A familiar sound when I was growing up was the wonderful range of sayings uttered by my grandmother, more often when we were kicking up a fuss about something or other.
‘What are you grinning about now? Stop your scrissing.’
These exhortations and many more like them would emanate from the kitchen over the noise we would be making.
Many years later, I felt a certain sense of loss when my now six-year-old daughter held up a book and pronounced it ‘buk’, rather than with the phonetic ‘oo’ sound, which to me was a common sound to be heard not so long ago.
I thought that right there I had a small example of the passing, or the moving on, of an element of ‘Manx-ness’. And from the movement of a couple of generations, the language had altered enough for the words, phrases and idioms spoken by my grandmother’s generation to apparently fall by the wayside. These observations are not isolated to me. It is obvious to a lot of people that the use of language is changing.
But does that mean that the wonderful earthy dialect, unique to the Isle of Ma and thought of as a significant part of its identity, is dying out altogether?
Coincidentally, two different people have embarked on a path to examine the health of Manx dialec in the 21st century, one aiming to study it (covered in a story published here on iomtoday yesterday), and one aiming to help preserve it, detailed below.
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The importance of Manx dialect is firm in the mind of one particular Manxman.
John ‘Dog’ Callister, a well-known and highly-regarded figure within Manx culture, has recently emerged as an impassioned champion of Manx dialect.
To him, dialect is the living, breathing language of the Manx landscape, where the soul of the hard-working Manx farmer, fisherman and housewife remained rooted to the ground on which they were born, and rarely experienced outside interference.
And he believes that to lose such unique aspects of language would be to lose an important connection with our roots as an island community.
‘Dialect, ostensibly, is made from Gaelic words, although they’re not all gaelic words,’ he said, in his unmistakable thick Manx accent.
‘It’s a way of talking that identifies us as Manx.’
‘A classic example is that in Manx Gaelic, you don’t say “you have something”, you say that there is something at you. “Ta glaishtan noa ayd” – there is a new car at you.
‘In Manx dialect, you would hear it all the time, but said in English. There are also words that aren’t Gaelic words, but words that have been altered to suit, such as putting -ing on the ends of words, or putting an “s” on the end of words, which is something you don’t do in Gaelic.
‘But there are hundreds. “Skeet” is another. People go for a skeet, ask “what’s the skeet?” - what’s the news, what’s going on.
‘I said to a friend that someone was grinning about something. He asked what they were smiling about. I said they were annoyed!
Grinning means to be cross at something. Grinning, whining, whinging. The Scots call it “greeting”.’
He, together with a group of like-minded Manx people, has created the Manx Dialect Society, with the aim of preserving and recording existing dialectal Manx, to make sure the phrases, sayings, idioms and words are not lost for future generations.
They held their first meeting earlier this month at the Tynwald Inn, St John’s, and, according to John: ‘A good scutch of people turned up – nearly 50.’
One of the reasons for the current debate on the future of Manx dialect is an appearance he made on Manx Radio’s discussion show ‘Women Today’, in which he vociferously defended the use and the pronunciation of Manx words, and the use of dialect, and memorably took the then-presenter Kate Holland to task over her pronunciation over the name ‘Mooragh’.
The show attracted the most response over social media they have ever received.
‘Mor-ag park,’ he said, with a shake of his head. ‘It’s not “Mor-ag”, it’s “Moor-agh”, and it’s easy to get it right.
‘If you go to America, Spain, France or wherever, you wouldn’t dare pronounce a name incorrectly like that, and if you are confronted with a word, and you are not sure, you look it up.
‘When people are confronted with something in Manx, they tend to just cobble it.’
However, given the mass of ‘outside’ influences to language use in the island, which is everything from the modern transatlantic media, to the number of families who either move here or who grow up without a Manx background, it is thought of by some that it is inevitable that the dialect will eventually die out.
Adrian Cain, Manx language officer for Culture Vannin picks up the point.
‘I don’t how much you can protect, really,’ he said. ‘In Culture Vannin, we try to ensure people know about culture and identity. I think you just need to inform people about those traditional quirks and idioms. Whether they go on being used, I don’t know.
‘Because accents and dialect are so distinctive, it would be very difficult to teach people and to nurture it, and if you did try to, it would seem really forced and unnatural to teach kids to say “put a sight on” and to roll their Rs and stuff like that.’
He added: ‘It’s not just the Isle of Man that this is an issue with though. It is often said in England that accents are dying out. It is all part of that spreading out and generalising of languages.’
One thing that is generally acknowledged is that the existence of Manx dialect has meant that the knowledge of Manx Gaelic has lived on long after the last of the native Manx speakers died.
As John said, it is a direct Manx translation to say ‘there is something at you’, or to ‘put a sight on somebody’, which is the literal translation of ‘cur shilley er’, meaning to visit someone.
The amount of Gaelic words which exist in common usage is quite eye-opening, such as ‘skeet’, ‘snig’, ‘gob’ and so on.
‘Dialect does help as a way into Manx Gaelic,’ said Adrian. ‘I think a lot of people who come from a Manx background who start learning Manx always get surprised by the idioms within Manx. And they realise that it’s things that their parents or their grandparents said.
‘I don’t know if it helps, but people definitely find it interesting to find those things out.’
John said: ‘Language and dialect do go hand in hand. I think if you get someone interested in dialect and they start using certain words, it may trigger an interest in Gaelic. It might be a stepping stone to Manx Gaelic, and I hope it would be.’
For those interested in the Manx Dialect Society, the next meeting will be at the Tynwald Inn on April 9th. For more information, contact John Dog Callister on 878509 and leave a message or email dog@iom.com
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List of Gaelic words still used in Manx dialect
Skeet meaning the news, what’s on, gossip, to have a look
Toot meaning someone who acts childishly
Smook meaning smoke
Gob mouth
Cowl cold
Snig the button to lock the door
Brock to mess something up
Howl to hold something
Yessir/fella possibly derived from ‘dooinney’, meaning ‘Man’
Kithag Someone who is left handed
Scutch a number, or an amount of something