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.^[2]

Masculine is considered the "default" or "unmarked" gender.^[3] Nouns ending in a "broad" (non-palatalised) consonant are usually masculine, as are those ending in the suffixes: -agh, -an, -ane, -ee, -er, -erey, -ey, -oo, -oon, -oor, -ys. Nouns ending in a "slender" (palatalised) consonant are usually feminine, as are those ending in the suffixes: -ag, -age, -aght, -eig, -id, -oge. Verbnouns are also usually feminine, especially those ending in -ail or -eil.^[3]

Number

Nouns show singular and plural number in Manx. Plurals can be formed from the singular by adding an ending, most often -yn (lioar "book", lioaryn "books"). Other endings include -aghyn, -ee, or a consonant followed by -yn. Sometimes a plural ending replaces a singular ending, as in the case of -agh becoming -ee or -eeyn or of -ee or -ey becoming -aghyn. Some mostly monosyllabic nouns pluralise by means of internal vowel change, such as mac "son" to mec, kayt "cat" to kiyt and dooiney "man" to deiney. Manx also has a handful of irregularly formed plurals, including ben "woman" to mraane, keyrey "sheep" to kirree and slieau "mountain" to sleityn.^[3]

Case

Number

Certain adjectives may be made plural by the addition of -ey 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.^[3]

Degree of comparison

Adjectives ending in -agh form their comparative/superlative form by replacing this with -ee, e.g. atçhimagh "terrible" becomes atçhimee, resulting in ny s'atçhimee "more terrible" and s'atçhimee "most terrible". As in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, the comparative-superlative is commonly marked by the copula verb s in the present and by in the past. The superlative is often shown by the word nys, from Middle Irish ní as "thing that is" (cf. Modern Irish níos, past ní ba).^[6] A number of adjectives form their comparative/superlative irregularly.

The comparative/superlative can also be formed using smoo "more" with the positive form, e.g. s'thrimmey = smoo trome.^[3]

Regular verbs

Manx verbs generally form their finite forms by means of periphrasis: inflected forms of the auxiliary verbs ve "to be" or jannoo "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.^[7] An example using the forms of tilgey "throwing" is as follows.

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. cha "not") does precede the verb. For example, "you will lose" is caillee oo with the independent form caillee ("will lose"), while "you will not lose" is cha gaill oo with the dependent form caill (which has undergone eclipsis to gaill after cha). Similarly "they went" is hie ad with the independent form hie ("went"), while "they did not go" is cha jagh ad with the dependent form jagh.^[9][10]

The fully inflected forms of the regular verb tilgey "throwing" are as follows. In addition to the forms below, a past participle may be formed using -it: tilgit "thrown".

^1 First person singular, making the use of a following subject pronoun redundant

^2 First person plural, making the use of a following subject pronoun redundant

^3 Used with all other persons, meaning an accompanying subject must be stated, e.g. tilgee eh "he will throw", tilgee ad "they will throw"

There are a few peculiarities when a verb begins with a vowel, i.e. the addition of d' in the preterite and n' in the future and conditional dependent. Below is the conjugation of aase "to grow".

^1 d' may also be spelt j when pronounced /dʲ/ [dʒ] i.e. before a slender vowel, e.g. "ate" can be either d'ee or jee.

These peculiarities extend to verbs beginning with f, e.g. faagail "to leave".

^1 Again, d' may also be spelt j where appropriate.

Irregular verbs

A number of verbs are irregular in their inflection.

^1 Future relative: clinnys

^2 Future relative: gowee

The most common and most irregular verb in Manx is ve "to be", often used as an auxiliary verb. In addition to the usual inflected tenses, ve also has a present tense. The full conjugation of ve "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.^[11]

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.

Examples of practical usage are Ta dooinney heese y traid "There's a man down the street" and Ta mee goll sheese y traid "I'm going down the street", Jean drappal neese "Climb up (towards me)" and Jean drappal seose "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. shiar "to the east, eastwards" and niar "from the east", sthie "in, inside" (location) and stiagh "in, inside" (direction), wass "this side, here", noon "from this side, to the other side" and noal "over to this side, over to the other side".^[3]

Personal

Technically, Manx has a T-V distinction where the second person singular pronoun oo is used to show familiarity while the second person plural shiu 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 oo when addressing another individual Manx speaker.^[3]

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 cha row uss [xa ˈrau ʊs] as cha row oo [xa ˈrau u(ː)] sounds too similar to cha row [xa ˈrau] "was not".

Reflexive pronouns are formed with the addition of -hene, which can also indicate emphasis, e.g. mee-hene "myself", oo-hene "yourself".^[3]

Interrogative

Manx interrogative pronouns include quoi "who?", cre "what?" and c'red "what?".^[3]

Indefinite

The Manx equivalent of English "-ever" or "any-" is erbee, e.g. quoi erbee "whoever, anyone". Ennagh is used like English "some-", e.g. peiagh ennagh "someone" (with peiagh "person").^[3]

Possessive

A gender distinction is made in the third person singular by means of lenition following masculine e "his, its" and lack of lenition after feminine e "her, its".

An alternative to using the possessive pronouns is to precede a noun with the definite article and follow it with the inflected form of ec "at" to show the person, e.g. yn thie aym "my house" (literally "the house at me") instead of my hie "my house". This is especially useful in the plural, where all persons share one possessive pronoun, e.g. yn thie oc "their house", as opposed to nyn dhie "our/your/their house".

Possessive determiners are used to indicate the object of a verbnoun, e.e. T'eh dy my akin "He sees me". E is dropped after the particle dy, although the mutation or lack thereof remains, and dy combines with nyn to give dyn, e.g. T'eh dy akin "He sees him", T'eh dy fakin "He sees her", T'eh dyn vakin "He sees us/you/them".^[3]