Old Irish

Old Irish
Goídelc
Pronunciation	[ˈɡoiðʲelɡ]
Region	Ireland, Isle of Man, western coast of Great Britain
Era	6th century–10th century; evolved into Middle Irish about the 10th century
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Goidelic Old Irish
Early forms:	Primitive Irish Old Irish
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-2	sga
ISO 639-3	sga
Linguasphere	50-AAD-ad

Old Irish (sometimes called Old Gaelic) is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish. Old Irish is thus the ancestor of Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. Broadly speaking, the grammar and sound systems of the modern languages are simpler than those of Old Irish.

Old Irish is well-known for its complex system of allomorphy, especially in verbal conjugations. Compare asberat "they say" vs. ní-epret "they do not say" or dorósc(a)i "he surpasses" vs. ní-derscaigi "he does not surpass".

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, among them Rudolf Thurneysen (1857–1940) and Osborn Bergin (1873–1950).

Classification

Old Irish was the only member of the Goidelic/Gaelic branch of the Celtic languages which is in turn a sub-family of the wider Indo-European language family that also includes Slavonic, Italic/Romance, Indo-Aryan, Germanic sub-families and a few less well known ones. Old Irish is the ancestor of all the modern Goidelic Langues; they are 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. These inscriptions date from about the 4th to the 6th centuries. Primitive Irish appears to be very close to Common Celtic, the ancestor of all Celtic languages and has a lot of the characteristics of other archaic Indo-European languages.

Sources

Relatively little survives in the way of strictly contemporary sources. These are mainly represented by shorter or longer glosses on the margins or between the lines of religious Latin manuscripts, most of them preserved in monasteries in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France and Austria, having been taken there by early Irish missionaries. Whereas in Ireland, many of the older manuscripts appear to have been worn out through extended and heavy use, their counterparts on the Continent were much less prone to the same risk, because once they ceased to be understood, they were rarely consulted.

The earliest Old Irish passages may be the transcripts found in the Book of Armagh and the Cambrai Homily, both of which are thought to belong to the early 8th 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 Gall 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 at 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, for instance, such as the Lebor na hUidre 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 which were 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.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Old Irish is shown in the chart below. The complexity of Old Irish phonology is due to a four-way split of phonemes inherited from Primitive Irish, with both a fortis–lenis and a "broad–slender" (velarized vs. palatalized) distinction arising due to historical changes. The sounds /f v θ ð x ɣ h ṽ n l r/ are the broad lenis equivalents of broad fortis /p b t d k ɡ s m N L R/; likewise for the slender (palatalized) equivalents. (However, most /f fʲ/ sounds actually derive historically from /w/.)

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	broad	m	N  n		ŋ
	slender	mʲ	Nʲ  nʲ		ŋʲ
Plosive	broad	p  b	t  d		k  ɡ
	slender	pʲ  bʲ	tʲ  dʲ		kʲ  ɡʲ
Fricative	broad	f  v	θ  ð	s	x  ɣ	h
	slender	fʲ  vʲ	θʲ  ðʲ	sʲ	xʲ  ɣʲ	hʲ
Nasalized fricative	broad	ṽ
	slender	ṽʲ
Approximant	broad		R  r
	slender		Rʲ  rʲ
Lateral	broad		L  l
	slender		Lʲ  lʲ

Some details of Old Irish phonetics are not known. /sʲ/ may have been pronounced [ɕ] or [ʃ], as in Modern Irish. /hʲ/ may have been the same sound as /h/ and/or /xʲ/. The precise articulation of the fortis sonorants /N/, /Nʲ/, /L/, /Lʲ/, /R/, /Rʲ/ is unknown, but they were probably longer, tenser, and generally more strongly articulated than their lenis counterparts /n/, /nʲ/, /l/, /lʲ/, /r/, /rʲ/, as in the Modern Irish dialects (e.g. Connacht Irish) that still possess a four-way distinction in the coronal nasals and laterals. /Nʲ/ and /Lʲ/ may have been pronounced [ɲ] and [ʎ] respectively. The difference between /R(ʲ)/ and /r(ʲ)/ may have been that the former were trills while the latter were flaps.

