What did the Old Gaelic Language Sound Like?

many people find the Gaelic language a confusing one to learn in part this is because of the orthography the way that the language is written it seems at first at least to be far removed from how it's pronounced this is at least in part due to the Fairly radical changes in pronunciation which the Gaelic language underwent between the earliest surviving sources and the modern period old gelic or old Irish was likely the last form the language that the few surviving lines of real Druids would have spoken as they were pushed to the margins by Christianity so what did old gelix sound like and how does its pronunciation compare to the pronunciation of various modern Gaelic dialects hi friends I'm Kevin mlan don't forget to like subscribe and consider supporting the channel on patreon PayPal or through YouTube super stickers your support is very much app appreciate it and thank you to all of my supporters all languages change over time but some go through more rapid and significant changes than others the modern gelic languages descend from the Proto Celtic language introduced into Ireland likely during the late Bronze Age although possibly from the initial Indo-European B beer settlement of the island it probably began to diverge from the protonic the ancestor of modern Welsh sometime in the early Iron Age and unlike bonic which became influenced by later Continental Celtic language development gelic retained various archaic Celtic features such as the loss of the P sound while Welsh has pen gelic has Ken wel pisk Gaelic esk the early earliest form of the Gaelic language attested is known as ancient Gaelic and even as we go to describe it we already encounter the differences in pronunciation because what I want to say is ow which is the ancient gelic writing system but my pronunciation is in Scottish gelic an Irish speaker might say something like om but in Old GIC it would have been pronounced AUM it's a native gelic system a writing primarily used for inscriptions on Stone as mentioned now in myth it was invented by the godma but in Old gelic pronounced Olma who was its father while the chisel used for the inscription was its mother unlike modern and middle gelic ancient gelic did not use initial mutations long and slender consonants and consonant clusters are not present making its more morphology similar to Gish Latin and ancient Greek some examples are [Music] Leon Mak menu Kuni a kunos Mak Don Maka however by around the 6th Century this form of the language transitioned into old gelic and the change was relatively dramatic and fast some have speculated that the change was due to the introduction of Christianity with the Priestly class replacing The Druids The Druids were responsible for preserving the archaic forms of the language through rituals and reciting ancient knowledge when they were replaced by a Latin educated and oriented Christian Elite the language formed sedr rids helped to preserve through their leading role in public education and rituals was disrupted unstressed syllables at the end of words and certain vowels began to disappear the archaic Irish name lugus appears in old gilic as Lugi or lug in the genitive lugu refers to the god lugus in the genitive and deos means to honor or worship so lugu deos or later Lugi means the one who honors lugus but in Modern Irish lug is pronounced simply Lou in Scottish gelic it is sometimes pronounced L still but the old Irish name Lugi is now pronounced Louie as in huy Dewey and Louie so far from the original sound it is unrecognizable now this type of change was Universal across the language however other changes especially in terms of consonant slenderize and did not all develop with the transition to Old Irish the system of writing gelic in latin-based characters is not always intuitive even in Old Gaelic in part this seems to be because it was influenced by the bonic or archaic Welsh system however there is a lot of evidence hiding Right In Plain Sight regarding how old and even middle Irish was pronounced this pronunciation is in some cases crystallized in English renderings of gelic personal names and place names when English rendered these names from gelic into English they approximated the gelic pronunciation at the time and preserved them more or less unchanged since the region known today as AR G is discussed in a 13th century English text written as arath this is clearly based on the sound of gelic at the time in Old gelic it was spelled guil meaning the Borderland of The gales 13th century text also explains how the Irish and Scots are called gath thus at least as late as 1202 when this was written the letter D in the middle of a word in Old Gaelic and DH in the middle of a middle gelic word was pronounced as an audible th however eventually the th sound disappears from Gaelic altogether so that is how we get the modern sound gaale in protog galic the word began as goel it then became goel and finally gaale this softening process continued into Modern Irish this occurred at the end of words to so that Proto Celtic bulos becomes old Irish bulath became middle Irish bath and then Modern Irish bua however in the final softening of the original D there are differences ending on the dialect in Scottish gelic if the word ends in DH following a non-s slenderizing vowel it will make a g sound in Monster Irish if a DH follows a slenderizing vowel it makes a sound this sound may have developed out of the original softening of the D to a th with some cases instead softening to a g sound so that instead of going from du to th and then to it may have went from du to initially with older English place names derived from gelic you can also see similar things me for instance is one of the counties of Ireland in Modern Irish it's pronounced me in Old GIC it was mether from archaic Celtic Med cognate with English middle and having the same meaning the loss of the th sounding gelic is perhaps the most profound and in my opinion sad sound changes that the language underwent some examples are gelic M old gelic math Proto Celtic mat Scottish gilic ah old gilic ah Proto Celtic yatus Scottish gelic G old gelic gu Proto Celtic gutus Scottish GIC B old gelic BNA Proto Celtic bedani Scottish gilic CL old gilic CL Proto Celtic Clos Gil she old Celtic she Proto Celtic sidos and of course we also have words that differ fairly significantly in sound between Scottish gelic Irish and old gelic so Scottish gelic F Irish F and old gelic feed Proto Celtic wios all mean meaning would now B is one of the consonants which is not always easy to understand its intended sound in Old gelic the reason is because sometimes it means b sometimes it means a type of w while other times it means a type of v a good example is the city of Dublin its modern gelic name is Baka or old pronunciation bath cleath yet its English name is also gelic derived in old gelic black is spelled du pronounced variably today as Tu or du however when the sound changed is not clear but it seems it must have been pronounced as a b when vikings settled the area and adopted the name crystallizing its sound in Norse and in England English as dub from Proto Celtic dubus now finally there is the infamous GH my channel is an example of this while most Modern Irish speakers pronounce the name Lou I use the older pronunciation of l from Proto Celtic lugus this GH in Modern Irish and Scottish gilic is nearly always silent some examples are gilic cha old gilic tigna Proto Celtic OS so we can see that there is a fairly substantial difference between old gelic and modern gelic now modern gelic also has peculiar pronunciations depending on the dialect for instance an S sound is sometimes inserted between an r and a d so instead of saying b as you would have in Old GAC they say bar another significant sound change that is perhaps not as noticeable in orthography but as noticeable when you listen to the language is the sound of R in Old Gaelic a broad R was generally trilled or rolled R Ruth slender RS were generally tapped so kov in Modern Irish most speakers have eliminated not only trills but also Taps so that the r almost sounds like an English R in Scottish gelic the r is generally tapped the broad R will have a harder tap and the Slender R will have a softer tap with more air although in some dialects this slender R is actually turning into a kind of th sound so now I will do some readings of various old Irish poems now the readings will not be perfect I do not have perfect old gelic pronunciation and very few if any people do but it's based on several years of study of the topic as well as various pronunciation guides but there isn't always agreement over every sound this is a poem called storm on the great Mo Glam guess wasy f for in foron L Arin a s g Isel green g ro ro [Music] ro well I hope you like this video and if you did please like share and subscribe and consider supporting me on patreon PayPal or through YouTube super stickers your support is very much appreciated and as always stand [Music] tall

Channel: Fortress of Lugh

Views: 364,806

Keywords: old Irish, Irish language, Gaelic, ancient language, Celtic language

Id: lAmGGOhuoOw

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023