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Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (; ; ; or Shenn Ghaelg), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The main contemporary texts are dated 700–850; by 900 the language had already transitioned into early Middle Irish. Some Old Irish texts date from the 10th century, although these are presumably copies of texts written at an earlier time. Old Irish is forebear to Modern Irish, Manx language and Scottish Gaelic.
Old Irish is known for having a particularly complex system of morphology and especially of allomorphy (more or less unpredictable variations in stems and suffixes in differing circumstances), as well as a complex phonology involving grammatically significant consonant mutations to the initial consonant of a word. Apparently,It is difficult to know for sure, given how little Primitive Irish is attested and the limitations of the Ogham alphabet used to write it. neither characteristic was present in the preceding Primitive Irish period, though initial mutations likely existed in a non-grammaticalised form in the prehistoric era.
Contemporary Old Irish scholarship is still greatly influenced by the works of a small number of scholars active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rudolf Thurneysen (1857–1940) and Osborn Bergin (1873–1950).
Old Irish also preserves most aspects of the complicated Proto-Indo-European (PIE) system of morphology. Nouns and adjectives are declension in three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter); three numbers (singular, dual, plural); and five cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, dative and genitive). Most PIE noun stem classes are maintained ( o-, yo-, ā-, yā-, i-, u-, r-, n-, s-, and consonant stems). Most of the complexities of PIE verbal conjugation are also maintained, and there are new complexities introduced by various (see below).
A still older form of Irish is known as Primitive Irish. Fragments of Primitive Irish, mainly personal names, are known from inscriptions on stone written in the Ogham alphabet. The inscriptions date from about the 4th to the 6th centuries. Primitive Irish appears to have been very close to Common Celtic, the ancestor of all Celtic languages, and it had a lot of the characteristics of other archaic Indo-European languages.
The earliest Old Irish passages may be the transcripts found in the Cambrai Homily, which is thought to belong to the early 8th century. The Book of Armagh contains texts from the early 9th century. Important Continental collections of glosses from the 8th and 9th century include the Würzburg Glosses (mainly) on the Pauline Epistles, the Milan Glosses on a commentary to the Psalms and the St Gallen Glosses on Priscian's Grammar.
Further examples are found at Karlsruhe (Germany), Paris (France), Milan, Florence and Turin (Italy). A late 9th-century manuscript from the abbey of Reichenau, now in St. Paul in Carinthia (Austria), contains a spell and four Old Irish poems. The Liber Hymnorum and the Stowe Missal date from about 900 to 1050.
In addition to contemporary witnesses, the vast majority of Old Irish texts are attested in manuscripts of a variety of later dates. Manuscripts of the later Middle Irish period, such as the italic=no and the Book of Leinster, contain texts which are thought to derive from written exemplars in Old Irish now lost and retain enough of their original form to merit classification as Old Irish.
The preservation of certain linguistic forms current in the Old Irish period may provide reason to assume that an Old Irish original directly or indirectly underlies the transmitted text or texts.
| ! colspan="2" | ! Labial consonant ! dental consonant ! Alveolar ! velar consonant ! Glottal |
Some details of Old Irish phonetics are not known. may have been pronounced or , as in Modern Irish. may have been the same sound as or . The precise articulation of the fortis is unknown, but they were probably longer, tenseness and generally more strongly articulated than their lenis counterparts , as in the Modern Irish and Scottish dialects that still possess a four-way distinction in the coronal nasal consonant and laterals. and may have been pronounced and respectively. The difference between and may have been that the former were trill consonant while the latter were flap consonant. and were derived from an original fortis–lenis pair.
The following short vowels existed:
| ! ! colspan="2" Monophthongs ! colspan="2" | Diphthongs |
1The short diphthong likely existed very early in the Old Irish period, but merged with later on and in many instances was replaced with due to paradigmatic levelling. It is attested once in the phrase i r outh by the prima manus of the Würzburg Glosses.
