The Isle of Man: a Celtic Island Nation | Manx Language & Culture

far into the Irish sea Rising above the waves you'll find an island like no other a Celtic Nation with its own language home to 880,000 people existing in its own Universe where the rules are a little different it's not part of the UK or Ireland but it's also not technically an independent nation a peaceful isolated Haven that's been named the safest place in the British [Music] Isles welcome to the aisle of [Music] man 33 M long and 13 wide it draws its name from the Celtic Sea God mananan mle and they say that from its highest point you can see the six kingdoms England Ireland Scotland Wales heav and man steeped in Viking history and largely cut off from the rest of the world for centuries today many of its residents are extremely protective of their Island and are doing whatever they can to preserve another Celtic language and culture that's at risk of Extinction we'd left Northern England behind we're going to the a of man and had returned to Liverpool to catch a ferry that would take us over 100 km into the Irish sea to Douglas the capital of the aisle of man right and left as sh passengers in the rear section of the lower passenger deck evacuate through the after [Music] scapes thank you the first thing we noticed this symbol it's part of the mans's flag and it was everywhere three legs facing different directions it's called the trellion or three legs of man and it makes a bit more sense when combined with the Ms Mot which actually is in Latin not Ms a loose translation is whichever way you throw me I will stand next was the science with strange unfamiliar words accompanying English ones in my other videos even counted Welsh and Cornish well here you'll find another Celtic language mans galic it went extinct in 1974 when the last surviving native speaker passed away but it was revived and in 2015 around 1,800 people or 2% of the population here could speak mans gelic oh Halloween then there was the money the aisle of man has its own currency the M's pound you can spend British money here but you can't spend Ms currency anywhere else there are different rules too some legal like the fact that there's no speed limits outside of towns and Villages here or the Rock Bottom tax rates that have made the aisle of man an Infamous tax Haven for the wealthy and some social you never call the UK the mainland this Island isn't part of the UK the mainland is the Isle of Man what's the reaction here if someone calls uh the UK the mainland it's a no no definitely a no no we the mainland I was fortunate to go to the calf fairly regularly and we used to talk about the mainland all the time but we we go back to the alaman you see we were on the C and we go back to the mainland it's definitely a no no so instead people say a cross I think it's across is sort of the the most common way yeah I'm going across if you say I'm going across you generally mean you're going to the UK adjacent on the radio they see the adj it's another reminder that the aisle of man is its own entity and it joins a list of other lingo here some suggesting a society that's a bit resistant to Outsiders those who weren't born on the aisle of man and moved from across who now make up just over half the population are referred to as covers stopovers or stayovers come overs are anyone who's lived here for less than 10 years after you've been here for between 10 and 30 years you're a stopover and it's only after you've lived on the island for 30 years or more that you're granted the prestigious title of stay over and if you have a problem with the way things are done here as the MS say there's a boat in the morning basically you can leave and beyond all that even the animals here are different these are man cats notice anything different about them they're born without tails more impressive and slightly satanic looking are the MS lockon sheep which grow incredible horns and can have up to six of them [Music] each these animals populate a very unique landscape High Barren Peaks descend into sheltered folds in the hillsides where Lush forests flourish these protected areas are the mans National [Music] Glens got two of the kingdoms in the distance that's England over there and over there is Scotland behind that Headland there so why is the aisle of man so unique well being a small island it's followed a slightly different path to its neighbors it was once ruled by Vikings they set up the parliament here the tinal in 979 ad making it the world world 's oldest continuous Parliament back in 1275 when Scotland and England were totally separate and occasionally fighting each other a Norwegian King mnus I 6 gave up control of the aisle of man to Scotland in exchange for some money and recognition of Norwegian rule over Shetland and ory which as you probably know didn't last forever after a series of battles the aisle of man flipped back and forth between English and Scottish control until the English eventually captured it for good it's now a self-governing crown dependency which is officially described as a territory for which the United Kingdom is responsible so it has never been part of the UK but M's people are British citizens the British monarch is Lord of man and the British government has significant influence over the msan and is responsible for its defense so this unique history the influence of several different rulers on its culture and geographical isolation has meant this island developed its own clear identity over the centuries underneath all this though today the aisle of man seems to be battling time and change as the world modernized the movement of people increased and while that can improve a Region's economy it also drastically changes its identity places with larger populations can to some extent absorb that change but smaller populations like the mans are less resistant to it so many people here are fiercely protective of the a of man in the face of more new arrivals I think I'm a good msman I would fight tooth and nail to preserve what we've got which we're losing slowly people growing up youngsters growing up don't have the same ideals as I grew up with the language the culture and it's it's all getting watered down going to disappear the