The grammar of the Manx language has much in common with related Indo-European languages, such as nouns that display gender, number and case and verbs that take endings or employ auxiliaries to show tense, person or number. Other morphological features are typical of Insular Celtic languages but atypical of other Indo-European languages. These include initial consonant mutation, inflected prepositions and verb–subject–object word order.
Nouns
Gender Manx nouns fall into one of two genders, masculine or feminine. As with Old Irish, there is evidence for the existence of a third neuter gender in Classical Manx, but neuter nouns are thought to have been gradually converted to masculine.
Masculine is considered the "default" or "unmarked" gender. Nouns ending in a "broad" (non-palatalised) consonant are usually masculine, as are those ending in the suffixes: , , , , , , , , , , . Nouns ending in a "slender" (palatalised) consonant are usually feminine, as are those ending in the suffixes: , , , , , . Verbnouns are also usually feminine, especially those ending in or . Number Nouns show singular and plural number in Manx. Plurals can be formed from the singular by adding an ending, most often (lioar "book", lioaryn "books"). Other endings include , , or a consonant followed by . Sometimes a plural ending replaces a singular ending, as in the case of becoming or or of or becoming . Some mostly monosyllabic nouns pluralise by means of internal vowel change, such as "son" to , "cat" to and "man" to . Manx also has a handful of irregularly formed plurals, including "woman" to , "sheep" to and "mountain" to .
Case
Nominative The base form of a noun is in the nominative case ( "friend", "friends").
Vocative A nominative noun is lenited to become vocative, ( "friend!", "friends!"). This also extends to proper nouns. Moirrey, the Manx equivalent of the English name Mary, would be lenited to Voirrey, but this practice is less common for foreign names. This form is commonly used in greetings (Vax veen "dear Max").
Genitive Some mostly feminine nouns possess a distinct genitive form, usually ending in , e.g. "of a year" (nominative: ), "of a foot" (nominative: ). Historical genitive singulars often survive in compounds and fixed expressions although no longer productive, such as "cowhouse" using the old genitive of "cattle" or "the crown", literally "the top of the head", employing lenited "of a head" (nominative: ).Thomson 1992, 118–19; Broderick 1993, 239–40 "of sheep" is the only distinct genitive plural, the nominative plural being .
Dative The dative case is encountered only in set expressions such as "on foot", where is the lenited dative "foot" (nominative: "foot").
Articles In common with the other Insular Celtic languages except Breton, Manx has a definite article but no indefinite article. The definite article takes the form before masculine nominative and genitive and feminine nominative nouns. This is often reduced to before consonants or to after grammatical words ending in a vowel. Plural nouns and feminine genitive nouns take the article , another archaic form of which is found in some place names as .
Adjectives
Number Certain adjectives may be made plural by the addition of to the singular form (ben veg "little woman", mraane veggey "little women"). In earlier versions of the language, these were used attributively, but are rarely employed in modern Manx.
Degree of comparison Adjectives ending in form their comparative/superlative form by replacing this with , e.g. "terrible" becomes , resulting in "more terrible" and "most terrible". As in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, the comparative-superlative is commonly marked by the copula verb in the present and in the past. The superlative is often shown by the word , from Middle Irish "thing that is" (cf. Modern Irish , past ). A number of adjectives form their comparative/superlative irregularly. +Irregular comparative/superlative forms of Manx adjectivesPositiveEnglishComparative/Superlativebeautifuleasyyounghighsmallsoft, moistprettyhottight, fastthicknearfar, longroughbright, whiteshortstrongsoonwidelong, tallgoodslowlarge, bigbad, evilmerry, livelyfat, broadoldthinheavymany The comparative/superlative can also be formed using "more" with the positive form, e.g. = .
Verbs
Regular verbs Manx verbs generally form their finite forms by means of periphrasis: inflected forms of the auxiliary verbs "to be" or "to do" are combined with the verbal noun of the main verb. Only the future, conditional, preterite and imperative can be formed directly by inflecting the main verb, but even in these tenses, the periphrastic formation is more common in Late Spoken Manx.Broderick 1984–86, 75–82; 1993, 250, 271; Thomson 1992, 122 An example using the forms of "throwing" is as follows.
