On the Isle of Man, people still speak a Gaelic language called Manx, or Gaelg. That might not sound unusual, except that Manx was once officially classified as dead.
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Manx is a Goidelic Celtic language, closely related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and was the everyday language of the island for over a thousand years. From the 18th century, English took over as the language of trade and administration, and speaking Manx became associated with poverty. By the early 20th century, only a handful of elderly islanders still spoke it as their first language.
Ned Maddrell, a fisherman from Cregneash born in 1877, became known as the last person to learn Manx as a child in a Manx-speaking household. Researchers recorded him and others before it was too late, first the Irish Folklore Commission in 1948, then scholar Brian Stowell in the 1960s. When Maddrell died in December 1974, aged 97, the direct chain between generations of speakers came to an end.
In February 2009, UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger formally declared Manx extinct. Many islanders were furious. Pupils at Bunscoill Ghaelgagh, a primary school teaching mainly in Manx, wrote to UNESCO themselves, asking a simple question: if their language was extinct, what language were they writing in? The island’s Chief Minister also objected. UNESCO agreed and changed the classification to “critically endangered” instead.
The language has kept growing since. According to the island’s 2021 census, over 2,200 residents reported some knowledge of Manx. The first Manx Language Strategy, published in 2017, set out a five-year plan covering schools and broadcasting; a second, more ambitious strategy has now followed, aiming to more than double the number of speakers and learners to 5,000.
Today, Manx words appear on shopfronts, road signs, and the island’s own name, Ellan Vannin. A language declared dead in official records was brought back by a small, determined community who simply refused to agree.