Vowels

The inventory of Old Irish monophthongs is:

	Short		Long
Close	i	u	iː	uː
Mid	e	o	eː	oː
Open	a		aː

The distribution of short vowels in unstressed syllables is a little complicated. All short vowels may appear in unstressed final open syllables (an open syllable is one with no coda consonant), after both broad and slender consonants. The front vowels /e/ and /i/ are often spelled ae and ai after broad consonants, which might indicate a retracted pronunciation here, perhaps something like [ɘ] and [ɨ]. All ten possibilities are shown in the following examples:

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English	Annotations
marba	/ˈmarva/	kill	1 sg. subj.
léicea	/ˈLʲeːɡʲa/	leave	1 sg. subj.
marbae	/ˈmarve/ or /ˈmarvɘ/	kill	2 sg. subj.
léice	/ˈLʲeːɡʲe/	leave	2 sg. subj.
marbai	/ˈmarvi/ or /ˈmarvɨ/	kill	2 sg. indic.
léici	/ˈlʲeːɡʲi/	leave	2 sg. indic.
súlo	/ˈsuːlo/	eye	gen.
doirseo	/ˈdoRʲsʲo/	door	gen.
marbu	/ˈmarvu/	kill	1 sg. indic.
léiciu	/ˈLʲeːɡʲu/	leave	1 sg. indic.

In unstressed closed syllables (that is, those with a syllable coda), the quality of a short vowel is almost entirely predictable by whether the surrounding consonants are broad or slender. Between two broad consonants, the vowel is /a/, as in dígal /ˈdʲiːɣal/ "vengeance" (nom.). Between a slender and a broad consonant the vowel is /e/, as in dliged /ˈdʲlʲiɣʲeð/ "law" (nom./acc.). Before a slender consonant the vowel is /i/, as in dígail /ˈdʲiːɣilʲ/ "vengeance" (acc./dat.), and dligid /ˈdʲlʲiɣʲiðʲ/ "law" (gen.). The chief exceptions to this pattern are that /u/ frequently appears when the following syllable contained an *ū in Proto-Celtic (for example, dligud /ˈdʲlʲiɣuð/ "law" (dat.) < PC *dligedū), and that /o/ or /u/ frequently appears after a broad labial (for example, lebor /ˈLʲevor/ "book"; domun /ˈdoṽun/ "world").

The inventory of Old Irish diphthongs is shown in this chart:

Long (bimoraic)					Short (monomoraic)
ai	ia	ui		au	ĭu	ău
oi	ua	iu	eu	ou	ĕu

History

Old Irish was affected by a series of phonological changes that radically altered its appearance compared with Proto-Celtic and older Celtic languages (e.g. Gaulish, which still had the appearance of typical early Indo-European languages such as Latin or Ancient Greek). These changes were such that Irish was not recognized as Indo-European at all during much of the 19th century. The changes must have happened quite rapidly, perhaps in a one or two-century period c. 500 – 600 AD, since almost none of the changes are visible in Primitive Irish (4th to 6th centuries AD) and all of them are already complete in archaic Old Irish (8th century AD). A capsule summary of the most important changes is (in approximate order):

1. Palatalization of all consonants before front vowels.
2. Extensive umlaut ("affectation") of short vowels, which were raised or lowered to agree with the height of following Proto-Celtic vowels. Similarly, rounding of *a to /o/ or /u/ often occurred adjacent to labial consonants.
3. Lenition of all single consonants between vowels. This applied across word boundaries in the case of syntactically-connected words.
   • Stops became fricatives.
   • *s became /h/ (later lost unless the following syllable was stressed).
   • *w was lost.
   • *m became a nasalized continuant (/w̃/; perhaps [w̃] or [β̃]).
   • *l *n *r remained, but the non-lenited variants were strengthened to /L N R/ (see phonology section above).
4. Syllable-final *n (from PIE *m, *n) assimilated to the following phoneme, include across word boundaries in the case of syntactically-connected words.
   • Voiceless stops became voiced: *mp *nt *nk > /b d g/.
   • Voiced stops became prenasalized /^mb ⁿd ⁿg/. (These were reduced to simple nasals after the Old Irish period.)
   • Before a vowel, /n-/ was attached to the beginning of the syllable.
5. Loss of part or all of final syllables.
6. Loss of most interior vowels (syncope).

