Irish language. Irish and its offshoots, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, constitute the Gaelic or Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages. Welsh, Cornish, and Breton form the Brythonic or Brittonic group. The extinct languages of the
Celts of mainland Europe are known collectively as Continental Celtic. It was once assumed that Brythonic and the Celtic of Gaul formed a unity separate from Goidelic. More recent research suggests that Goidelic and Brythonic have much in common and that the two branches shared a common prehistory as Insular Celtic.
Apart from geographical names in classical authors our earliest evidence for Irish is to be found in
ogam inscriptions. These are written in a script consisting of horizontal and diagonal lines and exhibit an archaic form of the language. When the Latin alphabet was introduced by Christian missionaries the history of Irish proper begins. The language is usually divided into the following periods: Old Irish ad
c.650–
c.900, Middle Irish
c.900–
c.1200, Early Modern Irish
c.1200–
c.1600, Modern Irish
c.1600– .
In the pre‐Old Irish period inherited unstressed syllables were shortened and in many cases lost altogether. As a result consonantal quality became an essential part of the language. In Irish consonants are either pronounced with lip rounding and velar articulation or with spread lips and palatal articulation (cf. the hard/soft difference in Russian). This opposition survives in full vigour into the modern period. Since Irish uses the roman alphabet or variations of it, the broad–slender distinction can be indicated in writing only by using vowels. It is for this reason that contemporary Irish orthography presents unusual collocations of vowels, for example in
tuíodóireacht ‘thatching’,
deartháireacha ‘brothers’.
Another consequence of the loss of unstressed syllables was the emergence of the system of initial mutation. The tendency was probably already present in Insular Celtic, since a similar series of phenomena is attested in Brythonic. In Irish initial mutation means that the first consonant of a word can change according to grammatical function. Initial mutation also continues into the modern language where the initial consonant of
bó (‘cow’), for example, is lenited to bh (pronounced as v or w) after the definite article (
an bhó, ‘the cow’), and is nasalized to mb (pronounced m) in
leis an mbó (‘with the cow’).
From the Old Irish period until the 13th century the language underwent a prolonged period of regularization and simplification. Among the more important changes one could cite the loss of the neuter gender and analogical reshaping of the verbal and pronominal systems. In early Irish ‘he seized me’ is rendered by
rom‐gab where
ro is a preverbal particle,
gab is the verb, and
m is an infixed object pronoun. By the 13th century this has become
do ghabh sé mé, where
do is the particle,
ghabh the verb,
sé the subject pronoun, and
mé the object pronoun.
Although they had existed in the language since earliest times, dialects do not come into view to any degree until the 17th century. This is because the literary standard language was common to the entire Gaelic‐speaking area. With the collapse of the
bardic schools, however, writers began to use spoken rather than literary forms. Using such forms,
place names, and Irish words surviving in Hiberno‐English, it is possible to deduce something about the dialects spoken throughout Ireland.
It seems that there were essentially three main dialects. The Ulster dialect was spoken north and east of a line drawn from Leitrim to the Boyne valley. The centre of this dialect was probably Inishowen and Co. Londonderry. The southern dialect was spoken in Munster, southern Clare, Kilkenny, and part of Co. Laois. The epicentre of this dialect was the territory of the
Eóganachta. A third dialect, ‘Galeonic Irish’, was spoken in Connacht, in Westmeath and south Longford, across to Dublin and south to Wexford.
The position of the accent and concomitant weakening of syllables were the chief distinguishing features of the three dialects. In Old Irish word‐stress was generally upon the initial syllable. The word
scadán, ‘herring’, for example, is or was pronounced as
SCADan in the north, as
scuDAN in Munster, but as
SCUdán (with a weakened but stressed first syllable and a long unstressed syllable) in the Galeonic area. Although the surviving dialects in Ulster, Connacht, and Munster conform to this pattern of stress, in other ways all three forms of speech are somewhat atypical of the Irish spoken elsewhere in Ireland.
Irish and indeed the Gaelic languages in general are very unlike other European languages in general are very unlike other European languages in syntax and idiom. Irish lacks any single word for ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the question being repeated instead. Thus the answer to ‘Did you see him?’ is either
Chonaic (‘[I] saw’) or
Ní fhaca (‘[I] did not see’). Irish does not emphasize by use of intonation but by bringing the item to be emphasized to the head of its clause after the copula (one of the two verbs ‘to be’): ‘I don't live in Dublin any more’ is rendered
Ní i mBaile Átha Cliath atá cónaí orm a thuilleadh (lit. ‘It is not in Dublin that dwelling is on‐me any more’). Similarly ‘Do you want a stamp?’ is
An stampa atá uait?, literally ‘Is it a stamp that is from‐you?’ Many Irish idioms survive in Hiberno‐English, ‘'Tis true for you’, ‘Not a bother on me’, etc.
Although Irish was not much cultivated during the 19th century, its status as an official language since 1922 has helped to modernize it. All writers now employ the
Caighdeán Oifigiúil or Official Standard, a regularized spelling and grammar developed by the translation staff of the
Oireachtas. The terminological committees of the Department of Education have over the years provided speakers of Irish with technical vocabulary in a wide range of subjects. The Gaeltacht radio service, Raidió na Gaeltachta, has disseminated much modern terminology as well as familiarizing native speakers with dialects other than their own.
See also
language.
Bibliography
Greene, D. , The Irish language/ An Ghaeilge (1966)
Ó Cuív, B. , Irish Dialects and Irish‐Speaking Districts (1951)
Ó Murchú, M. , The Irish Language (1985)
Nicholas Williams
