Talk:Old Irish

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Contents 1 2003 edit 2 Drastically different 3 difference 4 phonology

[edit] 2003 edit

The page as it exists now is inaccurate; Old Irish is no longer spoken - Old Irish is the common ancestor of Irish and Scots gaelic, but the language in use in Ireland today is most definitly "New Irish". -- Jim Regan 01:05, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Plus: the article is superfluous, as it has the same subject as the Irish language page, which is more complete.Erwin 10:08, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Drastically different

"Old Irish possesses much more inflection than its descendants and also employs drastically different phonetic and grammatical structures"

Yes, it is more inflectional; it depends on what you mean by 'drastically different' -both languages might still recognise each other if they met on the street, even if the modern one is 'simpler'.

However, I cannot agree with the idea of "drastically different phonetic structures". I bet natives speakers and those who can pronounce Irish, would be within an hour able to speak with the same blas as OI. In that area, it has (for older speakers, anyway) seen the least change. Apart from the dental fricatives (there were 4), one can find all other phones (/R'/ included, but that is not to say it is the same /R'/ as 1200 years ago). Given that the phonetic table only has meaning if one places phones in their appropriate boxes, and the modern langauge uses the same sounds, (apart from dental fricatives, and some alveolar r's and gemminated consonants, all of which survived into the 20th century in Donegal irish, altho the dental fricatives were in sandhi only), how can one make this spurious claim? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.93.5.45 (talk • contribs) 16:30, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't notice this comment earlier! I agree that "drastically different" is an overstatement and have rephrased it. I do think the modern languages are phonologically much simpler than Old Irish, more in terms of overall phonotactics and syllable structure than in terms of individual phonemes. User:Angr 13:53, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] difference

that's fair enough -I am not knowledgeable yet to comment on phonotactics

[edit] phonology

The wording: "/N/, /Nʲ/, /L/, /Lʲ/, /R/, /Rʲ/ represent fortis sonorants whose precise articulation is unknown, but which were probably longer, tenser, and generally more strongly articulated" is not very clear. "Longer", yes, that is a clear, universally understood parameter --- and about the only one clearly stated, for example, in Stifter's new book. But "tenser", "stronger" --- these are at best ad hoc terms used with different meanings by different authors for different languages. If you want to go by modern Irish as a model, then you should use precise articulatory phonetic descriptions thereof (from the literature), otherwise, it might be better not to even include such terms unless you want to say: "by stronger, I actually mean that the unlenited forms were unmarked, and that the lenited ones were approximants", or, "by tenser, I mean that laryngeal constriction accompanied the articulation", or whatever.Jakob37 13:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, if we knew what the phonetic difference between the fortis and lenis consonants really was in Old Irish, I would have written that instead. Since we don't, I stuck to vague terms. Would it be better to write simply "...represent fortis sonorants whose precise articulation is unknown, but which were probably longer than their lenis counterparts, and probably differed from them somehow in articulation as well"? —Angr 13:54, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

One method used in historical linguistics is extrapolation: in this case, if we can fairly accurately define the modern Irish reflexes of these sounds, and if we know something about where they came from (Common Celtic and/or Indo-European), then we should be able to make a reasonable estimate of their nature in Old Irish (I haven't checked my references in the office, so this is just a general statement).Jakob37 04:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but doing so here would be original research. We have to go by what's already been published, and AFAIK what's already been published is pretty vague on the specifics. —Angr 06:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)