older people in my era were probably more stch I'm a watered down version of them and what's coming after me is a watered down version of me lots of people complain about the incomers to come over people leave over there because of what it's like over there and come here and then want to change it to what it was over there which which they were glad to get away from I would say the ma people the older ma people are quite proud very you know nationalistic and also you're reserved I would say the MS people can come across very anti other nations do you know what I mean well I think it's sort of an old fashioned view which still lingers on a little bit you know you've probably heard the phrase like come overs and stop overs and there's a boat in the morning and all that sort of stuff there's that weird thing where if you you have to be born here and your parents and one grandparent has to be Ms for you to be Ms and it's kind of ridiculous really CU we've got so many people over here who come over embrace the culture wholeheartedly how can you say that they're not LS I I don't complain about anybody coming here long as they assimilate they come here and they take on what we've got do what we do and not try to change but while there are worries for the future of M's culture there is an aspect of man's identity that's making a bit of a comeback the man's language there'll be people maybe 30 40 50 years ago who thought it had died out cuz they'd never heard it now I would say I was in my late teens and early 20s before I actually realized that we had a m scal a M's language and I started go to m classes and then suddenly all things started dropping into place there be place names and farm names once I started learning colors ban is white do is black we got SLO Doo and he suddenly said that's SLO with mountain that's Black Mountain you know and that was a revelation to me not KN that we had a m language and all these funny little sayings that I thought were slang so my dad was growing up in the 60s it was kind of classed as a poor man's language and it was dis scourged completely so the numbers drops like significantly Adam and Joe are very involved in the language Revival effort but one of their biggest hurdles is convincing people that mans is worth speaking one of my friends actually said to me so do you and Adam speak Ms at home and I said yeah and she said why when like no one can hear you I was like we don't just speak BS when we're out just you know to promote it I said it's just we speak it and it's our language so why not talk it and that's from that's from M's family yeah Jo's friend there is is Ms through and through a whole family but they just don't attach the value of the language as part of their culture it's still seen as a kind of a plastic Mickey Mouse language do you know what I mean and pointless really there's no they don't attach any value to it whatsoever but on the other hand they are fiercely proud to call themselves MS you say you learn the language or you speaker of the language there's a kind of phrase that people use all the time well it's kind of a dead language that why why bother speaking it but if you lose your language it's kind of the underlaying fabric I think of the culture so you take away your spoken language you're taking away all that history all that culture all Traditions folklore that goes with it it's all gone so it's quite easy for people to dismiss it because they don't understand the value that actually has as a huge part towards culture and I would say that it links everything we do Ma's music Ma's dance Ms Traditions oh yeah we did Ms Bingo night for um world first so if you do speak ma I think it links all those bits together they look to Wales where 800,000 people speak Welsh as a model of success the difference between whales which is a real success story and Us and other nations like Cornwall Wales is top down so Wales it comes from the government and everybody's bought in everybody supports it and it comes top down I think for Cornwall and us it's bottom up um and it's hard that I think sometimes it's not easy what we're doing especially as I say come and bottom up it's not easy but hopefully strength to strength yeah and there's been a massive urgence in the last 20 30 years at least GA has never been more prolific now than since probably the the 20s do you know what I mean there's more people speaking at now than than ever before you know prob from a long long time ago after 4 days on the aisle of man it felt like we'd barely scratched the surface of a Celtic Nation with its own language and a fascinating history and it struck me as an island being pulled in different directions on the one hand the arrival of more and more people from across is changing the way of life here on the other there are people like Joe Adam and John who are doing everything they can to preserve what they've got and who've even helped bring the mans's language back from the [Music] dead for centuries these Shores have been so far from anywhere that the island was was able to develop in a kind of bubble but now there are fairies and planes and are fully loaded bicycles and it only takes a couple of hours to get here from Liverpool so it's not so isolated anymore and the a of man is attracting more and more people which makes efforts to preserve the language and culture all the more important so in such drastically Changing Times it didn't surprise me that many residents felt very protected Ive over this small but unique part of the world our time here flew by and before long we packed our things and headed off in the dead of night to catch our early morning Ferry because we were moving on to another country entirely Ireland was next

Channel: Tieran Freedman

Views: 606,999

Keywords: Isle of Man, Mannanan Mac Lir, IOM, Manx, British Isles, Britain, UK, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Irish Sea, Manx Gaelic, Gaelic, Manx speakers, Manx language, Manx culture, Tynwald, Celtic nation, Celtic, Celtic history, Celtic Island, Celts, Manx flag, Celtic culture, Celtic nations, Celtic people, Celtic languages, Manx landscape, Manx countryside, Manxie, Manx life, Mannanan

Id: 6fCaG8OVQAs

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023