These led to the following effects:

• Both the palatalized ("slender") and lenited variants of consonants were phonemicized, multiplying the consonant inventory by 4 (broad, broad lenited, slender, slender lenited). *Variations between broad and slender became an important part of the grammar. e.g.:
  • in masc. o-stems: macc "son" (nom. acc.) vs. maicc (gen.), cúl "back" (nom. acc.) vs. cúil (gen.), cf. Latin -us (nom.), -um (acc.) vs. -ī (gen.);
  • in fem. ā-stems: túath "tribe, people" (nom.) vs. túaith (acc. dat.), mucc "pig" (nom.) vs. muicc (acc. dat.);
  • in r-stems: athar "father" (gen.) vs. ath(a)ir (nom. acc. dat.).
• Lenition and nasal assimilation across word boundaries in syntactically-connected words produced extensive sandhi effects (Irish initial mutations). These variations became an important part of the grammar.
• Both umlaut (affectation) and especially syncope radically increased the amount of allomorphy found across declensions and conjugations. The most dramatic deviances are due to syncope: cf. as·berat "they say" vs. ní-epret "they do not say" or do·rósc(a)i "he surpasses" vs. ní-derscaigi "he does not surpass" (where the stressed syllable is boldfaced).

Examples of changes

The following are some examples of changes between Primitive Irish and Old Irish.

Primitive Irish	Old Irish	Meaning
inigena	ingen	daughter
qrimitir	cruimther	priest
maqqi	maicc	son (gen.)
velitas	filed	poet (gen.)
Lugudeccas	Luigdech	genitive of Lug(u)id (name)
Anavlamattias	Anfolmithe	genitive of Anblamath (name)
Coillabotas	Coílbad	genitive of name

Initial mutations

All words within a syntactic phrase were treated phonologically as a single unit for the purpose of lenition and nasal assimilation, producing extensive sandhi effects. Synchronically these were unpredictable, but diachronically they reflected the state of the original final syllable in Primitive Irish:

• Lenition: If the word originally ended in a vowel, the first consonant of the following word was lenited.
• Gemination: If the syllable originally ended in *-s, or in *-t or *-k after a vowel, the first consonant was geminated, while /h-/ appeared before a vowel-initial word (regularly from *-s, analogically in the other cases). By Old Irish times, this gemination appeared only after vowel-final words.
• Nasalization (eclipsis): If the syllable originally ended in a nasal, the nasal is attached to the beginning of the following word, with various further changes (see above).

These mutations became an important part of the grammar, and remain with little change in modern Irish (see Irish initial mutations).

Mutations were only partly noted in Old Irish spelling:

• Lenition is only clearly indicated in the case of initial voiceless stops (written ph th ch) and (in later Old Irish) initial /f- s-/ (written ḟ ṡ).
• Nasalization is only clearly indicated in the case of initial voiced stops and vowels, where n- is prefixed (m- before b).
• Gemination is only partly indicated when geminated consonants were produced (geminated consonants were in the process of reducing to single consonants in Old Irish times). It was not indicated at all when /h-/ resulted.

The fact that mutations applied more extensively than indicated in spelling is largely inferred from later written and modern spoken evidence.

