Old Irish – Archaic, Well-Preserved, and Strikingly Close to Proto-Celtic

[Black Book]

Old Irish – Archaic, Well-Preserved, and Strikingly Close to Proto-Celtic​

---

Old Irish is strikingly close to Proto-Celtic, preserving an extraordinary amount of its grammar, vocabulary, and syntax - more than any other surviving Celtic language:

Nouns carry three genders, five cases, and sometimes dual number, while verbs are famously intricate, with multiple classes, moods, tenses, and the unique feature of infixed pronouns that allow a single verb to encode subject, object, tense, and mood. On top of that, the language has lenition, nasalization, and eclipsis, mutations that weave grammar into the sound of every word, and a verb–subject–object word order that interacts elegantly with prepositional inflection and relative clauses.

Old Irish is not just another inflected language — it is far more morphologically dense and syntactically intricate than even Latin, making it one of the most challenging and rewarding languages in Europe to study.​

Below I will make some comparisons with Old Norse, the main other substantial Northwest European ancient language, to help show the significance of Old Irish's preserved state.

Old Irish is one of the earliest fully attested Celtic languages (7th–9th century), and preserves complete grammar, verb systems, and syntax. By comparison, Old Norse texts appear later (~9th–13th century) and its grammar is noticeably simpler. Old Irish also has effectively about double the amount of surviving text that Old Norse has (~130,000–150,000 lines versus ~70,000–85,000 lines), which is even more significant in that the Old Irish texts were written centuries earlier than the Old Norse texts.

Old Irish literature includes the Ulster Cycle (epic heroic stories), Fenian Cycle (Fionn mac Cumhaill adventures), Mythological Cycle (Tuatha Dé Danann), poetry embedded in prose, legal texts, annals, and glosses. Old Norse has the Poetic Edda and sagas, but fewer long, interconnected narratives, and some vocabulary is uncertain due to “hapax legomena,” meaning not enough contextual evidence to definitively determine a word’s definition due to it only being present once throughout all available texts. This problem is less relevant in Old Irish, as its corpus is nearly double the size and contains thousands of contemporary 'glosses' (bilingual notes written by the scribes themselves), making it far less likely to encounter words that are literally undetermined in meaning.

Old Irish has notable cognates with Sanskrit:

The Sanskrit word for “freeman” is arya, which has an Old Irish cognate aire, meaning “noble,” while the Sanskrit word for “good,” naib, is a cognate of the Old Irish word noeib, from which the modern Irish word naomh, “saint,” derives.

The shared origins between Old Irish and Sanskrit are also evident in minda (Sanskrit for physical defect) and menda (Old Irish for a person with a stammer), and perhaps most clearly in Raj (Sanskrit word for king) and the Old Irish cognate Rí.

Other comparisons include the Sanskrit badhira (deaf), which is bodar in Old Irish, while the Sanskrit pibati (drink) is reflected in the Old Irish ibid.​

From: https://www.irishamerica.com/2017/05/mother-teanga/

---

While its impressive grammar complexity and archaic preservation may also sound intimidating, there is a gateway into the language to make the journey a feasible one: Modern Irish provides a great stepping stone into the ancient form of the language, especially the Ulster dialect, which retains 40-50% of the roots of the core vocabulary from Old Irish.

The Pathway: Modern Irish to Old Irish​

Of the 3 main dialects one can learn of modern Irish today (Connacht, Munster, and Ulster), Ulster Irish is believed to be the closest to Old Irish phonetically and in its lexicon; in other words, it has the closest pronunciation to Old Irish overall, and retains the most archaic vocabulary. Munster is seen as the closest to Old Irish grammatically; however, Ulster is still moderately conservative in this regard, while Connacht is the most simplified of the three.

In regards to feasibility to learn (e.g. number of learning resources and media available) as well as usefulness in modern Ireland, technically the Connacht dialect has the largest number of speakers and most learning resources available; however, it is still the most divergent compared to Old Irish. The Munster dialect has the lowest number of speakers by a fairly large margin, as well as scarce/archaic learning resources. The Ulster dialect only has slightly fewer speakers than Connacht, while also benefiting from being the dialect that is taught in Northern Ireland, providing it with modern learning materials and strong media support from BBC Northern Ireland as well as TG4 (an Irish free-to-air public service television channel) broadcasts. Additionally, Ulster Irish is the closest of the three to Scottish Gaelic, thanks to Ireland's historical Ulster province being relatively close in proximity to Scotland.

To summarize, Ulster Irish has substantial learning resources and support, is the closest to Old Irish in pronunciation and vocabulary, and is moderately conservative grammatically. This makes it a great choice as a bridge to eventually learn Old Irish, and one could even use Ulster pronunciation when reading Old Irish texts instead of trying to rely on potentially incorrect scholarly reconstructions.

---

​

Learning Resources​

Sionnach is an excellent and completely-free app for learning Modern Irish. You can choose to focus on any of the three main dialects, including Ulster, which will tailor the lessons and pronunciations to that dialect.

Note: As of the time of writing this article, the creators of the app are working on a successor to it: “Madra Teanga, our new open-source project. Sionnach will remain live for existing users until the new app is ready.”


TG4 provides free streaming of dramas, children’s shows, and more in Modern Irish.

 

[Yurei]

Being Irish myself, I did some digging. Apparently the word order in Irish is very similar to that of Ancient Egyptian too.

