Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Irish language which can be, more or less, fully reconstructed from extant sources. It dates from the 6th to the 10th century when it gives way to Middle Irish. Irish (Gaeilge), a Goidelic language spoken in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, is constitutionally recognized as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland. ... This Buddhist stela from China, Northern Wei period, was built in the early 6th century. ... As a means of recording the passage of time, the 10th century was that century which lasted from 901 to 1000. ... my children are my life ...

Old Irish first appears in the margins of Latin religious manuscripts dating as early as the 6th century. A large number of early Irish literary texts, though recorded in manuscripts of the Middle Irish period such as Lebor na hUidre and the Book of Leinster, are essentially Old Irish in character. Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... A manuscript (Latin manu scriptus written by hand), strictly speaking, is any written document that is put down by hand, in contrast to being printed or reproduced some other way. ... Lebor na hUidre, or the Book of the Dun Cow, is the oldest Irish manuscript to contain primarily native narrative materials. ... The Book of Leinster (Irish Lebor Laignech), formerly known as the Book of Noughaval (Lebor na Nuachongbála), is a medieval Irish manuscript compliled ca. ...

It should be noted that while Old Irish is the ancestor to Modern Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx Gaelic, it is most definitely distinct from these. In general, Old Irish possesses much more inflection than its descendants and also employs drastically different phonetic and grammatical structures. Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig; IPA: ) is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages. ... Manx (Gaelg or Gailck), also known as Manx Gaelic, is a Goidelic language spoken on the Isle of Man. ...

A great deal of what is known about Old Irish comes from a small number of individuals such as Dr. Rudolf Thurneysen (1857-1940) and Osborn Bergin. Even today, their books are regarded as required material for any Old Irish enthusiast.

Fragments, mainly personal names, of an earlier form of the language (known as Primitive Irish) are known from inscriptions in the Ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Britain dating as late as the 4th century. Primitive Irish is the oldest known form of the Irish language, known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Britain up to about the 4th century. ... Ogham (Old Irish Ogam) was an alphabet used primarily to represent Gaelic languages. ... As a means of recording the passage of time, the 4th century was that century which lasted from 301 to 400. ...

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Old Irish is shown in the chart below. /N/, /Nʲ/, /L/, /Lʲ/, /R/, /Rʲ/ represent fortis sonorants whose precise articulation is unknown, but which were probably longer, tenser, and generally more strongly articulated than their lenis counterparts /n/, /nʲ/, /l/, /lʲ/, /r/, /rʲ/. Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Fortis (from Latin fortis strong) and lenis (from Latin lenis weak) are linguistics terms. ... In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a member of a class of speech sounds that are continuants produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. ... Tenseness is a term used in phonology to describe a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. ...

Some details of Old Irish phonetics are not known. /sʲ/ may have been pronounced [ɕ] or [ʃ], as in Modern Irish. /hʲ/ may have been the same sound as /h/ and/or /xʲ/. /Nʲ/ and /Lʲ/ may have been pronounced [ɲ] and [ʎ] respectively. The difference between /R(ʲ)/ and /r(ʲ)/ may have been that the former were trills while the latter were flaps. Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant. ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. ... In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another. ...

Vowels

The inventory of Old Irish monophthongs is: A monophthong (in Greek μονόφθογγος = single note) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong. ...

The distribution of short vowels in unstressed syllables is a little complicated. All short vowels may appear in unstressed final open syllables (an open syllable is one with no coda consonant), after both broad and slender consonants. The front vowels /e/ and /i/ are often spelled ae and ai after broad consonants, which might indicate a retracted pronunciation here, perhaps something like [ɘ] and [ɨ]. All ten possibilities are shown in the following examples: A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word. ... This article discusses the unit of speech. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

In unstressed closed syllables (that is, those with a syllable coda), the quality of a short vowel is almost entirely predictable by whether the surrounding consonants are broad or slender. Between two broad consonants, the vowel is /a/, as in dígal /ˈdʲiːɣal/ 'vengeance' (nom.). Between a broad and a slender consonant the vowel is /e/, as in dliged /ˈdʲlʲiɣʲeð/ 'law' (nom./acc.). Before a slender consonant the vowel is /i/, as in dígail /ˈdʲiːɣilʲ/ 'vengeance' (acc./dat.), and dligid /ˈdʲlʲiɣʲiðʲ/ 'law' (gen.). The chief exceptions to this pattern are that /u/ frequently appears when the following syllable contained an *ū in Proto-Celtic (for example, dligud /ˈdʲlʲiɣuð/ 'law' (dat.) < PC *dligedū), and that /o/ or /u/ frequently appears after a broad labial (for example, lebor /ˈLʲevor/ 'book'; domun /ˈdoṽun/ 'world'). Third person redirects here, but can also mean: Third Person, a New York City improvising trio A perspective (storytelling) Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others. ... Number, in linguistics, is a grammatical category used to express the quantity of objects referred to by a noun. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that is subjective, from the persons viewpoint, that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgment, necessity and statements that are contrary to fact. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun. ... The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. ... Proto-Celtic language, also called Common Celtic, is the putative ancestor of all the known Celtic languages. ... Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ...

