Old Irish

Classification

Old Irish was the only known member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, which is, in turn, a subfamily of the wider Indo-European language family that also includes the Slavonic, Italic/Romance, Indo-Aryan and Germanic subfamilies, along with several others. Old Irish is the ancestor of all modern Goidelic languages: Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx.

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.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Old Irish is shown in the chart below. The complexity of Old Irish phonology is from a four-way split of phonemes inherited from Primitive Irish, with both a fortis–lenis and a "broad–slender" (velarised vs. palatalised) distinction arising from historical changes. The sounds are the broad lenis equivalents of broad fortis ; likewise for the slender (palatalised) equivalents. (However, most sounds actually derive historically from , since was relatively rare in Old Irish, being a recent import from other languages such as Latin.)

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 sonorants is unknown, but they were probably longer, tenser 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 nasals and laterals. and may have been pronounced and respectively. The difference between and may have been that the former were trills while the latter were flaps. and were derived from an original fortis–lenis pair.

Vowels

Old Irish had distinctive vowel length in both monophthongs and diphthongs. Short diphthongs were monomoraic, taking up the same amount of time as short vowels, while long diphthongs were bimoraic, the same as long vowels. (This is much like the situation in Old English but different from Ancient Greek whose shorter and longer diphthongs were bimoraic and trimoraic, respectively: vs. .) The inventory of Old Irish long vowels changed significantly over the Old Irish period, but the short vowels changed much less.

The following short vowels existed:

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 routh 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 ⟨au, ai, e, i, u⟩ 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).

Archaic Old Irish (before about 750) had the following inventory of long vowels:

¹Both and were normally written ⟨é⟩ 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 ⟨ía⟩ (but ⟨é⟩ before a palatal consonant). becomes ⟨é⟩ in all circumstances. Furthermore, is subject to u-affection, becoming ⟨éu⟩ or ⟨íu⟩, while is not.

²A similar distinction may have existed between and , both written ⟨ó⟩, and stemming respectively from former diphthongs (*eu, *au, *ou) and from compensatory lengthening. However, in later Old Irish both sounds appear usually as ⟨úa⟩, sometimes as ⟨ó⟩, 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 (c.700 or earlier); afterwards it merged into . Neither sound occurred before another consonant, and both sounds became ⟨ó⟩ in later Old Irish (often ⟨ú⟩ or ⟨u⟩ before another vowel). The late ⟨ó⟩ does not develop into ⟨úa⟩, suggesting that ⟨áu⟩ > ⟨ó⟩ postdated ⟨ó⟩ > ⟨úa⟩.

Later Old Irish had the following inventory of long vowels:

¹Early Old Irish and merged in later Old Irish. It is unclear what the resulting sound was, as scribes continued to use both ⟨aí⟩ and ⟨oí⟩ to indicate the merged sound. The choice of in the table above is somewhat arbitrary.

The distribution of short vowels in unstressed syllables 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 ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨ai⟩ after broad consonants, which might indicate a retracted pronunciation here, perhaps something like and . All ten possibilities are shown in the following examples:

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 ⟨a, ai, e, i⟩ depending on the quality of surrounding consonants) and (written ⟨u⟩ or ⟨o⟩). 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 (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:

• from the late resolution of a hiatus of two adjacent vowels (usually as a result of loss of *s between vowels);
• from compensatory lengthening in response to loss of a consonant (cenél "kindred, gender" < *cenethl; du·air-chér "I have purchased" < *-chechr, preterite of crenaid "buys";)
• from assimilation of an unstressed vowel to a corresponding long stressed vowel;
• from late compounding;
• from lengthening of short vowels before unlenited , still in progress in Old Irish (compare erríndem "highest" vs. rind "peak".)

Stress

Stress is generally on the first syllable of a word. However, in verbs it occurs on the second syllable when the first syllable is a clitic (the verbal prefix as- in as·beir "he says"). In such cases, the unstressed prefix is indicated in grammatical works with a following centre dot (⟨·⟩).

Orthography

As with most medieval languages, the orthography of Old Irish is not fixed, so the following statements are to be taken as generalisations only. Individual manuscripts may vary greatly from these guidelines.

The Old Irish alphabet consists of the following eighteen letters of the Latin alphabet:

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

in addition to the five long vowels, shown by an acute accent (´):

á, é, í, ó, ú,

the lenited consonants denoted with a superdot (◌̇):

ḟ, ṡ,

and the eclipsis consonants also denoted with a superdot:

ṁ, ṅ.

