The Manx language was the subject of one of the many seminars and presentations given at the International Polyglot Gathering, held this year in Teresin in Poland.

The Polyglot Gathering brings together people who speak multiple languages, teach languages or who just enjoy linguistics and learning languages in general and is attended by people from all over the world.

The presentation about Manx was given by Jeffrey Micher, an American linguist and polyglot from Pittsburgh.

He started learning Manx online about a year ago with Manx teacher Paul Rogers, who lives in Peel.

Jeffrey became interested in Manx when he discovered a Manx ancestor in his family tree.

For his talk, he highlighted the history of the decline and revival of Manx and aimed to inspire other polyglots to take up learning an endangered language such as Manx.

Jeffrey explained some of the interesting features of the often-forgotten sister language of Irish and Scottish Gaelic – the grammar, pronunciation, initial mutation of consonants, and how it relates to other Indo-European languages.

Paul explained: ‘Through his ongoing promotion for Manx, Jeffrey hopes to convince some of the language-lovers to try their hand at learning Manx, one of the smallest Celtic languages, and not only gain an interesting new language but help increase the total number of Manx speakers, wherever they may be, around the world.’

As well as Manx, Jeffrey can speak English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Slovak and little bits of many other languages.

He has an MA in linguistics and an MS in language technologies.