Example:

forms of fer becc "small man", fer cumachtach "powerful man"

	Singular		Plural
	Old Irish	Prim Irish ending	Old Irish	Prim Irish ending
Nom	fer becc, fer cumachtach	*-os	fir bicc /β-/, fir chumach(a)ig	*-ī < PIE *-oi
Voc	fir bicc /β-/, fir chumach(a)ig	*-e	firu biccu, firu cumachtchu	*-ūs < PIE *-ōs
Acc	fer m-becc, fer cumachtach /g-/	*-on < PIE *-om	firu biccu, firu cumachtchu	*-ūs < PIE *-ōns
Gen	fir bicc /β-/, fir chumach(a)ig	*-ī	fer m-becc, fer cumachtach /g-/	*-on < PIE *-ōm
Dat	fiur biucc /β-/, fiur chumachtach	*-ū < *-ūi < PIE *-ōi	fer(a)ib becc(a)ib, fer(a)ib cumachtch(a)ib	-obis < PIE *-obhis

In the case of a "his, her, its, their", only the initial mutation of the following word distinguishes the various meanings.

initial mutation after a "his, her, its, their"

	Effect	ech "horse"	bo "cow"	teg "house"	PIE form	Sanskrit form
Masc Sing	Lenition	a ech	a bo /β-/	a theg	*esyo	asya
Fem Sing	Gemination	a ech /h-/	a bo	a teg	*esyās < *esyeh₂s	asyās
Neut Sing	Lenition	a ech	a bo /β-/	a theg	*esyo	asya
Plur	Nasalization	a n-ech	a m-bo	a teg /d-/	*eysōm	ēṡām (fem. āsām)

Allomorphy

These various changes, esp. syncope, produced quite complex allomorphy, because the addition of prefixes or various pre-verbal particles (proclitics) in Proto-Celtic changed the syllable containing the stress: According to the Celtic variant of Wackernagel's Law, the stress fell on the second syllable of the verbal complex, including any prefixes and clitics. By the Old Irish period, most of this allomorphy still remained, although it was rapidly eliminated beginning in the Middle Irish period.

Among the most striking changes are in prefixed verbs with or without pre-verbal particles. With a single prefix and without a proclitic, stress falls on the verbal root, which assumes the deuteronic ("second-stressed") form. With a prefix and also with a proclitic, stress falls on the prefix, and the verb assumes the prototonic ("first-stressed") form. Rather extreme allomorphic differences can result, e.g.:

Example differences between deuterotonic and prototonic forms of various verbs. Stress falls directly after the center dot or hyphen.

Earlier form	Deuterotonic	Meaning	Prototonic	Meaning
*ess-bero(n)t < PIE *-bheronti	as·berat /as-ˈbʲerəd/	they say	ní-epret /Nʲiː-ˈhebrʲəd/	they do not say
*cum-uss-ana	con·osna	he rests	ní-cumsana	he does not rest
*de-ro-uss-scochi	do·rósc(a)i	he surpasses	ní-derscaigi	he does not surpass
*de-lugi < PIE *-logheyeti	do·lug(a)i	he pardons	ní-dílg(a)i	he does not pardon
*de-ro-gn...	do·róna	he may do	ní-derna	he may not do

Additional details

In more detail, syncope of final and intervocalic syllables involved the following steps (in approximate order):

