Edward "Ned" Maddrell (1877?–December 27, 1974) was a fisherman from the Isle of Man who was arguably the last surviving native speaker of the Manx language. Today, however, native speakers have once again appeared. Jump to: navigation, search 1877 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search December 27 is the 361st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1974 is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Fishing is the activity of hunting for fish. ... Jump to: navigation, search First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. ... Jump to: navigation, search Manx (Gaelg or Gailck), also known as Manx Gaelic, is a Goidelic language spoken on the Isle of Man. ...

Following the death of Mrs. Sage Kinvig (c. 1870–1962), Maddrell was the only remaining person who could claim to have spoken Manx Gaelic from childhood (according to one source, Maddrell had some knowledge of English before he learned Manx, and learned Manx from his great-aunt¹), although some others at the time also spoke it as a second language, having learned it later in life. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Maddrell recorded some of his speech for the sake of linguistic preservation; for example, in 1948 he recorded the following about fishing (in Manx, with the English translation): Jump to: navigation, search Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Dooyrt "Ballooilley" rish:

"Ballooilley" said to him:

"Vel ny partanyn snaue, Joe?"

"Are the crabs crawling, Joe?"

"Cha nel monney, cha nel monney," dooyrt Joe. "T'ad feer ghoan."

"Not much, not much," said Joe. "They're very scarce."²

A newspaper article about the decline of Manx from about 1959 (it gives Maddrell's age as 82) mentions and quotes him, since at the time he was, along with Kinvig, one of only two native speakers: Jump to: navigation, search 1959 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Ned Maddrell, who went to sea at 13, found he was able to keep his Manx "alive" by talking to Gaelic-speaking sailors on British ships. He was brought up in the remote village of Cregneash, where "unless you had the Manx you were a deaf and dumb man and no good to anybody."

This was not the case in the towns. "Nobody there wanted to talk Manx, even those who had it well. They were ashamed, like. It will never earn a penny for you," they said. Ned is a sprightly old man, a trifle deaf but very proud of his role as one of the last native speakers. "They have tape recordings of me telling legends and stories in Manx," he said "in Ireland and in America and in places you never heard of."³

In contrast to some other native speakers, Maddrell appears to have enjoyed his minor celebrity status, and was very willing to teach younger language revivalists such as the recently deceased Leslie Quirk, and the still active Brian Stowell. When Irish taoiseach Eamon de Valera visited the island he called upon Ned personally. De Valera had been angered some years before at the inaction of the British and Manx governments over the language, and had sent over a team from the Irish Folklore Commission with a sound recording van to preserve what was left. Goidelic is one of two major divisions of modern-day Celtic languages (the other being Brythonic). ... ... The Taoiseach (plural: Taoisigh) or, more formally, An Taoiseach, is the head of government of the Republic of Ireland and the leader of the Irish cabinet1. ... Jump to: navigation, search Eamon de Valera (born Edward George de Valera, sometimes Gaelicised Éamonn de Bhailéara; October 14, 1882 – August 29, 1975), was an Irish politician, best known as a leader of Irelands struggle for independence from the United Kingdom in the early 20th Century, and the... The Irish Folklore Commission (Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann in Irish) was set up in 1935 by the Irish Government to study and collect information on the folklore and traditions of Ireland. ...

Objections to Ned as last native speaker

As with Dolly Pentreath, who was supposedly the last native speaker of Cornish, there appears to be some controversy as to whether Ned was actually the very last native speaker of Manx. Dolly Pentreath (died December 1777) is considered by many to be the last native speaker of the Cornish language (that is, the last person who spoke only or predominantly Cornish). ... Jump to: navigation, search The Cornish language (in Cornish: Kernowek, Kernewek, Curnoack) is one of the Brythonic group of Celtic languages that includes Welsh, Breton, the extinct Cumbric and perhaps the hypothetical Ivernic. ...

The first objection to this claim is that a number of small children speak Manx as a first language right now, as they have been raised in the language. The counterargument to this is that they speak "Neo-Manx" and are "native speakers" in the sense that young Israelis are new "native speakers" of neo-Hebrew rather than Classical Hebrew. Jump to: navigation, search Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by 6 million people mainly in Israel, parts of the Palestinian territories, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ...

The second objection to the claim is that many Manx native speakers often did not openly announce themselves due to some social stigma attached to the language, and/or due to the fact that some native Manx speakers may have emigrated. For example, an unverified story claims that a native speaker died in Chicago in the 1980s, the best part of ten years after Ned. Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ... Jump to: navigation, search // Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...

The third objection is quite different, claiming that Ned was not a true native speaker at all, but had acquired it as a very young child from his great-aunt rather than his parents. However, Ned was fluent in Manx from a very early age, which would have made him a near-native speaker.

The late Leslie Quirk learnt his first Manx from his grandmother, a native speaker, as a child. Some argue that he was a native speaker.

References

1. Language Decline and Language Revival in the Isle of Man: Ned Maddrell Memorial Lecture, November 28, 1996.
2. Manx Language Samples (with audio): "Are the Crabs Crawling?"
3. "Newspaper clipping from the 1950s", quoted in a Usenet post from September 2, 1993. (scroll down)