Classification and Dialects
Manx is one of the three descendants of Old Irish (via Middle Irish and early Modern Gaelic), and is closely related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It shares a number of developments in phonology, vocabulary and grammar with Irish and Scottish Gaelic (in some cases only with dialects of these), but also shows a number of unique changes. There are two dialects of Manx, Northern Manx and Southern Manx.
Manx shares with Scottish Gaelic the partial loss of contrastive palatalisation of labial consonants; thus while in Irish the velarised consonants /pˠ bˠ fˠ w mˠ/ contrast phonemically with palatalised /pʲ bʲ fʲ vʲ mʲ/, in Scottish Gaelic and Manx, the phonemic contrast has been lost to some extent. A consequence of this phonemic merger is that Middle Irish unstressed word-final (spelled -(a)ibh, -(a)imh in Irish and Gaelic) has merged with (-(e)abh, -(e)amh) in Manx; both have become, spelled -oo or -u(e). Examples include shassoo ("to stand"; Irish seasamh), credjue ("religion"; Irish creideamh), nealloo ("fainting"; Early Modern Irish (i) néalaibh, lit. in clouds), and erriu ("on you (plural)"; Irish oraibh). However, Manx is further advanced in this than is Scottish, where the verb ending -ibh second person plural is consistently, as it is in the second plural pronoun sibh (shiu in Manx).
Like western and northern dialects of Irish (cf. Irish phonology) and most dialects of Scottish Gaelic, Manx has changed the historical consonant clusters /kn ɡn mn tn/ to /kr ɡr mr tr/. For example, Middle Irish cnáid ("mockery") and mná ("women") have become craid and mraane respectively in Manx. The affrication of to is also common to Manx, northern Irish, and Scottish Gaelic.
Also like northern and western dialects of Irish, as well as like southern dialects of Scottish Gaelic (e.g. Arran, Kintyre), the unstressed word-final syllable of Middle Irish (spelled -(a)idh and -(a)igh) has developed to in Manx, where it is spelled -ee, as in kionnee ("buy"; cf. Irish ceannaigh) and cullee ("apparatus"; cf. Gaelic culaidh).
Another property Manx shares with Ulster Irish and some dialects of Scottish Gaelic is that /a/ rather than /ə/ appears in unstressed syllables before /x/ (in Manx spelling, agh), for example jeeragh ("straight") (Irish díreach), cooinaghtyn ("to remember") (Gaelic cuimhneachd).
Similarly to Munster Irish, historical bh and mh (nasalised ) have been lost in the middle or at the end of a word in Manx either with compensatory lengthening or vocalisation as u resulting in diphthongisation with the preceding vowel. For example, Manx geurey ("winter"), and sleityn ("mountains") correspond to Irish geimhreadh and sléibhte (Southern Irish dialect spelling and pronunciation gíre and sléte ). Another similarity to Munster Irish is the development of the Old Irish diphthongs before velarised consonants (spelled ao in Irish and Scottish Gaelic) to in many words, as in seyr ("carpenter") and keyl ("narrow") (spelled saor and caol in Irish and Scottish, and pronounced virtually the same in Munster).
Like southern and western varieties of Irish and northern varieties of Scottish Gaelic, but unlike the geographically closer varieties of Ulster Irish and Arran and Kintyre Gaelic, Manx shows vowel lengthening or diphthongisation before the Old Irish fortis and lenis sonorants. For example, cloan ("children"), dhone ("brown"), eeym ("butter") correspond to Irish/Scottish Gaelic clann, donn, and im respectively, which have long vowels or diphthongs in western and southern Irish and in the Scottish Gaelic dialects of the Outer Hebrides and Skye, thus western Irish, Southern Irish/Northern Scottish, /, /), but short vowels and 'long' consonants in northern Irish, Arran, and Kintyre, and .
Another similarity with southern Irish is the treatment of Middle Irish word-final unstressed, spelled -(e)adh in Irish and Scottish Gaelic. In nouns (including verbal nouns), this became in Manx, as it did in southern Irish, e.g. caggey ("war"), moylley ("to praise") ; cf. Irish cogadh and moladh, pronounced and in southern Irish. In finite verb forms before full nouns (as opposed to pronouns) became in Manx, as in southern Irish, e.g. voyllagh ("would praise"), cf. Irish mholfadh, pronounced in southern Irish.
Linguistic analysis of the last few dozen native speakers reveals a number of dialectal differences between the northern and the southern parts of the island. Northern Manx is reflected by speakers from towns and villages from Maughold in the northeast of the island to Peel on the west coast. Southern Manx is used by speakers from the Sheading of Rushen.
In Southern Manx, older á and in some cases ó have become . In Northern Manx the same happens, but á sometimes remains as well. For example, laa ("day", cf. Irish lá) is in the south but or in the north. Old ó is always in both dialects, e.g. aeg ("young", cf. Irish óg) is in both dialects.
In Northern Manx, older (e)a before nn in the same syllable is diphthongised, while in Southern Manx it is lengthened but remains a monophthong. For example, kione ("head", cf. Irish ceann) is in the north but in the south.
In both dialects of Manx, words with ua and in some cases ao in Irish and Scottish are spelled with eay in Manx. In Northern Manx, this sound is, while in Southern Manx it is, or . For example, geay ("wind", cf. Irish gaoth) is in the north and in the south, while geayl ("coal", cf. Irish gual) is in the north and, or in the south.
In both the north and the south, there is a tendency to insert a short sound before a word-final in monosyllabic words, as in for slane ("whole") and for ben ("woman"). This phenomenon is known as pre-occlusion. In Southern Manx, however, there is also pre-occlusion of before and of before, as in for shooyl ("walking") and for lhong ("ship"). These forms are generally pronounced without pre-occlusion in the north. Preocclusion of before, on the other hand, is more common in the north, as in trome ("heavy"), which is in the north but or in the south. This feature is also found in Cornish.
Southern Manx tends to lose word-initial before, while Northern Manx usually preserves it, e.g. glion ("glen") is in the north and in the south, and glioon ("knee") is in the north and in the south.
Read more about this topic: Manx Language