Edmund Goodwin

Edmund Evans Greaves Goodwin (24 August 1844 – 3 January 1925 ) was a Manx language scholar, linguist, and teacher. He is best known for his work First Lessons in Manx that he wrote to accompany the classes he taught in Peel. Early life Goodwin was born on 24 August 1844 at Castle Street, Despite his disability, he was devoted to music and helped to support himself by teaching singing and piano to the music students of Peel and the surrounding areas.

Even as a youth, Goodwin was noted for his aptitude for learning languages:At the age of twelve I picked up my first knowledge of German and French from old books which had belonged to my father. My first inducement to learn Latin and Italian was to be able to understand the words of Mozart’s Masses and Italian opera libretti.

Anglo-Manx dialect Goodwin was interested in the dialect of English spoken on the Isle of Man, that was heavily influenced by the Manx language. He contributed to the writing of A Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx Dialect by collaborating with A.W. Moore and Sophia Morrison. His contribution consisted primarily in relation to phonology and the "putting the phonetic sounds to the words". He also listed the words alphabetically, added some of his own suggestions, and prepared the work for the press. The book was published in 1924 after Moore's death in 1909 and Morrison's in 1917.

Goodwin began teaching Manx in Peel, where the earliest iterations of First Lessons in Manx "for blackboard use" were written. A. W. Moore, the director of the Manx Museum and the first president of Yn Çheshaght Ghailckagh, was not concerned only with the preservation and promotion of the Manx language, but also with all things related to Manx culture:Though called the Manx Language Society, it should, I think, by no means confine its energies to the promotion of an interest in the language, but extend them to the study of Manx history, the collection of Manx music, ballads, carols, folklore, proverbs, place-names, including the old field names which are rapidly dying out in a word, to the preservation of everything that IS distinctively Manx, and, above all, to the cultivation of a national spirit.

Published works

1901 - Lessoonyn ayns Çhengey ny Mayrey Ellan Vannin 1924 - A Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx Dialect (with Sophia Morrison and A.W. Moore)