• Loss of most final consonants, including *m, *n, *d, *t, *k, and all clusters involving *s (except *rs, *ls, where only the *s is lost).
• Loss of absolutely final short vowels (including those that became final as a result of loss of a final consonant).
• Shortening of long vowels in unstressed syllables.
• Collapsing of vowels in hiatus (producing new unstressed long vowels).
• Syncope (deletion) of vowels in every other interior unstressed syllable following the stress. That is, if there are two remaining syllables after the stress, the first one loses its vowel; if there are four remaining syllables after the stress, the first and third lose their vowel.
• Resolution of impossible clusters resulting from syncope and final-vowel deletion:
  • Adjacent homorganic obstruents where either sound was a fricative became a geminate stop, voiceless if either sound was voiceless (e.g. *ðð *dð *ðd > /dd/; *θð *ðθ *θd *tθ etc. > /tt/).
  • Otherwise, adjacent obstruents assumed the voicing of the second consonant (e.g. *dt > /tt/; *kd > /gd/; *ɣt > /xt/).
  • *l *r *n not adjacent to a vowel became syllabic and then had a vowel inserted before them (e.g. domun "world" < *domn < *domnos < *dumnos; immormus "sin" < *imm-ro-mess). However, in the case of *n this occurred only when the nasal had not previously been joined to a following voiced stop as a result of nasal assimilation; c.f. frecnd(a)irc "present" (disyllabic).
  • Remaining impossible clusters were generally simplified by deletion of consonants non-adjacent to vowels (e.g. between other consonants). Note, however, that Old Irish tolerated geminates adjacent to other consonants as well other other quite complex clusters, including e.g. , ainm /aNʲm/ "name" (one syllable), fedb /fʲeðβ/ "widow", do-aidbdetar /do-ˈaðʲβʲðʲǝdǝr/ "they are shown".

The following is a summary of some of the lower-level phonological changes yielding (written) Old Irish forms from Proto-Celtic (not in order).

• *φ is lost with compensatory lengthening of a preceding vowel.
• *j is lost in all positions after palatalizing a preceding consonant, except that before a dropped final vowel it survives as e.
• *kʷ *gʷ lose their labialisation (yielding c g).
• Initial *w becomes f. Intervocalic *w is lost with vowel colouring. *w is lost after *t *s and sometimes *d (always when initial), and becomes b after a voiced coronal.
• *t *d drop out before *b *s which are retained as p s. *d is lost in *ndw > nb.
• *ld and *ll can both be reflected as either ld or ll, and similarly for *nd and *nn. *ln yields ll.
• Medial *s assimilates to a following sonorant.
• Medial *st yields s.
• *zg yields dg.
• *rs yields rr.
• *x is lost before *s (and survives before *t, written ch).
• Medial *tr *br *dr yield tha(i)r ba(i)r da(i)r respectively.
• The first element of medial clusters *nt *nk *φm, or any medial cluster formed of *φ *t *k *b *d *g plus *l *n *r excepting *tr *br *dr, is lost with compensatory lengthening of any preceding vowel. Compensatorily lengthened vowels develop as original long vowels (below). Such clusters after *s still lose their first member but cause no lengthening.
• Consonants before *e *i *j, excepting the *k in *nk, become slender. If the consonant is not initial this is indicated by a preceding i in spelling (unless the preceding vowel is already i or í).
• ī, and *ē from compensatory lengthening, both yield either é or í, and similarly for *ū and *ō. The corresponding short vowels also can exchange before a consonant plus optional *j and a back vowel.
• *e *i before a consonant plus *(j)u can additionally yield iu. *ō *ū before a velar plus *(j)u can additionally yield úa.
• Nonfinally, the outcomes of *ei are é ía; of *ai and *oi are áe ái óe ói; of *eu and *ou is úa; of *au are áu ó.
• *iwo gives eó or ía; *ewo gives eó; *eiwi gives é; *eiwo gives ía; *awi gives á or ó; *awo gives ó; *owi gives úa.
• *e *i can yield respectively eu iu after *wl.

Orthography

As with most medieval languages, the orthography of Old Irish is not fixed, so the following statements are to be taken as generalizations 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, the acute accent and the superdot are used as diacritics with certain letters:

• The acute accent indicates a long vowel. The following are long vowels: á, é, í, ó, ú.
• The superdot indicates the lenition of f and s: ḟ is silent, ṡ is pronounced /h/
• The superdot is also sometimes used on m and n with no change in pronunciation, when these letters are used to mark the nasalization mutation: ṁ, ṅ.

