Breathing life into the Manx language

Feb 16 2009 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

The opposite of the stuffy academic, Jennifer Kewley Draskau is the horse-jumping, bungee jumping, parachuting linguist putting Manx back on Britain’s language map. Peter Elson reports

SHE’S just galloped back to her ancient cliff-top Manx house, on a German horse called Gingerbread, and immediately reveals a clandestine life-time love affair to me.

Dr Jennifer Kewley Draskau’s long-felt passion has burned in spite of a long marriage to her Danish husband, Frederic.

“I have to confess that I love grammar. I know a lot of people don’t, but I love the way languages are put together and work,” murmurs Jennifer.

“I’m quite interested in the mechanics of cars, but I’d really rather drive them than look under the bonnet, and I know that most people feel like that about language.

“They’ll check the seat colours and the extras, but won’t get their hands dirty. Whereas, I’m a greasy mechanic, or a greasy biker of language. And I make no apology.”

This life-long dedication to language and a Manx family history dating back 1,000 years has merged to flower in her new book, called Practical Manx.

This is the first modern, comprehensive handbook in more than a century on Manx Gaelic, a language which almost died out in the mid-19th century as islanders switched to English for trading.

Jennifer, a senior research fellow at the University of Liverpool’s Centre for Manx Studies, Douglas, was faced with the paucity of records about Manx grammar and morphology.

Backed by the Manx Heritage Bureau, she created Practical Manx from aural sources and old translations of standard English works.

Her book’s cover features the island’s ancient standing stones’ depiction of a blackbird, as in Celtic mythology this bird represents the moment of discovery of a different language.

This, she believes, is very apposite as Manx, which was an off-shoot of old Irish Gaelic, has never been adequately described in book-form.

“It was because the first people who recorded it 100 years ago were enthusiastic amateur lexicographers, with no linguistic training,” she says.

“Not being grammarians, they attempted descriptions of the language and went to extraordinary lengths.