The Isle of Man Government cannot rely on volunteers and motivated individuals who are dedicated to the Manx language to promote it.
That’s the call being made by experts from the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages which looks at protecting Cornish, Manx Gaelic, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh.
It says government must ‘put its money where its mouth is’ and has urged it to implement a number of recommendations.
Professor Vesna Crnic-Grotic and Professor Rob Dunbar make up part of the committee which has put forward the recommendations:
Hi, I'm Chanel, one of the journalists at Meng's Radio. Welcome to the latest edition of Meng's Radio Newscast. Can I start with your names and your titles please? Okay, my name is Wes Natsanich Gratich. I'm a professor at the University of Riekam, professor of law at the University of Riekam and a member of the comics. And I'm a professor Rob Dunbar, I'm a professor of Celtic at the University of Edinburgh. And I'm the British member of the committee of experts of comics. Right, now the committee has done some very important research recently and you've guys have released or will be releasing a report soon. Can you tell me about that? Rob, do you want to start? I can do, yeah. The UK and the Isle of Man are parties to a council of Europe treaty called the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. The UK signed up to it in 2001, and the mangs language has been covered by the charter since that time. In 2020, there are two substantive parts of the charter. One, chapter two sets out some general principles which apply to all of the languages covered in the UK and the Isle of Man, including mangs. And then part three contains more detailed obligations in areas like education, the legal system, public administration, broadcasting and so forth. The Isle of Man, the mangs language was added to the protection under part three, the more detailed provisions in 2020. So this was our first opportunity to take a look at what the authorities in the Isle of Man were doing and in the UK to support mangs in areas such as education, broadcasting, public administration, legal service, the legal system and in its use in economic and social and cultural life. Right. Now, Vesna, would you like to add on to that? Yes. In a way, Rob covered it all, but just the way he explains, you can already understand that the charter is quite a complex international instrument and that states have this kind of freedom to adapt the application and the ratification instrument to the needs of the language. And this is what the UK has done or did by the extension of the ratification and by enlarging the legal protection of mangs through the charter. The other thing should be added is that the committee of experts, the committee that Vesna and I are on, there are 25 states that have signed up to the charter. For each state, there is a member of the committee and the role of the committee is to oversee how states are implementing the obligations under the charter. So every five years we take a look at what the UK and the Mike's authorities are doing and report on how they're doing in terms of putting into action the principles and the rules set out in the European charter. As part of that, we travel to the state to see what's happening on the ground. Vesna, I myself and another member of the committee, as well as a member of the secretariat that supports the committee, came to the UK and to the Isle of Man in February and our observations formed part of the report that we're talking about now. Right and I understand, sorry, Vesna, did you want to add on there? Sorry. I know from those findings you guys have also made recommendations. I know it includes adding more of the main scalik in your classrooms at a tertiary level, looking for programs that includes main scalik, things like that. Is that recommendation solely for the Isle of Man or is it for the Isle of Man in UK or will all 25 states kind of adopt this or look into it? There are two kinds of recommendations. So one kind is the recommendations that the committee of experts is making and they are throughout the report. You can read them throughout the report, but there are also recommendations that are based on our proposal and that are done by the another body, the committee of ministers of the Council of Europe. And the committee of ministers is the body where oral states, member states of the Council of Europe are represented. So 46 of them, so not just the state's parties to the charter, but 46 member states of the Council of Europe will adopt or not, but we hope that they will adopt our proposal of recommendations to the UK authorities because we consider the UK authorities as the state party. And then based on the, if I may say for the UK, that the constitutional basis in the system, in the internal system, then the authorities of the Isle of Man will of course bear their kind, their own responsibility for that. No, I think Vesta has summarized very well these particular recommendations with regard to banks in higher education and so forth that you mentioned, those are directed to, as Vesta said, to the UK, but because the responsibility for these matters fall with the authorities in the Isle of Man, the bank's government, we would expect that they're to be interpreted and implemented by the authorities in the Isle of Man. In the recommendations of the ministers, that's the supreme decision-making body in the Council of Europe, some of the recommendations are specific to particular languages in the UK. Others apply across the board to all of the languages that are covered in the UK, not only banks, but Welsh, Scottish, Gallic, Scots, Ulster Scots, Cornish, and some of the recommendations, for example, with regard to as made a recommendation, it would really apply to all of the minority languages to take measures to strengthen the teaching and the long-term recruitment of teachers for all the regional or minority languages. So you have both types of recommendations. Right, how long did you both spend on the Isle of Man and what were some of the findings, or were