Re: Irish Language
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but okay. I'll go with a history of the language.
References:
http://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeilge for Irish
http://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeilge_na_hAlban for Scots Gaelic
http://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeilge_Mhanann for Manx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Ireland
Because Wikipedia has EVERYTHING.
The two divsions of Celtic languages left are Gaelic and Brythonic. The surviving Brythonic languages are Welsh, Cornish and Breton. The surviving Gaelic languages are Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx. Scots Gaelic and Max descended from Middle Irish, however, and are also either near-extinct or extinct.This makes Irish the only surviving Gaelic language still widely spoken.
Irish was originally introduced into Ireland in 1200-700BC, making it one of the oldest surviving languages in the world. It was introduced when the Gaels took over, in the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Records show this through carbon-dating iron tools, which were brought by the Celts. However, some scholars now suggest that an Indo-European language, ancestral to the Goidelic group of languages, may have arrived in Ireland as early as the Neolithic. If this is true, then Irish may be
the oldest surviving language in the world.
The original form, Primitive Irish, is recorded in ogham writing, and also had the first dictionary of a non-classical language in Europe, the Sanas Cormaic (which I've actually been trying to get my hands on for
ages). When Latin became more popular as a language of study and learning, it replaced the formal language of Primitive Irish, and the day-to-day spoken language evolved into Old Irish.
Old Irish can be fully reconstructed, unlike Primitive Irish, which mostly existed in fragments. Its structure was fairly standard for an Indo-European language: three genders, five cases. The sentence structure was almost identical to modern Irish, with differences in pronunciation and word formation.
In the 10th century, Middle Irish was born. It was spoken in Ireland and Scotland, primarily. There's a huge amount of literature from this period. Tons. It was also here that the languages began to diverge into Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx.
...and then we have Modern Irish, which we all know, love and speak today. Aside from some relatively recent import words from English which are often rejected by native speakers, the language has only evolved by itself since its original Celtic roots, with no external influences.
And due to being taken over by the English over and over again, English has spread over a lot of the country and only about 10% speak Irish natively. Which is kind of sad, given that it's one of the oldest and purest languages in the world.
Scots Gaelic has little native speakers, and is steadily dying out as a first language. However, it and Irish are mutually intelligible, like the Scandinavian languages.
Manx is extinct, its last native speaker died in 1976. Irish speakers and Manx speakers would have difficulty communicating, and the written languages are completely different.
I promise to teach you how to curse in Spanish real well in return.
