Spoken Here Language Analysis

In the 1860’s, more people on the Isle of Man spoke Manx, the native language of the island, than English (Crossan). However, cultural and international changes soon started to reverse that until by the mid-20th century, the language had only a few native speakers left. After a kick start in the 1960’s and 1970’s by a few (at the time) radical people who wanted to bring back the language of their ancestors (Abley, 112), the language began a slow, dawdling rebirth that continues today, one step at a time. Celtic languages, on the whole, are dying out. Most are being driven to the edges of their native lands by English speaking majorities. For many years, the natives were moving away to find work and foreigners were coming to the island nation …show more content…
"Leaving the Grave: Manx." Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 95-120. Print. Mark Abley is a Canadian writer and lover of languages. In Spoken Here, he explores more then eight different languages which are slowly dying out or have mostly been eradicated. He travels to the places these languages are spoken, consults with the locals and as many remaining native speakers as he can, along with those attempting to revive the languages. In the chapter on Manx, he talks with several Isle of Man residents about their attempts to revive the language. He also has conversations with those who grew up with the language and others who grew up in a period where the Manx language (and Celtic culture in general), was considered rough, low brow, and beneath loftier languages such as …show more content…
Maintaining A Minority Language: A Case Study of Hispanic Teenagers. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, 2004. Print. Maintaining a Minority Language studies 106 Hispanic teenagers in the Sydney, Australia area. The study attempts to dispel “nationalist myths” and explore challenges for “ linguistic minorities, whether indigenous, refugee, or migrant”, in regards to maintaining their culture and communities. The study focuses on bilingualism and biliteracy as the stepping-off points for maintaining cultures in decline or who are minorities in a particular area. Though this particular study is more than a decade old, it has a great deal of information about language use, literacy, and more in regards to a language in decline in Sydney as the children of Hispanic immigrants to Australia begin to assimilate and speak Spanish (or other native languages) less. For me, this relates to the people of the Isle of Man and how many of them left the island and assimilated into other cultures, particularly English and Scottish. I hope to distinguish parallels between cultures whose languages are