Is it time for a Manx Language Act?

Today's guest blog was written by Dr Christopher Lewin, Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral research fellow, Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh. If you want to know more, Dr Lewin will be hosting an event at the iMuseum on 5 May between 6-8 pm as part of the Blein ny Gaelgey (Year of Manx). You can find out more here.

The Manx language is one of the most important markers of Manx national identity, underpinning much of our culture, music and place-names, and linking us to our Celtic neighbours. The revival of Manx from near-extinction is rightly seen as a major achievement which has attracted worldwide attention to the Isle of Man and has been an inspiration to many other minority language communities.

Alongside and in response to committed grassroots activism, the last forty years has seen an increasing institutionalisation of state support for the language, especially in the fields of education, culture and heritage, and broadcasting, as well as in bilingual signage and branding across public sector bodies.

Key milestones include:

• the 1985 Tynwald Select Committee Report on the Greater Use of Manx Gaelic, which signalled a change in official attitudes to the language and led to bilingual signage and established the Coonceil ny Gaelgey translation committee;

• the introduction of Manx as an optional school subject in 1992, taught by a team of peripatetic teachers (the Manx Language Service), with statutory recognition from 2001;

• statutory requirements for the use of Manx in broadcasting in 1993; 

• the establishment of Manx-medium primary education in 2001 (now Bunscoill Ghaelgagh in St John’s, with some secondary classes at QEII in Peel);

• recognition of Manx under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2003, with application of the more stringent Part III requirements in 2020;

• establishment in 2015 of the inter-agency Jeebin Manx Language Network, which brings together professional language organizations and has overseen two Manx Language Strategies, with support from the Department of Education, Sport and Culture and Culture Vannin.

In recent years there has been greater engagement with international peers through the European Charter process and the British–Irish Council, strengthening the perception of language revitalisation as a legitimate, fully-fledged area of public policy, in which continuing development and improvement can and should be expected, with attention to international best practice.

However, in certain respects Manx language policy has arguably stagnated and fallen behind where we might expect it to be. 

While there has been some consolidation, in broad terms the place of Manx in (non-immersion) education has changed little since the 1990s and 2000s. As a subject, the language remains an optional part of the curriculum, and overall contact hours are low (30 minutes a week over two terms out of three in the last three years of primary school). This means that, outside the Bunscoill, relatively few pupils learn the language to a high level – which is not to say the classes aren’t important in terms of fostering goodwill, awareness, and a positive Manx identity, as well as opening doors to future learning.

There are ongoing long-term discussions about the possibility of a second Manx-medium school, but this is unlikely to happen any time soon, and in the meantime there is a significant geographical inequity – it simply isn’t feasible for many families to send their children to St John’s or QE2 if they don’t live nearby. 

As for preschool provision, from a high of four Manx-medium nurseries operated by Mooinjer Veggey earlier this century, only one is now left, also in St John’s. Wider structural and logistical issues in the preschool sector are primarily responsible for this reversal of fortunes, rather than any lack of commitment on the part of the provider or parents. Nonetheless, is especially concerning given the well-known importance and advantages of language learning in early childhood, and the role preschool provision plays as a gateway for the Bunscoill. 

Turning to adult learning opportunities, the main provider is Culture Vannin (the Manx Heritage Foundation), which has one full-time employee dedicated to language affairs, the Manx language development officer (Yn Greinneyder ‘the encourager’), as well as a team of part-time tutors. Although Culture Vannin does stirling work, clearly this provision is relatively limited in the numbers it can reach. Moreover, the demographics of Manx classes tend to skew towards retired people who can more easily access classes, rather than working-age adults and parents. There is at present no higher or tertiary-level tuition or qualifications in Manx available in the island.

Considerably greater investment in learning opportunities for adults – as well as Manx-medium activities and opportunities for young people – will clearly be essential if Manx speakers of working age are going to be available for recruitment to teaching and other roles in the future. A similar point was made in a Council of Europe monitoring report on implementation of the European Charter in 2024 which noted that a lack of higher education provision for Manx ‘seriously hampers the availability of future teachers and the survival of Manx Gaelic medium education in a [sic] long run’.

There is also a lack of support for other crucial fields, including language research and resource development (e.g. creation of new dictionaries, digital resources etc.), beyond small grants from Culture Vannin and what Manx teachers can find time to do alongside their main duties, or volunteers can do in their spare time. 

