Who Are the Manx?
The Manx are the people of the Isle of Man, a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, numbering approximately 85,000, with approximately 2,000 speakers of revived Manx Gaelic, a Goidelic Celtic language related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic. The Isle of Man has unique constitutional status with its own parliament Tynwald, claiming to be world's oldest continuous parliament established 979 CE. The Manx language declined severely, with the last native speaker, Ned Maddrell, dying in 1974. However, unprecedented revival efforts beginning in the 1970s-1990s created new generation of fluent speakers through Manx-medium schools, representing rare example of successful language resurrection. Modern Manx identity balances British connections, Celtic heritage, and island distinctiveness.