Old Irish digraphs include the lenition consonants:

ch, fh, th, ph, sh,

the eclipsis consonants:

mb, nd, ng; ṁb, ṅd, ṅg,

the geminatives:

bb, cc, ll, mm, nn, pp, rr, tt,

and the diphthongs:

aé/áe/aí/ái, oé/óe/oí/ói,

uí, ía, áu, úa, éu, óu, iu, au, eu,

ai, ei, oi, ui; ái, éi, ói, úi.

The following table indicates the broad pronunciation of various consonant letters in various environments:

Angle brackets ⟨⟩ here indicate graphemic differences to the unmutated consonant.

A dash (—) here indicates that the respective consonant is not subject to eclipsis. These consonants are: r, l, n, s

¹The s₂ arises from older *sw or *sɸ which is lenited to . In Old Irish there are only several words containing s₂: sïur :: fïur, phïur, sister; sesser :: mórfesser, six persons / seven (lit. great six) persons; or in reduplicated verbs do·seinn :: do·sephainn, pursue.

When the consonants b, d, g are eclipsed by the preceding word (always from a word-initial position), their spelling and pronunciation change to: ⟨mb⟩ , ⟨nd⟩ , ⟨ng⟩

Generally, geminating a consonant ensures its unmutated sound. While the letter ⟨c⟩ may be voiced at the end of some words, but when it is written double ⟨cc⟩ 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 ⟨fh⟩, ⟨sh⟩, instead of using a superdot ⟨ḟ⟩, ⟨ṡ⟩.

When initial s stemmed from Primitive Irish *sw-, its lenited version is ⟨f⟩ .

The slender (palatalised) variants of the 13 consonants, transcribed in IPA with a following , occur in the following environments:

• Before a written e, é, i, í
• After a written i, when not followed by a vowel letter (but not after the diphthongs aí, oí, uí)

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-occur, it is by coincidence, as ní hed "it is not".

Stops following vowels

The voiceless stops of Old Irish are c, p, t. They contrast with the voiced stops g, b, d. Additionally, the letter m can behave similarly to a stop following vowels. These seven consonants often mutate when not in the word-initial position.

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.

The voiced stops b, d, and g become fricative , , and , respectively—identical sounds to their word-initial lenitions.

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.

Stops following other consonants

Ambiguity arises in the pronunciation of the stop consonants (c, g, t, d, p, b) when they follow l, n, or r:

After m, the letter b is naturally a stop . After d, l, r, the letter b is fricative :

After n or r, the letter d is a stop :

After n, l, or r, the letter g is usually a stop , but it becomes a fricative in a few words:

The consonants l, n, r

The letters l, n, r are generally written double when they indicate tense sonorants and single when they indicate lax sonorants. Originally, it reflected an actual difference between single and geminate consonants, as tense sonorants in many positions (such as between vowels or word-finally) developed from geminates. As the gemination was lost, the use of written double consonants was repurposed to indicate tense sonorants. Doubly written consonants of this sort do not occur in positions where tense sonorants developed from non-geminated Proto-Celtic sonorants (such as word-initially or before a consonant).

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.

Vowels

Written vowels a, ai, e, i in poststressed syllables (except when absolutely word-final) all seem to represent phonemic . The particular vowel that appears is determined by the quality (broad vs. slender) of the surrounding consonants and has no relation to the etymological vowel quality:

It seems likely that spelling variations reflected allophonic variations in the pronunciation of .

The regular insertion of the letter "i" between a written back vowel and a slender consonant has been interpreted as an indication that Old Irish speakers did pronounce such sequences with a non-phonemic palatal on-glide, so that e.g. duine was realised as .

History

Old Irish underwent extensive phonological changes from Proto-Celtic in both consonants and vowels. Final syllables were lost or transphonologized as grammatical mutations on the following word. In addition, unstressed syllables faced various reductions and deletions of their vowels.

Grammar

Old Irish is a fusional, nominative-accusative, and VSO language.

Nouns decline for 5 cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, prepositional, vocative; 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; 3 numbers: singular, dual, plural. Adjectives agree with nouns in case, gender, and number. The prepositional case is called the dative by convention.

Verbs conjugate for 3 tenses: past, present, future; 3 aspects: simple, perfective, imperfective; 4 moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 2 voices: active, and passive; independent, and dependent forms; and simple, and complex forms. Verbs display tense, aspect, mood, voice, and sometimes portmanteau forms through suffixes, or 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 personal pronouns occur between the preverb and the verbal 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 inflect for person and number, and different prepositions govern different cases, sometimes depending on the semantics intended.