It’s a little while since I kept people up to date with what’s being going on in the world of Manx Gaelic so I thought I’d wish everyone a quick Nollick Ghennal as Blein vie noa as well as provide a little update on recent events.
We had a film crew from America with us last week. They were here to produce a short documentary for Viki.com about Manx and how it’s a successful example of language revitalisation and, in particular, they were interested in how we use technology to promote and support the language. Check out the following short interview between myself and David Harrison, the linguist heading the team, here. This is quite a high-profile piece and I’ll keep you up-to-date with developments.
Both our video-a-day project and 1000 Manx words in a year challenge are coming to an end soon. They have been hard work but we’ve received some good feedback with them both. Gura mie eu. We never quite made a 1000 words but I suppose that wasn’t really the point! We’ve still a few lessons to come in our 100 episode podcast for the year too!
Next year will hopefully see the publication of a new course: Manx for Busy People which I hope will be a good introduction to the language. We also aim to put in place over the next year or two a systematic programme for adults wishing to learn some Gaelg.
We’ve recently released on our You-tube channel (now with over 500 videos) a new series called Taggloo: Conversational Manx which we believe will be a really useful tool for intermediate and advanced learners. We’ve a great deal more to come on the film front next year too!
We’ve published a new Novella in Manx this year: Slane Lhiat, Vabban which was translated by Brian Stowell from the highly successful crime book, Bye,Bye Baby by Alan Guthrie. Two new books have just been finished and should be available soon: Murder on the Orient Express translated by Joan Caine and a bilingual edition of some of the stories from the classic by Nigel Kneale: Tomato Cain and other stories.This has been supported through Island of Culture funding and the book (which if you haven’t read you must) should make available to a wider audience the formative work of the author of Quatermass.
Finally, I’d just like to say that we are all very sad to hear of the passing of our board member at Culture Vannin and Knox champion, Liam O’Neill. Our thoughts are with his family.
Nollick Ghennal from us all at Culture Vannin.
Check out our Website and promotional video and remember:
Manx Culture is for life and not just for Christmas