arose from the u-infection of stressed by a that preceded a palatalized consonant. This vowel faced much inconsistency in spelling, often detectable by a word containing it being variably spelled with across attestations. Tulach "hill, mound" is the most commonly cited example of this vowel, with the spelling of its inflections including ''tulach'' itself, ''telaig'', ''telocho'', ''tilchaib'', ''taulich'' and ''tailaig''. This special vowel also ran rampant in many words starting with the stressed prefix air- (from Proto-Celtic ''*ɸare'').Stifter, David (1998). "Old Irish ²fén 'bog'?" ''Die Sprache'' '''40'''(2), pp. 226-228.Qiu, Fangzhe (2019). "Old Irish aue 'descendant' and its descendants". ''Indogermanische Forschungen'' '''124'''(1), pp. 343–374
Archaic Old Irish (before about 750) had the following inventory of long vowels:
| ! ! colspan="2" Monophthongs ! colspan="2" | Diphthongs |
1Both and were normally written but must have been pronounced differently because they have different origins and distinct outcomes in later Old Irish. stems from Proto-Celtic *ē (< PIE *ei), or from ē in words borrowed from Latin. generally stems from compensatory lengthening of short *e because of loss of the following consonant (in certain clusters) or a directly following vowel in hiatus. It is generally thought that was higher than . Perhaps was while was . They are clearly distinguished in later Old Irish, in which becomes (but before a palatal consonant). becomes in all circumstances. Furthermore, is subject to u-affection, becoming or , while is not.
2A similar distinction may have existed between and , both written , and stemming respectively from former diphthongs (*eu, *au, *ou) and from compensatory lengthening. However, in later Old Irish both sounds appear usually as , sometimes as , and it is unclear whether existed as a separate sound any time in the Old Irish period.
3 existed only in early archaic Old Irish (700 or earlier); afterwards it merged into . Neither sound occurred before another consonant, and both sounds became in later Old Irish (often or before another vowel). The late does not develop into , suggesting that > postdated > .
Later Old Irish had the following inventory of long vowels:
| ! ! colspan="2" Monophthongs ! colspan="2" | Diphthongs |
1Early Old Irish and merged in later Old Irish. It is unclear what the resulting sound was, as scribes continued to use both and to indicate the merged sound. The choice of in the table above is somewhat arbitrary.
The distribution of short in unstressed is a little complicated. All short vowels may appear in absolutely final position (at the very end of a word) after both broad and slender consonants. The front vowels and are often spelled and after broad consonants, which might indicate a retracted pronunciation here, perhaps something like and . All ten possibilities are shown in the following examples:
| marba | kill | 1 sg. subjunctive mood | |
| léicea | leave | 1 sg. subj. | |
| marbae | () | kill | 2 sg. subj. |
| léice | leave | 2 sg. subj. | |
| marbai | (?) | kill | 2 sg. indicative mood |
| léici | leave | 2 sg. indic. | |
| súlo | eye | genitive case | |
| doirseo | door | gen. | |
| marbu | kill | 1 sg. indic. | |
| léiciu | leave | 1 sg. indic. |
The distribution of short vowels in unstressed syllables, other than when absolutely final, was quite restricted. It is usually thought that there were only two allowed phonemes: (written depending on the quality of surrounding consonants) and (written or ). The phoneme tended to occur when the following syllable contained an *ū in Proto-Celtic (for example, dligud "law" (dat.) < PC * dligedū), or after a broad labial consonant (for example, lebor "book"; domun "world"). The phoneme occurred in other circumstances. The occurrence of the two phonemes was generally unrelated to the nature of the corresponding Proto-Celtic vowel, which could be any monophthong: long or short.
Long vowels also occur in unstressed syllables. However, they rarely reflect Proto-Celtic long vowels, which were shortened prior to the deletion (syncope) of inner syllables. Rather, they originate in one of the following ways:
The Old Irish alphabet consists of the following eighteen letters of the Latin alphabet:
The following table indicates the broad pronunciation of various consonant letters in various environments:
| b | |||||
| c | , | ||||
| d | — | ||||
| f | — | ||||
| g | — | ||||
| h | See explanation below | ||||
| l | — | ||||
| m | — | ||||
| n | — | ||||
| p | , | ||||
| r | — | ||||
| s₁ | — | — | |||
| s₂1 | — | — | |||
| t | , | ||||
When the consonants b, d, g are eclipsed by the preceding word (always from a word-initial position), their spelling and pronunciation change to: , ,
Generally, geminating a consonant ensures its unmutated sound. While the letter may be voiced at the end of some words, but when it is written double it is always voiceless in regularised texts; however, even final was often written "cc", as in bec / becc "small, little" (Modern Irish and Scottish beag, Manx beg).
