RECENTLY I was fortunate enough to go to the Isle of Man (IoM) for five days to research Manx language education at pre-school level.

As part of my trip I visited three nurseries and two playgroups that provide full-time Manx language education to children between two and five years.

The Manx language schools are run by a charity called Mooinjer Veggey (MV), which has been in existence for about 13 years. Places at the nursery schools are funded by the IoM Government and the schools are all very popular.

Part of the reason why I wanted to visit these schools was to develop my own professional practice as a Cornish-language early years teacher and to gain useful and relevant knowledge and experience to help contribute to the development of Cornish-language early years education in Cornwall.

I went to the IoM because the Manx language is not only a Celtic language like Cornish, but of all the Celtic languages the situation of Manx is closest to Cornish in terms of its stage of revival.

Both languages are spoken by roughly 1 per cent of the population and are on the United Nations' critically endangered list of languages.

In Cornwall, though, we don't yet have full-time Cornish medium schools, but we do have good foundations on which to build, including our own Cornish language Saturday pre-school (Skol Veythrin Karenza).

The trip to the IoM was a professional success for me and over the next few months I will be aiming to put into practice some of the aspects of the Manx language experience that I think we can use to further the Cornish language revival.

My trip to the IoM showed me once again how much the Celtic countries have to learn from each other through the sharing of our experiences.

The main aim of the Celtic League is to further understanding and promote cooperation between the Celtic countries and if you would like to find out how you can get involved please contact gensec@celticleague.net