A number of digraphs are also used:

The letter i is placed after a vowel letter to indicate that the following consonant was slender: ai, ei, oi, ui; ái, éi, ói, úi

The letter h is placed after c, t, p to indicate a fricative: ch, th, ph

The diphthongs are also indicated by digraphs: áe/aí, ía, uí, áu, óe/oí, úa, éu, óu, iu, au, eu

In word-initial position, when no initial consonant mutation has applied, the consonant letters have the following values; they are broad before back vowels (a, o, u) and slender before front vowels (e, i):

Consonant	When no initial consonant mutation has applied in word-initial position before a, o, u	When no initial consonant mutation has applied in word-initial position before e, i
b	/b/	/bʲ/
c	/k/	/kʲ/
d	/d/	/dʲ/
f	/f/	/fʲ/
g	/ɡ/	/ɡʲ/
h	See discussion below
l	/L/	/Lʲ/
m	/m/	/mʲ/
n	/N/	/Nʲ/
p	/p/	/pʲ/
r	/R/	/Rʲ/
s	/s/	/ʃ/
t	/t/	/tʲ/

Although Old Irish has both a sound /h/ 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 preposition i "in" was sometimes written hi) or if they need to be emphasized (the name of Ireland, Ériu, was sometimes written Hériu). On the other hand, words that begin with the sound /h/ are usually written without it, for example a ór /a hoːr/ "her gold". If the sound and the spelling cooccur, it is by coincidence, as ní hed /Nʲiː heð/ "it is not".

After a vowel or l, n, or r the letters c, p, t can stand for either voiced or voiceless stops; they can also be written double with either value:

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English
mac or macc	/mak/	son
bec or becc	/bʲeɡ/	small
op or opp	/ob/	refuse
brat or bratt	/brat/	mantle
brot or brott	/brod/	goad
derc	/dʲerk/	hole
derc	/dʲerɡ/	red
daltae	/daLte/	fosterling
celtae	/kʲeLde/	who hide
anta	/aNta/	of remaining
antae	/aNde/	who remain

After a vowel the letters b, d, g stand for the fricatives /v, ð, ɣ/ or their slender equivalents:

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English
dub	/duv/	black
mod	/moð/	work
mug	/muɣ/	slave
claideb	/klaðʲǝv/	sword
claidib	/klaðʲǝvʲ/	swords

After m, b is a stop, but after d, l and r it is a fricative:

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English
imb	/imʲbʲ/	butter
odb	/oðv/	knot (in a tree)
delb	/dʲelv/	image
marb	/marv/	dead

After n and r, d is a stop

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English
bind	/bʲiNʲdʲ/	melodious
cerd	/kʲeRd/	"art, skill"

After n, l, and r, g is usually a stop, but it is a fricative in a few words:

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English
long	/Loŋɡ/	ship
delg or delc	/dʲelɡ/	thorn
argat or arggat	/arɡǝd/	silver
ingen	/inʲɣʲǝn/	daughter
bairgen	/barʲɣʲǝn/	loaf of bread

After vowels m is usually a fricative, but sometimes a (nasal) stop, in which case it is also often written double:

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English
dám	/daːṽ/	company
lom or lomm	/Lom/	bare

The digraphs ch, ph, th do not occur in word-initial position except under lenition, but wherever they occur they are pronounced /x/, /f/, /θ/.

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English
ech	/ex/	horse
oíph	/oif/	beauty
áth	/aːθ/	ford

The letters l, n, and r are written double when they indicate the tense sonorants, single when they indicate the lax sonorants. (But the tense sonorants are usually written single in word-initial position.)

Old Irish	Pronunciation	English
corr	/koR/	crane
cor	/kor/	putting
coll	/koL/	hazel
col	/kol/	sin
sonn	/soN/	stake
son	/son/	sound

Written vowels a, ai, e, i in post-stressed syllables (except absolutely word-finally) all seem to represent phonemic /ǝ/. 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:

• a appears between two broad consonants;
• i appears between two slender consonants;
• ai appears between broad and slender;
• e appears between slender and broad.

The written vowel may approximate the actual phonetic quality of phonemic /ǝ/.

