I find something pathetic in the dying struggles of a language as it is gradually driven to the outposts more and more remote, until eventually it dies with some old person who has outlived the normal span.
Cornish, one of the ancient provincial tongues in England, is an example. Towards the close of the eighteenth century there were only two people in Cornwall who could speak the language - an aged woman, named Dolly Pentreath, and a man, William Bodenoer a few years her junior. Up to the age of twenty, Dolly Pentreath could speak no English. During her lifetime, however, the Cornish language gradually ceased to be spoken in all parts of the county except Penzance, where she resided until her death in 1776. Bodenoer lived until 1794, and was the last man to speak the ancient tongue.
More than a hundred years later, it became obvious that the Manx language could not long survive the changed conditions brought about by the development of the Isle of Man as a tourist resort.
The influx of tourists and settlers soon drove it from the populous centres to the rural districts. At the last census there were only seven people in the island who could speak no English, and less than a hundred who were bilingual. The present enumeration will probably reveal a further decline in the number of Manx speakers.
The Irish Times, May 2nd, 1931.