The inventory of Old Irish diphthongs is shown in this chart: In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds) is a vowel combination in a single syllable involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in phonology that determines syllable weight (which in turn determines stress) in some languages. ...

Orthography

As with most medieval languages, the orthography of Old Irish is not fixed, so the following statements are to be taken as generalizations only; individual manuscripts may very greatly from these guidelines. The orthography of a language is the set of rules of how to write correctly in the writing system of a language. ... A manuscript (Latin manu scriptus, written by hand), strictly speaking, is any written document that is put down by hand, in contrast to being printed or reproduced some other way. ...

The Old Irish alphabet consists of the following eighteen letters of the Latin alphabet: An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... This article is about letter, a written message from one party to another. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u

In addition, the acute accent and the superdot are used as diacritics with certain letters: The acute accent ( Â´ ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin script. ... When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the middle dot (·), or to the glyphs combining dot above ( ) and combining dot below ( ) which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in Eastern European languages and Vietnamese. ... A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ...

• The acute accent indicates a long vowel: á, é, í, ó, ú are long vowels
• The superdot indicates the lenition of f and s: ḟ is silent, ṡ is pronounced /h/
• The superdot is also sometimes used on m and n with no change in pronunciation, when these letters are used to mark the nasalization mutation: ṁ, ṅ.

A number of digraphs are also used: Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. ... Digraph has several meanings: Directed graph, or digraph Digraph (orthography) Digraph (computing) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

The letter i is placed after a vowel letter to indicate that the following consonant was slender: ai, ei, oi, ui; ái, éi, ói, úi

The letter h is placed after c, t, p to indicate a fricative: ch, th, ph

The diphthongs are also indicated by digraphs: áe/aí, ía, uí, áu, óe/oí, úa, éu, óu, iu, au, eu

In word-initial position, when no initial consonant mutation has applied, the consonant letters have the following values; they are broad before back vowels (a, o, u) and slender before front vowels (e, i): Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Consonant mutation is the phenomenon in which a consonant in a word is changed according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ...

• b: /b/, /bʲ/
• c: /k/, /kʲ/
• d: /d/, /dʲ/
• f: /f/, /fʲ/
• g: /g/, /gʲ/
• h: See discussion below
• l: /L/, /Lʲ/
• m: /m/, /mʲ/
• n: /N/, /Nʲ/
• p: /p/, /pʲ/
• r: /R/, /Rʲ/
• s: /s/, /ʃ/
• t: /t/, /tʲ/

Although Old Irish has both a sound /h/ and a letter h, there is no consistent relationship between the two. Vowel-initial words are sometimes written with an unpronounced h, especially if they are very short (the preposition i "in" was sometimes written hi) or if they need to be emphasized (the name of Ireland, Ériu, was sometimes written Hériu). On the other hand, words that begin with the sound /h/ are usually written without it, for example a ór /a hoːr/ "her gold". If the sound and the spelling cooccur, it is by coincidence, as ní hed /Nʲiː heð/ "it is not". It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with adposition. ...

After a vowel or l, n, or r the letters c, p, t can stand for either voiced or voiceless stops; they can also be written double with either value:

• mac or macc /mak/ "son"
• bec or becc /bʲeg/ "small"
• op or opp /ob/ "refuse"
• brat or bratt /brat/ "mantle"
• brot or brott /brod/ "goad"
• derc /dʲerk/ "hole"
• derc /dʲerg/ "red"
• daltae /daLte/ "fosterling"
• celtae /kʲeLde/ "who hide"
• anta /aNta/ "of remaining"
• antae /aNde/ "who remain"

After a vowel the letters b, d, g stand for the fricatives /v, ð, ɣ/ or their slender equivalents:

• dub /duv/ "black"
• mod /moð/ "work"
• mug /muɣ/ "slave"
• claideb /klaðʲev/ "sword"
• claidib /klaðʲivʲ/ "swords"

After m, b is a stop, but after d, l and r it is a fricative:

• imb /imʲbʲ/ "butter"
• odb /oðv/ "knot (in a tree)"
• delb /dʲelv/ "image"
• marb /marv/ dead

After n and r, d is a stop

• bind /bʲiNʲdʲ/ "melodious"
• cerd /kʲeRd/ "art, skill"

After n, l, and r, g is usually a stop, but it is a fricative in a few words:

• long /loŋg/ "ship"
• delg or delc /dʲelg/ "thorn"
• argat or arggat /argad/ "silver"
• ingen /inʲɣʲen/ "daughter"
• bairgen /barʲɣʲen/ "loaf of bread"

After vowels m is usually a fricative, but sometimes a (nasal) stop, in which case it is also often written double:

• dám /daːṽ/ "company"
• lom or lomm /lom/ "bare"

The digraphs ch, ph, th do not occur in word-initial position except under lenition, but wherever they occur they are pronounced /x/, /f/, /θ/.

