Primitive Irish
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| Primitive Irish | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Ireland and western Great Britain | |
| Language extinction: | Evolved into Old Irish about the 6th century AD | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Goidelic Primitive Irish |
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| Writing system: | Ogham | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | ine | |
| ISO 639-3: | —
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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 Great Britain up to about the 6th century.
Transcribed Ogham inscriptions, which lack a letter for the /p/ phoneme, show Primitive Irish to be similar in morphology and inflections to Gaulish, Latin, Classical Greek and Sanskrit. It has few of the distinctive characteristics of modern Irish and is difficult to recognise as a form of Irish.
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[edit] Evolution to Old Irish
By contrast, Old Irish, written from the 6th century on, is recognisably Irish, complete with initial mutations, distinct "broad" and "slender" consonants, the letter P, consonant clusters created by the loss of unstressed syllables, along with a number of significant vowel and consonant changes.
As an example, a 5th century king of Leinster, whose name is recorded in Old Irish king-lists and annals as Mac Caírthinn Uí Enechglaiss, is memorialised on an ogham stone near where he died. This gives the late Primitive Irish version of his name (in the genitive case), as MAQI CAIRATINI AVI INEQUAGLAS. The development of one to the other clearly shows the loss of unstressed syllables and lenition of certain consonants.
These changes, traced by historical linguistics, are not unusual in the development of languages but appear to have taken place remarkably quickly in Irish. According to one theory given by Koch (1995), these changes coincide with the conversion to Christianity and the introduction of Latin learning.
The theory is based on the fact that all languages have various registers or levels of formality, the most formal of which, usually that of learning and religion, changes slowly while the most informal registers change much more quickly, but in most cases are prevented from developing into mutually unintelligible dialects by the existence of the more formal register. In pre-Christian Ireland the most formal register of the language would have been that used by the learned and religious class, the druids, for their ceremonies and teaching. Koch theorised based on the likelyhood that memorial inscriptions were written in this form but when the druids were replaced as the learned class by Christian monks, formal Primitive Irish was replaced as the language of learning by Latin. The vernacular forms, freed from the conservative influence of the formal register, changed rapidly, until a new written standard, Old Irish, established itself.
[edit] Possible external influences
Before Gaelic dialects evolved in Ireland, some allege that the inhabitants spoke Ivernic, particularly in Munster. It receives its name from a Gallo-Belgic group known as the Iverni (later Érainn), attested in Ptolemy's 2nd century Geography. This hypothesis may be supported by what seems to be a brief mention of such a language in the 9th-century Irish dictionary Sanas Cormaic, under the names Iarnnbélrae, Iarnbélrae, and Iarmbérla, which, if treated as Old Irish, means "Iron-speech". However, most linguists now explain these Brythonic loanwords as borrowings directly from Welsh, noting that Ogham inscriptions attest to an early Irish presence in Wales. The early 20th century Gaelic scholar T. F. O'Rahilly thus proposed their language, which he called Ivernic, as the source for these loanwords.
Advocates of this hypothesis believe that Ivernic first diverged from Gaulish around 500 BC[citation needed] and survived a proposed Goidelic-speaking invasion of Ireland (sometime between 500 and 100 BC). It was said[citation needed] to be still spoken by a minority in Munster at the time of Bede in about AD 700. However its speakers were eventually absorbed into the Goidelic-speaking population, and by the time the Vikings had established Limerick in about 850, the Ivernic and Goidelic languages had merged into Irish.
Cormac mac Cuilennáin, king and bishop of Cashel in Munster in Ireland, born 836, died 908, wrote a large Glossary which said that the "Iron-speech" was "dense and difficult" and had recently died out and that two words of it were remembered: ond = "stone" and fern = "anything good".[citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- John T. Koch (1995), "The conversion and the transition from Primitive to Old Irish", Emania 13
- Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (1995), Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200
- T. F. O'Rahilly in Ériu 13, 1942.
- T. F. O'Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946, 1957, 1964, 1971, 1976, 1984, 1999.
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| History of the language | Primitive Irish | Old Irish | Middle Irish | Early Modern Irish | Modern Irish | ||
| Connacht Irish | Munster Irish | Newfoundland Irish | Ulster Irish | ||
| Initial mutations | Morphology (nominals, verbs) | Phonology | Syntax | Orthography | Ogham | Gaelic script | ||
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| Primitive Irish | Old Irish | Middle Irish | Early Modern Irish | Scottish Gaelic|Canadian Gaelic | ||
| Alphabet | Grammar | Names | ||
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| Primitive Irish | Old Irish | Middle Irish | Manx language | ||