In later Irish manuscripts, lenited f and s are denoted with the letter h , , instead of using a superdot , .
When initial s stemmed from Primitive Irish *sw-, its lenited version is .
The slender (palatalised) variants of the 13 consonants are denoted with marking the letter. They occur in the following environments:
Although Old Irish has both a sound 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 Old Irish preposition i "in" was sometimes written hi) or if they need to be emphasised (the name of Ireland, Ériu, was sometimes written Hériu). On the other hand, words that begin with the sound are usually written without it: a ór "her gold". If the sound and the spelling co-occurrence, it is by coincidence, as ní hed "it is not".
In non-initial positions, the single-letter voiceless stops c, p, and t become the voiced stops , , and respectively unless they are written double. Ambiguity in these letters' pronunciations arises when a single consonant follows an l, n, or r. The lenited stops ch, ph, and th become , , and respectively.
| macc | son | |
| bec or becc | small | |
| op or opp | refuse | |
| bratt | mantle | |
| brot or brott | goad | |
| ech | horse | |
| oíph | beauty | |
| áth | ford |
The voiced stops b, d, and g become fricative , , and , respectively—identical sounds to their word-initial lenitions.
| dub | black | |
| mod | work | |
| mug | slave | |
| claideb | sword | |
| claidib | swords |
In non-initial positions, the letter m usually becomes the nasal fricative , but in some cases it becomes a nasal stop, denoted as . In cases in which it becomes a stop, m is often written double to avoid ambiguity.
| dám | company | |
| lom or lomm | bare |
| derc | hole | |
| derc | red | |
| daltae | fosterling | |
| celtae | who hide | |
| anta | of remaining | |
| antae | who remain |
After m, the letter b is naturally a stop . After d, l, r, the letter b is fricative :
| imb | butter | |
| odb | knot (in a tree) | |
| delb | image | |
| marb | dead |
After n or r, the letter d is a stop :
| bind | melodious | |
| cerd | art, skill |
After n, l, or r, the letter g is usually a stop , but it becomes a fricative in a few words:
| long | ship | |
| delg or delc | thorn | |
| argat or arggat | silver | |
ingen
| daughter | |
| ingen | nail, claw | |
| bairgen | loaf of bread |
| corr | crane | |
| cor | putting | |
| coll | hazel | |
| col | sin | |
| sonn | stake | |
| son | sound | |
| ingen | daughter | |
| ingen | nail, claw |
Geminate consonants appear to have existed since the beginning of the Old Irish period, but they were simplified by the end, as is generally reflected by the spelling. Eventually, however, ll, mm, nn, rr were repurposed to indicate nonlenited variants of those sounds in certain positions.
| ! Preceding consonant !! Following consonant !! Spelling !! Example |
| díg al "vengeance" (nominative case) |
| díg ail "vengeance" (accusative case/dative case) |
| dlig ed "law" (accusative case) |
| dlig id "law" (genitive case) |
It seems likely that spelling variations reflected allophonic variations in the pronunciation of .
Nouns declension for 5 grammatical case: nominative, accusative, genitive, prepositional, vocative; 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; 3 numbers: singular, dual, plural. agree with nouns in grammatical case, gender, and number. The prepositional case is called the dative by convention.
Verbs conjugate for 3 tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense; 3 aspects: simple, perfective, imperfective; 4 grammatical mood: indicative, subjunctive mood, conditional mood, imperative mood; 2 voices: active voice, and passive voice; independent, and dependent forms; and simple, and complex forms. Verbs display tense, aspect, grammatical mood, voice, and sometimes portmanteau forms through , or word stem vowel changes for the former four. Proclitics form a verbal complex with the core verb, and the verbal complex is often preceded by preverbal particles such as ní (negative marker), in (interrogative marker), ro (perfective marker). Direct object occur between the preverb and the verbal word stem. Verbs agree with their subject in person and number. A single verb can stand as an entire sentence. Emphatic particles such as -sa and -se are affixed to the end of the verb.
Prepositions inflection for person and number, and different prepositions govern different cases, sometimes depending on the semantics intended.
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