that there is significant uncertainty as to whether certain nouns are masculine or feminine. The tendency has been to treat more and more nouns as masculine.

It is difficult to give firm guidance as to gender of nouns. But we can make say this:

Nouns denoting males are masculine, those denoting females are feminine.
Nouns denoting personal agents and having such endings as -eyr, -oon, -oor,are masculine.
Nouns ending in -an, -ane tend to be masculine.
Nouns ending in -ag, -age are usually feminine.
Nouns ending in -id, -aght tend to be feminine.

We get letter changes (called ‘lenition’ or ‘aspiration’) in feminine singular nouns after ‘the’ article in the nominative-accusative (see Mutations):
ben - woman: yn ven - the woman

You don’t get lenition in masculine singular nouns after ‘the’ (the article) in the nominative-accusative:
bainney - milk: yn bainney/y bainney - the milk

You get lenition in masculine singular nouns after the article in the genitive:
bainney - milk: blass yn vainney/blass y vainney - the taste of the milk


In what we might call ‘Classical Manx’, the article for feminine singular nouns in the genitive is ny; there is no lenition:
moain - peat/turf (nominative-accusative)
moaney - of peat/turf (genitive)
Cronk ny Moaney - The Hill of the Peat

There has been a marked tendency in later Manx to treat all nouns as masculine when using the genitive case (while dropping separate genitive forms).
Cronk ny Moaney (Cronk ny Mona) is familiar as a place name. In later Manx, The Hill of the Peat would have been Cronk y Voain.

The plural article is ny for all nouns, both for the nominative-accusative and for the genitive: there are no mutations (letter changes):
ny deiney - the men
ny mraane- the women
argid ny deiney - the money of the men/the men’s money
argid ny mraane - the money of the women/the women’s money


Plurals of Nouns

There is a variety of ways of forming plurals.

The commonest way to form plurals is by adding -yn to the singular:
lioar - book: lioaryn - books

Nouns ending in -agh often form the plural by changing this to -ee:
Manninagh - Manx person: Manninee - Manx people

Some nouns ending in -agh change this to -eeyn:
liargagh - down-slope: liargeeyn - down-slopes

One class of nouns forms plurals by adding -aghyn to the singular:
çheer - country: çheeraghyn - countries

Some plurals end in -çhyn/-jyn/-tyn:
balley - town: baljyn - towns

Note the tendency towards -yn as the ultimate plural ending in the three last cases.

Plurals are formed for some nouns (mainly monosyllables) by changing the vowel:
cronk - hill: crink - hills

Other nouns are irregular:
ben - woman: mraane - women


Genitives of Nouns

The following list indicates some ways in which genitive singulars were formed:

Nominative-accusative (singular) Genitive singular

mullagh -summit mullee
caggey - war caggee
creg - rock creggey
baase - death baaish
keyrrey - sheep keyrragh

Genitive plurals having a special form are extremely rare and occur only in some place names and set phrases, for example:
giat ny geyrragh - the gate of the sheep (plural)
In this case, the genitive plural was the same as the genitive singular, except that nasalisation took place in the plural (c to g).