• ech /ex/ "horse"
• oíph /oif/ "beauty"
• áth /aːθ/ "ford"

The letters l, n, and r are written double when they indicate the tense sonorants, single when they indicate the lax sonorants. (But the tense sonorants are usually written single in word-initial position.)

• corr /koR/ "crane"
• cor /kor/ "putting"
• coll /koL/ "hazel"
• col /kol/ "sin"
• sonn /soN/ "stake"
• son /son/ "sound"

Grammar

Sentence structure

Old Irish follows the typical VSO (verb-subject-object) structure shared by most Celtic languages. Verbs are all fully conjugated, and have most of the forms typical of Indo-European languages, i.e. present, imperfect, past, future and preterite tenses, indicative, subjunctive, conditional and imperative moods, and active and passive voices. The only verbal form lacking in Old Irish is the infinitive (present to a limited degree in Modern Irish), the meaning of which Old Irish conveyed with verbal noun constructions. Personal pronouns, when used as direct objects, are infixed into the verb with which they are associated. Nouns possess four cases (nominative, genitive, accusative a.k.a. objective, and dative), and two numbers - the singular and the plural. A third number, dual, is attested to a limited degree with somewhat distinct forms, though it is almost always preceded by the cardinal dá, meaning "two". What equate to prepositions in English are generally in the same placement as Old Irish, though a good many with verbal overtones are actually infixed into the verbs themselves. The Celtic languages are the languages descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, spoken by ancient and modern Celts alike. ... In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). ... The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects, including most of the major language families of Europe, as well as many languages of Southwest and South Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ... The present tense is the tense (form of a verb) that is often used to express: Action at the present time A state of being A habitual action An occurrence in the near future An action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present There are two... The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a past tense with imperfective aspect. ... The past tense is a verb tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past. ... In linguistics, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by a verb as not having happened yet, but expected to in the future. ... This article is about the grammatical term. ... Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that is subjective, from the persons viewpoint, that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgment, necessity and statements that are contrary to fact. ... The conditional mood (sometimes described as the conditional tense) is a verb form in many languages, in which a verb root is modified to form verb tenses, moods, or aspects expressing degrees of certainty or uncertainty and hypothesis about past, present, or future. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In grammar, voice is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc. ... In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... A verbal noun is a noun formed directly as an inflexion of a verb or a verb stem, sharing at least in part its constructions. ... In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... The dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and/or pronouns. ... Number, in linguistics, is a grammatical category used to express the quantity of objects referred to by a noun. ... A variety of dualities in mathematics are listed at duality (mathematics). ...

Verbs

Verbs stand initially in the sentence (preceded only by some particles, forming a 'verbal complex' and very few adverbs). Most verbs have, in addition to the tenses, voices, and moods named above, two sets of forms: a conjunct form, and an absolute form. The conjunct form typically consists of one or more preverbs (particles some of which are historically of prepositional origin, compare a-, e-, in-, etc. in Latin verbs, though not directly related and verbal prefixes in Germanic languages), followed by a verb stem which bears the bulk of the conjugation. Personal pronouns as direct objects are infixed between the preverb and the verbal stem, along with various other particles that modify the verb's meaning (including the negative) or indicate certain special sentence structures. The absolute form is used when no infixes are necessary, and any other necessary elements are given in another part of the sentence. A single verb can stand as an entire sentence in Old Irish, in which case emphatic particles such as -sa and -se are affixed to the end of the verb.

References

• Green, Antony (1995). Old Irish Verbs and Vocabulary, Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Press. ISBN 1-57473-003-7.
• McCone, Kim (1987). The Early Irish Verb, Maynooth: An Sagart. ISBN 1-870684-001.
• Quin, E. G. (1975). Old-Irish Workbook, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. ISBN 0-901714-08-9.
• Strachan, John (1949). Old-Irish Paradigms and Selections from the Old-Irish Glosses, Fourth edition, revised by Osborn Bergin. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. ISBN 0-901714-35-6.
• Thurneysen, Rudolf (1946). A Grammar of Old Irish, Translated by D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. ISBN 1855001616.