Morphology

Nouns

Old Irish had three genders, namely, masculine, feminine and neuter; three numbers, namely, singular, dual and plural, with the dual being attested only to a limited degree with somewhat distinct forms, though it is almost always preceded by the cardinal dá, meaning "two" (and as such has been retained in the modern Gaelic languages); and five cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive and dative). Thurneysen had fourteen classes of noun, defined by the morphological marking on the stem, with seven vocalic stems and seven consonantal stems (including one class of irregular and indeclinable nouns). The full range of case is only evident in the noun phrase, where the article causes noun initial mutation, and where the initials of following adjectives are mutated according to the underlying case ending, thus in fer bec "the small man", nominative, differs from the accusative in bfer mbec, though at times such mutations were not written. In the following H shows lenition, N shows ellipsis of the following adjective, and h shows prefixing of h to following vowel initial adjectives. (These mutations are related to the form of the case ending in Common Celtic. Endings with a final vowel triggered lenition; those with a final nasal consonant triggered ellipsis; and those with a final /s/ triggered prefixing of h. For the most part, the endings that can be reconstructed by these mutations agree with the corresponding forms in Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and/or Latin.)

Feminine ā-stems	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative/Vocative	túath H	túaith H	túatha
Accusative	túaith N
Genitive	túaithe (h)	túath N
Dative	túaith H	túathaib

Masculine o-stems	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	fer		fir H
Vocative	fir H	fer	firu h
Accusative	fer N		firu h
Genitive	fir H	fer N
Dative	fiur H	feraib

Verbs

Verbs stand initially in the sentence (preceded only by some particles, forming a "verbal complex", and very few adverbs). The verb can be either suffixed for tense, person, mood and aspect (often portmanteau suffixes), or these can be shown by vowel changes in the stem (e.g. as·beir present "says", as·rubart past "said", as·béra future "will say"). Before this core "verb phrase" are placed various other preverbal clitic particles, e.g. negative ni-/ní-, perfective ro- or one or more preverbal particles that modify the meaning of the verb in unpredictable ways (compare ā-, ex-, in-, dē-, etc. in Latin verbs). Personal pronouns as direct objects are infixed between the preverb and the verbal stem. In an overall sense, the verb structure is agglutinative. A single verb can stand as an entire sentence in Old Irish, in which case emphatic particles such as -sa and -se are affixed to the end of the verb.

Verbs are conjugated in present, imperfect, past, future and preterite tenses, indicative, subjunctive, conditional and imperative moods, and active and passive voices. The only verbal form lacking in Old Irish is the infinitive, this covered, as in the modern Gaelic languages, by the verbal noun. Old Irish inherits a large amount of Indo-European verbal morphology, including extensive ablaut variations, reduplication, primary and secondary endings, multiple ways of forming each of the various tenses and moods, and no general cross-tense/mood conjugational classes. (That is, in general a series of principal parts must be memorized for each verb, much as in Latin or Ancient Greek.)

Some of the formations are as follows:

• Present tense: n-infixing; *y-suffixing; *ā-suffixing; no suffix
• Preterite: *s-suffixing; *t-suffixing; reduplicated
• Subjunctive: *s-suffixing; *ā-suffixing
• Future: *s-suffixing; reduplicated; é as main vowel

Major additional complications were induced by phonological change, especially vowel syncope.

Most verbs have, in addition to the tenses, voices, and moods named above, two sets of forms: a conjunct form, and an absolute form. The absolute form occurs when the verb occurs absolutely sentence-initial with no preverbs, while the conjunct form occurs when the verb is preceded by one or more preverbs. Absolute and conjunct forms are distinguished primarily by the endings. In addition, the conjunct form comes in two variants, deuterotonic ("second-stressed", when exactly one preverb precedes and the stress is on the first syllable of the verbal stem) and prototonic ("first-stressed", when more than one preverb precedes and the stress is on the second preverb). These variants are marked by (sometimes radical) changes in the verbal stem and non-initial preverbal particle(s), which merge with the stem. This is due to the Celtic version of Wackernagel's law, where stress falls in second position whenever there is one or more preverbs.

