Each month, Ruth Keggin-Gell, the Manx language officer, or yn Greinnedyr, with Culture Vannin catches up with a Manx speaker based off-island, to find out where their journey began.

Manx has seen an upsurge of interest in recent years, on-island and internationally.

This month, it’s the turn of Katie Murphy - a Manx speaker from Ireland.

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m Irish, but I moved to the Isle of Man with my (now) husband in 2017; we lived in the island for two years before moving back to Ireland. I’m a secondary school RE and history teacher.

How did you start learning Manx?

When we first moved to the island, there was a period of time where I was waiting for my police check to come through so that I could begin teaching.

I was already interested in Manx from seeing it all around us on the island on signs; Manx language signage is so important, and can be such a hook into learning Manx.

I thought it would be a good idea to do something in my free time that would connect me to the place and which I was interested in because of its connection to Irish.

Having learnt Irish at school, I jumped straight into learning Manx and did the A level course at University College Isle of Man; I threw myself in at the deep end and bought a lot of books from the Lexicon bookshop to help me along.

I’m still going to Culture Vannin’s Manx classes on Zoom, and recently finished an online course [at UCM] with Rob Teare.

Did you find that your background in Irish helped you when it came to learning Manx?

Definitely. Understanding word order, prepositions and how Gaelic works as a language family really helped, though on the other hand things like vowels in Manx were very different to the Connemara Irish I had learned - that was a bit difficult to begin with.

Has learning Manx changed the way that you see the world?

Learning about Manx, and the success of the language revival, has been really interesting; I’ve since looked at other minority languages around the world and have compared the scene in the island to those places. It really is a ’success story’; people don’t always realise that, and how interesting it is.

Can you tell us some of your top tips for people who want to learn Manx?

If you can attend classes, do; it gets you in touch with the community as well as experts in the Manx language. Secondly, look at the Learn Manx website; you can’t beat it - it’s absolutely fantastic.

In particular, listen to as much as you can in the recordings section to help with pronunciation and to get your ear into the language.

The Say Something in Manx course really helped me as a learner; it gets you saying full sentences and gets you confident - I can’t recommend it enough.

I also love Skeealyn Vannin.

You can listen to all of those recordings on YouTube, and read the transcripts on the iMuseum, and you can learn so much from them.

I make flashcards, too: when I come across a word that I don’t know, I add it to a digital set of flashcards.

You don’t have to be super Manx to learn Manx - anyone can learn it; it’s for everyone.

l You can find out more about Manx at www.learnmanx.com