DYING LANGUAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 21, 25 January 1934, Page 20

DYING LANGUAGE.

' ONLY 600 NOW SPEAK MANX. Within a few years, Manx, as a language, will lie heard only on gramophone records, and the people of the Isle of Man will scarcely know that their forbears conversed in a tongue which was entirely distinct and different from the English language which they speak to-day. The latest census returns reveal the steady decline of the language despite all efforts to keep it alive. In 1921 some 896 Manx folk could speak in the native tongue; in 1931 the figure had fallen to 529. Moreover, over 60 per cent of those who can speak in Manx are over 65 years of age, so that when they pass out there will be little more than 200 people able to speak in Manx out of the island's population of nearly 50,000. Nor does there appear to be any prospect of interesting young Manx folk in any substantial numbers to learn the language of their fathers. At King William's College, the island's public school, a prize is annually offered for the best Manx scholar, but this year there was not a single candidate. The Manx language, having no commercial value, seems destined to die and become only a memory of the times when the Manx were definitely a race apart from the rest of the British Isles.