The difference between absolute and conjunct endings is thought to reflect an additional particle *-es added to the absolute verbal form. Final -i in the conjunct forms was apparently lost early on (cf. a similar change in Latin).

Example:

Conjugation of berid "he carries", do⋅beir "he gives, brings" < *to-beret(i), ní-tab(a)ir "he does not give, bring" < *nís to-beret(i), as⋅beir "he says" < *ess-beret(i), ní-ep(a)ir "he does not say" < *nís ess-beret(i)

	Absolute		Conjunct
			Deuterotonic			Prototonic
	Old Irish	PCelt	Old Irish		PCelt	Old Irish
1st Sing	biru	*berū-s	do⋅biur	as⋅biur	*-berū	ní-tabur	ní-epur
2nd Sing	biri	*beresi-s	do⋅bir	as⋅bir	*-beres(i)	ní-tab(a)ir	ní-ep(a)ir
3rd Sing	berid, -ith	*bereti-s	do⋅beir	as⋅beir	*-beret(i)	ní-tab(a)ir	ní-ep(a)ir
1st Pl	berm(a)i	*beremos-es	do⋅beram	as⋅beram	*-beremos	ní-taibrem	ní-eprem
2nd Pl	*beirthe	*beretes-es	do⋅berid, -ith	as⋅berid, -ith	*-beretes	ní-taibrid, -ith	ní-eprid, -ith
3rd Pl	ber(a)it	*beronti-s	do⋅berat	as⋅berat	*-beront(i)	ní-taibret	ní-epret

Syntax

Old Irish follows the typical VSO (verb-subject-object) structure shared by most Insular Celtic languages (even though other orders are possible, especially under Bergin's Law). Verbs are all fully conjugated, and have most of the forms typical of Indo-European languages (see above). Personal pronouns, when used as direct objects, are prefixed to the verb with which they are associated (after other prefixes, and therefore are often referred to as infixes). Prepositions have the same status as the Latin prepositions, including the property of being verb prefixes.

See also

• Early Irish literature
• Dictionary of the Irish Language
• Auraicept na n-Éces
• Goidelic substrate hypothesis

References

• Green, Antony (1995). Old Irish Verbs and Vocabulary. Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Press. ISBN 1-57473-003-7. 
• Lehmann, R. P. M.; W. P. Lehmann (1975). An Introduction to Old Irish. New York: Modern Language Association of America. ISBN 0-87352-289-3. 
• McCone, Kim (1987). The Early Irish Verb. Maynooth: An Sagart. ISBN 1-870684-00-1. 
• McCone, Kim (2005). A First Old Irish Grammar and Reader. Maynooth: Department of Old and Middle Irish, National University of Ireland. ISBN 0-901519-36-7. 
• O’Connell, Frederick William (1912). A Grammar of Old Irish. Belfast: Mayne, Boyd & Son. 
• Quin, E. G. (1975). Old-Irish Workbook. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. ISBN 0-901714-08-9. 
• Stifter, David (2006). Sengoidelc: Old Irish for Beginners. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-3072-7. 
• Strachan, John (1949). Old-Irish Paradigms and Selections from the Old-Irish Glosses. Revised by Osborn Bergin (Fourth ed.). Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. ISBN 0-901714-35-6. 
• Thurneysen, Rudolf (1993) [1946]. A Grammar of Old Irish. Translated by D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. ISBN 1-85500-161-6. 
• Tigges, Wim; Feargal Ó Béarra (2006). An Old Irish Primer. Nijmegen: Stichting Uitgeverij de Keltische Draak. ISBN 90-806863-5-2. 

External links

• An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language MacBain, Alexander Gairm Publications, 1982
• Old Irish dictionary
• Old Irish Online from the University of Texas at Austin.
• eDIL (digital edition of the Dictionary of the Irish Language)