+Manx finite verb forms: "throwing"TensePeriphrastic form(literal translation)Inflected formGlossPresent("I am throwing")–"I throw"Imperfect("I was throwing")–"I was throwing"Perfect("I am after throwing")The particle is identical in form to the preposition "on"; however, it is etymologically distinct, coming from Old Irish "after" (Williams 1994, 725).–"I have thrown"Pluperfect("I was after throwing")–"I had thrown"Preterite("I did throwing")"I threw"Future("I will do throwing")"I will throw"Conditional("I would do throwing")"I would throw"Imperative("do throwing!")"throw!"Past participle–"thrown"
The future and conditional tenses (and in some irregular verbs, the preterite) make a distinction between "independent" and "dependent" forms. Independent forms are used when the verb is not preceded by any particle; dependent forms are used when a particle (e.g. "not") does precede the verb. For example, "you will lose" is with the independent form ("will lose"), while "you will not lose" is with the dependent form (which has undergone eclipsis to after ). Similarly "they went" is with the independent form ("went"), while "they did not go" is with the dependent form .This contrast is inherited from Old Irish, which shows such pairs as ("(s)he carries") vs. ("(s)he does not carry"), and is found in Scottish Gaelic as well, e.g. ("will take") vs. ("will not take"). In Modern Irish, the distinction is found only in irregular verbs (e.g. ("saw") vs. ("did not see").Broderick 1984–86, 1:92; 1992, 250; Thomson 1992, 122
The fully inflected forms of the regular verb "throwing" are as follows. In addition to the forms below, a past participle may be formed using : "thrown". +Inflection of a regular Manx verbTenseIndependentDependentRelativePreterite(same as independent)Future, , , , Conditional, , Imperative(same as independent) First person singular, making the use of a following subject pronoun redundant First person plural, making the use of a following subject pronoun redundant Used with all other persons, meaning an accompanying subject must be stated, e.g. "he will throw", "they will throw"
There are a few peculiarities when a verb begins with a vowel, i.e. the addition of in the preterite and in the future and conditional dependent. Below is the conjugation of "to grow". +Inflection of a regular Manx verb beginning with a vowelTenseIndependentDependentRelativePreterite(same as independent)FutureConditionalImperative(same as independent) may also be spelt when pronounced i.e. before a slender vowel, e.g. "ate" can be either or .
These peculiarities extend to verbs beginning with f, e.g. "to leave". +Inflection of a regular Manx verb beginning with fTenseIndependentDependentRelativePreterite(same as independent)Future,Conditional, Imperative(same as independent) Again, may also be spelt where appropriate.
Irregular verbs A number of verbs are irregular in their inflection. +Inflected forms of irregular Manx verbsInfinitivePreteriteFutureConditionalImperativePast participleIndependentDependentIndependentDependentIndependentDependent "come" "hear" "put, give" "see" "find", "get" "found", "given" "go"(same as independent) "say" "take" "do" Future relative: Future relative:
The most common and most irregular verb in Manx is "to be", often used as an auxiliary verb. In addition to the usual inflected tenses, also has a present tense. The full conjugation of "to be" is as follows. Generally, the personal pronoun is used (ta mee "I am"), but the emphatic pronoun is also acceptable. For instance, row oo "were you?" is grammatically correct, but it is likely to be misheard in speech as row "was". As such, row uss is often used instead.
+Forms of verb "to be"FormIndependentDependentRelativePresent–Preterite–Future(same as independent)veesConditional–Imperative(same as independent)–
Adverbs Manx adverbs can be formed from adjectives by means of the word (from Middle Irish "with, until"), e.g. "good" to "well", "cheerful" to "cheerfully". This is not used when preceded by such words as "too" and "very" or followed by "enough", e.g. "very good, very well", "cheerful(ly) enough". The prepositional phrase for "home(wards)" is formed with "to" and the noun "place, town, homestead" to give , while the noun "house, home" can be used unchanged as an adverb to convey the same meaning.
Adverbs of location and motion In common with its Goidelic sister languages, Manx has a number of adverbs corresponding to English "up" and "down", the meaning of which depend upon such things as motion or lack thereof and starting point in relation to the speaker. +Manx adverbs expressing "up" and "down"StationaryMotion towards speakerMotion away from speakerabovebelow
Examples of practical usage are "There's a man down the street" and "I'm going down the street", "Climb up (towards me)" and "Climb up (away from me)".
Likewise, Manx possesses various other single words that distinguish between stationary location and direction or movement towards or away from the speaker, e.g. "to the east, eastwards" and "from the east", "in, inside" (location) and "in, inside" (direction), "this side, here", "from this side, to the other side" and "over to this side, over to the other side".
Pronouns
Personal Technically, Manx has a T-V distinction where the second person singular pronoun is used to show familiarity while the second person plural is used as a respectful singular as well as with plural referents. Because of the solidarity of the small speech community, however, Manx speakers would automatically use when addressing another individual Manx speaker.
In common with Irish and Scottish Gaelic, in addition to its regular personal pronouns, Manx has also a series used for emphasis. Under certain phonological circumstances, these can be used as unemphatic pronouns, e.g. "you were not" is as sounds too similar to "was not".
+ Manx personal pronounsPersonRegularEmphaticFirst singularSecond singularThird singularmasculinefeminineFirst pluralSecond pluralThird plural
Reflexive pronouns are formed with the addition of , which can also indicate emphasis, e.g. "myself", "yourself".
Interrogative Manx interrogative pronouns include "who?", "what?" and "what?".
Indefinite The Manx equivalent of English "-ever" or "any-" is , e.g. "whoever, anyone". is used like English "some-", e.g. "someone" (with "person").
Determiners
Possessive A gender distinction is made in the third person singular by means of lenition following masculine "his, its" and lack of lenition after feminine "her, its".
+Manx possessive determinerssingularplural1st person2nd person3rd personmasculinefeminine
An alternative to using the possessive pronouns is to precede a noun with the definite article and follow it with the inflected form of "at" to show the person, e.g. "my house" (literally "the house at me") instead of "my house". This is especially useful in the plural, where all persons share one possessive pronoun, e.g. "their house", as opposed to "our/your/their house".