Strategy to have 3,000 more Manx speakers by 2032

Fri, 27 Oct 2023

During a Ministerial meeting of the British-Irish Council held in Jersey earlier this month, Claire Christian MHK cited The Manx Language Strategy 2022-2032 which aims to increase Manx speakers by 3,000 from approximately 2,000 to 5,000 by 2032.

Political member for Education, Sport and Culture, Claire Christian MHK, represented the Isle of Man at the conference, using the platform to reinforce a commitment to the Manx language.

The Conference focused on the Indigenous, Minority and Lesser-Used Languages work sector, and was a crucial platform to raise awareness of linguistic diversity.

Ministerial delegates representing the UK, Isle of Man, Jersey, Ireland, Scotland and Wales were in attendance. The delegates discussed the 2023 policy report and approved a Forward Work Plan to guide activities up to 2026.

Manx is now offered as a curricular option in all primary and secondary schools, including the Teisht Chadjin Ghaelgagh (GCSE equivalent) and the Ard-Teisht Ghaelgagh (A-Level equivalent).

As part of the Forward Work Plan, The Isle of Man, in collaboration with the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Government, will lead efforts to develop a ‘Linguistic Infrastructure’. This includes a focus on dictionaries, corpus search technology, place names, machine translation, and future AI advancements.

 

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