you anticipating to get that sort of findings or were you maybe left shocked by what you found? We spent, how long was it, two days? It was a very intense visit to the UK, because in less than a week we had to visit all the minority languages. We tried hard to do that. And the Isle of Man, for me, as I'm not British, so for me it was really a pleasant surprise that I noticed the kind of support for the language, which is very emotional, I should say, so that people really love this language. And now it's time for, if I may be so blunt, to put the money where the mouth is, is that the right expression, so that really loud authorities should stand behind their promise and develop the language and the support that the language is getting. So to move from the emotional side to very practical, financial, legal, and other methods in order to make the language better supported. Thank you. Rob, would you like to add on there? Not in particular, except to say that it was my first time to the Isle of Man. As Bessna said, we were in the UK for five days in total, and I think we spent longer in the Isle of Man than in any other place, almost two days. So first day we met with governmental officials, non-governmental organizations, language activists, and then on the second day we were able to visit some important institutions, such as the the the Banks language school in St. John and other parts of the island, which gave us a feel for what was happening on the ground. Also, as I mentioned earlier, until now, the only part two of the charter, the important but fairly general principles applied, whereas now the makes authorities in the UK have taken on the much more detailed obligations in part three in a number of areas. And my impression was that as Bessna said, there's a tremendous commitment amongst certainly activists, but also a real sense of support amongst the officials that we met, but necessarily to implement the more detailed obligations that have been voluntarily taken on, things will have to be further developed. Money and financing is certainly very important, as Bessna said, although we didn't make a specific recommendation on things like legislation generally to implement many of the more detailed things that the UK and the Isle of Man have signed up to sort of at least a sort of formal policy in a variety of areas needs to be developed. And I think we got the message that these are priorities for the authorities. And I think it's now important to build on the great progress that has been made in many respects in the Isle of Man and get to that next level in terms of funding and but also in terms of structures. I think Bessna, would you like to add on there anything? No, just agreeing with Rob, because that is the specificity of part three of the charter, that it is rather precise. So if by ratifying the states as we will make provision of education, primary education or second education, then we really are expecting the authorities to make such provision, not to rely too much on the NGOs and on volunteers and whatnot of people of goodwill, but that they should take responsibility and in a way lead or at least support what the volunteers are doing. Because obviously as Rob said, the volunteers are doing quite a lot in this in the context of none. And of course, the population is small, so they really have certain limits to what they can do, but within those limits and in the context of the island, I think they should do that if they're ratified for it. Right, I think my last question would be how important is it to follow the guidelines, for the island, to follow the guidelines, to keep the main language alive? As you mentioned, early 2020, the language was considered a protected language, so how important is it to keep it so that your future generations, they still have it? Rob, would you like to start? Well, I think it's fundamental. I think that the whole purpose of this particular treaty is to ensure that these languages, which have declined in terms of the numbers of speakers, and that's particularly the case in banks where the last native speaker of the language, a person raised in the language, died in the 1970s, and of course, many people had learned banks before that point, but it's undergoing a process of renewal, and the whole purpose of the charter is to ensure that all of these languages continue to not only survive, but to grow and strengthen in the future and that their cultures, that are the cultures that are associated with them, strengthen. So I think in terms of not only what is being done right now, but planning for the future, for growth, is very central to the treaty and should be central to planning in the Isle of Man, the impression that I certainly had is that there is a real seriousness of purpose, but quite a lot of things need to be done by the authorities, and there seems to be an understanding of this, and when we scrutinize the UK again in a little under five years, we hope and expect there will be responses, in fact, in two and a half years. There has to be a report to the Council of Europe with regard to what the state is doing in relation to the recommendations that we've made, so we'd expect to see a real progress at the time of the next report in two and a half years, and continued progress and growth when we're next back in 2028. Just may add, just emphasize that this charter is the only international treaty that is dealing with the protection of regional minority languages. So in that respect, it is a very unique instrument, and it is designed really to protect and promote regional minority languages, such as Manx, which is really a small miracle really that the language survived, and so now it's really perhaps a good time to enable it to grow and to develop further. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manx Radio newscast. You are obviously someone with exquisite taste. May I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manx Radio podcasts at your favourite podcast provider, so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone. Thank you. [Music] (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
