Old Irish

Old Irish
᚛ᚃᚘᚇᚓᚂ᚜
PronunciationOld Irish pronunciation: [ˈɸia̯ðel]
RegionIreland and your colonies in Man, Wales, Scotland, Devon and Cornwall
Era6th–10th century; evolved into Mid Irish by around the 10th century
Ogham
Language codes
ISO 639-2sga
ISO 639-3sga
Glottologoldi1246

Old Irish was the Goidelic language in the Middle Ages. People spoke Old Irish in Ireland, before the year 1000 AD. Old Irish was a Goidelic language, and modern Goidelic languages like Irish and Scots Gaelic came from it.

History

The western Britain in a satellite photograph by the European Space Agency.

People speaking Insular Celtic languages probably first came to Ireland at the start of the Iron Age, about 500 BC. By around 500 AD, people in Ireland all had the same Goidelic language and culture. Speakers of Old Irish began to move to Britain as Britain became weaker. Other peoples of Britain named these people the Scot.

Old Irish was the only language in the Goidelic languages until Old Irish split into the modern Goidelic languages of Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx. These languages are Insular Celtic languages and part of the bigger group of Celtic languages.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Old Irish is shown in the chart below. The complexity of Old Irish phonology is from a four-way split of phonemes inherited from Primitive Irish, with both a fortis–lenis and a "broad–slender" (velarised vs. palatalised) distinction arising from historical changes. The sounds /f v θ ð x ɣ h ṽ n l r/ are the broad lenis equivalents of broad fortis /p b t d k ɡ s m N L R/; likewise for the slender (palatalised) equivalents. (However, most /f fʲ/ sounds actually derive historically from /w/, since /p/ was relatively rare in Old Irish, being a recent import from other languages such as Latin.) |}

1The short diphthong ŏu likely existed very early in the Old Irish period, but merged with /u/ later on and in many instances was replaced with /o/ due to paradigmatic levelling. It is attested once in the phrase i routh by the prima manus of the Würzburg Glosses.

/æ ~ œ/ arose from the u-infection of stressed /a/ by a /u/ that preceded a palatalized consonant. This vowel faced much inconsistency in spelling, often detectable by a word containing it being variably spelled with  au, ai, e, i, or u across attestations.

References

  1. 1 2 Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2015) [2010]. "Old Irish". Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199571123.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-172766-5. Retrieved 2021-03-05.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Welch, Robert (2003) [2000]. The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780192800800.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-280080-0.
  3. ↑ David Greene (1976). "The Diphthongs of Old Irish". Ériu. 27: 26–45. JSTOR 30007667.