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We welcome Matt Boutilier on to talk about Old Irish, from the destruction of verb roots due to initial stress, to how you can incorporate initial mutations into a language.
Special mention: George recommends the show Cleverman. Nothing to do with this episode, it’s just good.
Top of show greeting: Dubarne /du’barnə/
Links and Resources
- Ogham writing system
- Old Irish on Wikipedia
- O’Connell, F. W. (1912) A Grammar of Old Irish. Belfast: Mayne, Boyd & son, ltd
- Lehmann, R. M., & Lehmann, W. P. (1975). Old Irish: An Introduction. New Yord: Modern Language
- Stifter, D. (2006). Sengoidelc: Old Irish for beginners. Syracuse University Press. [William’s recommendation]
Aidan
OMG. There is so much wrong already, and I haven’t even gotten through the phonological discussions at the start.
I have never seen it called Old Gaelic.
Old Irish didn’t use h at all to mark aspiration. It used a dot above the letter (haphazardly). The h as an indicator of aspiration came MUCH later. It’s also NOT from s. S didn’t become h, and then just get inserted. A final s on certain words (*sindos and its variants, which became the article ind) caused aspiration, which was marked with the dot, and much later with an h.
Irish orthography (modernly) is NOT difficult, it’s just what people who don’t know it like to say. It’s actually very regular, once you know the rules. Old Irish orthography is also very regular – it’s just that they couldn’t be bothered to write it regularly. 🙂 Partly because the writing down was a new fangled thing the Christians brought.
I’m really afraid to listen to the rest.
Aidan (who got his Masters in Celtic Language and Literature, focused on Old Irish)