The fact that the Isle of Man has a very limited tertiary education sector and no local research institutes (since funding was pulled from the Centre for Manx Studies in 2015) intensifies this problem, meaning that researchers are reliant on UK, Irish or European funders and academic institutions, whose priorities may not align closely with Manx needs. One of the results of this is that there has been very little detailed expert assessment of existing Manx language policy provision, making it difficult to plan future developments.

None of the above should be read as any reflection on the hard work and commitment of the institutions and invididuals concerned, who do their best with the limited time and resources at their disposal. The issues are structural, and the commonalities are a lack of sufficient public investment and strategic planning. In producing the current Manx Language Strategy, the Jeebin organizations have done their best to address the second issue in terms of making the best use of existing resources and structure, but they don’t have the scope, power or mandate to make the deeper structural changes which need to come from a higher level of government.

Of course, it may be difficult to make the case for additional public spending in the current economic climate, but the reality is there is no getting away from the need for greater resource if we are to maintain what we have so far, let alone grow the language for the future. (It should be considered that expenditure on the language is always likely to remain considerably lower than the costs of maintaining other national assets with much greater maintenance and staffing requirements such as museums and national monuments, the heritage railways, and the natural environment.)

Although the legally non-binding 1985 Tynwald resolution and the European Charter are often appealed to as giving Manx quasi-official status, the language in fact has very little legal protection. While Ireland, Scotland and Wales have each introduced two or more dedicated pieces of language legislation since the 1990s, there has been no corresponding push to introduce a Manx Language Act, and existing mentions of the language in the statute book are few and far between, and mostly quite vague and undemanding.

In part this may reflect Manx political culture and our status, where direct engagement with a relevant minister or civil servant on an issue-by-issue may be seen as more effective than formalised policy frameworks. There may also be a fear in some quarters of faceless bureaucrats taking away control of the language from the grassroots – perhaps understandable given the official apathy, if not outright hostility, faced by the language until relatively recently.

Nevertheless, after four decades where language policy has been implemented on a fairly informal, ad hoc basis – reliant on continued political goodwill of individual politicians and policymakers with little statutory underpinning, and with relatively little overall strategic planning – it is surely now time to ask whether the language and its speakers should be given more robust legislative protection, in line with other jurisdictions.

A Manx Language Act could include, among other things:

• a statutory Manx language agency with specific responsibilities and functions (like Scotland’s Bòrd na Gàidhlig); 

• a statutory national language strategy with measurable, resourced targets to ensure the language communities grows and flourishes, sitting at a higher level of government than the current inter-agency Manx Language Strategy; 

• clearer duties and responsibilities in respect of the language across government departments and agencies, perhaps through institutional language plans or language standards, thus spreading the load of promoting the language, and relieving some of the pressure on the language institutions and the grassroots; 

• clarification of Manx speakers’ rights in using the language in official contexts;

• expansion of the place of the language in the educational curriculum in both the English-medium and Manx-medium sectors.

A language act might not be the only approach to addressing some of the issues the language community faces, but it is certainly an option worth considering. It is worth quoting at length the Council of Europe experts’ recommendations on legal protection of Manx and some of the other languages covered in the 2024 report:

Legal provisions protecting these languages or foreseeing their use in the public domain, alongside more and dedicated funding, and a structured approach to language development are required for ensuring the long-term development of regional or minority languages for raising their prestige and visibility. Language strategies should set clear and realistic targets with measurable indicators, based on the specific context of each language and the needs and wishes of speakers. […] The lack of statutory bodies dealing with Cornish, Scots, Manx Gaelic and Ulster Scots, alongside the lack of official status, constitutes yet another barrier hampering the adequate development of these languages. […] In the case of Manx Gaelic, the additional commitments undertaken by the authorities of the Isle of Man to apply Part III of the Charter to it, will require additional investment in the language.

In any event, as we celebrate 2026 as Year of the Manx Language, and look towards the start of a new Tynwald term in the autumn, it is to be hoped that politicians and policymakers will start to give more attention to the Manx language as a serious policy area in need of significant reform and development, rather than simply as an occasional PR opportunity. Manx speakers and organisations, in turn shouldn’t shy away from demanding the progress they deserve, and to which they are entitled under the international legal instruments to which we have signed up.