 

[SrivatsaKouros]

Great post, I'm glad you posted this. There are many clear connections between the Ancient Irish and Vedic civilizations, and these need to be explored more. I have theorized that they may have been linked in past civilizations, possibly in the Golden or Silver Ages, as rival tribes or distant relatives, or both. The Tuatha de Danaan means in Irish "folk of the Goddess Danu" and is related to the Vedic Danavas or "Children of Goddess Danu" who were half-brothers and rivals to the Devas. This "rivalry" occurs in the later corrupted texts, and in the earliest Vedic writings, the Danavas were not seen as negative and were related to the Gods. This is much like what happened with the term "Asura," which originally was a positive term for the Gods themselves. What might have happened here is that the people of Ireland, the Tuatha de Danann, and the people of Iran, the Ahuras, once a part of the Vedic society, kept the names of their Gods and then went to war with the Vedic peoples, which caused the Vedic people to later label these people and their Gods as their adversaries.

In Sanskrit, pranava (AUM or OM) turns into “Ogum” before the term Satyam (Name of the Supreme God). Quite curiously, the name of the Archaic Irish Alphabet is called Ogham and is pronounced the same way as Ogum in Sanskrit. The Ogham is essentially the Irish version of the Runes; some believe they inspired the creation of the Norse Runes themselves. What Ogham means in Archaic Irish is 'point-seam.' This connects directly to the meaning of Pranava AUM, or Ogum in Sanskrit, which is the bindhu, or dot, from which all creation emerges.

 

[SrivatsaKouros]

Great post, I'm glad you posted this, we need more fellow Irishmen digging into their roots. There are many clear connections between the Ancient Irish and Vedic civilizations, and these need to be explored more. I have theorized that they may have been linked in past civilizations, possibly in the Golden or Silver Ages, as rival tribes or distant relatives, or both.

The Tuatha de Danaan means in Irish "folk of the Goddess Danu" and is related to the Vedic Danavas or "Children of Goddess Danu" who were half-brothers and rivals to the Devas. This "rivalry" occurs in the later corrupted texts, and in the earliest Vedic writings, the Danavas were not seen as negative and were related to the Gods. This is much like what happened with the term "Asura," which originally was a positive term for the Gods themselves.

What might have happened here is that the people of Ireland, the Tuatha de Danann, and the people of Iran, the Ahuras "Asuras" (s turns into an h from Sanskrit to Avestan), were both once a part of a large Vedic Golden Age society, and once the cycles of time caught up with it, it eventually fragmented and these people kept the names of their original Gods and then went to war with the Vedic peoples, which caused the Vedic people to later label these people and their Gods as their adversaries, even though they most likely worshipped the same deities.

The 3 i's (keep your 3rd i open!!!) The Iranians, the Irish, and the Indians all called themselves Aryans. The name of the country Iran originates from the ancient Avestan word Airyānąm, meaning "Land of the Aryans." The Irish people referred to themselves as Érainn, pronounced the same as Aryan. The Indians, of course, refer to themselves as Aryan many times in their ancient texts. All three of these civilizations were born from the true Aryan Race

Ancient Vedic Indians worshipped a solar God known as Aryaman. He is the deity of the customs that rule the various Aryan tribes and people. The Zoroastrians, before their religion was corrupted, worshipped Ahura Mazda, AND Ahriman, the God of Light and the God of Darkness. This is the same as Zeus and his Chthonic side, Hades. It is said that the land of Ireland was founded by a legendary figure and High King of Ireland known as Érimón (pronounced the same as above), from whom many Irish people are descended to this day.

In Sanskrit, pranava (AUM or OM) turns into “Ogum” before the term Satyam (Name of the Supreme God). Quite curiously, the name of the Archaic Irish Alphabet is called Ogham and is pronounced the same way as Ogum in Sanskrit. The Ogham is essentially the Irish version of the Runes; some believe they inspired the creation of the Norse Runes themselves. What Ogham means in Archaic Irish is 'point-seam.' This connects directly to the meaning of Pranava AUM, or Ogum in Sanskrit, which is the bindhu, or point/dot, from which the Sanskrit alphabet, all mantras, and all creation emerges.

 

[Black Book]

Great post, I'm glad you posted this. There are many clear connections between the Ancient Irish and Vedic civilizations, and these need to be explored more. I have theorized that they may have been linked in past civilizations, possibly in the Golden or Silver Ages, as rival tribes or distant relatives, or both. The Tuatha de Danaan means in Irish "folk of the Goddess Danu" and is related to the Vedic Danavas or "Children of Goddess Danu" who were half-brothers and rivals to the Devas. This "rivalry" occurs in the later corrupted texts, and in the earliest Vedic writings, the Danavas were not seen as negative and were related to the Gods. This is much like what happened with the term "Asura," which originally was a positive term for the Gods themselves. What might have happened here is that the people of Ireland, the Tuatha de Danann, and the people of Iran, the Ahuras, once a part of the Vedic society, kept the names of their Gods and then went to war with the Vedic peoples, which caused the Vedic people to later label these people and their Gods as their adversaries.

In Sanskrit, pranava (AUM or OM) turns into “Ogum” before the term Satyam (Name of the Supreme God). Quite curiously, the name of the Archaic Irish Alphabet is called Ogham and is pronounced the same way as Ogum in Sanskrit. The Ogham is essentially the Irish version of the Runes; some believe they inspired the creation of the Norse Runes themselves. What Ogham means in Archaic Irish is 'point-seam.' This connects directly to the meaning of Pranava AUM, or Ogum in Sanskrit, which is the bindhu, or dot, from which all creation emerges.

Excellent and thought-provoking information, Brother - thank you for sharing your knowledge on this subject.