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Irish orthography is the set of conventions used to write Irish. A spelling reform in the mid-20th century led to An Caighdeán Oifigiúil, the modern standard written form used by the Government of Ireland, which regulates both spelling and grammar.
Irish (Standard Irish: Gaeilge), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic (/ ˈ ɡ eɪ l ɪ k / GAY-lik), is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language group, which is a part of the Indo-European language family.
- Origins
- Alphabet: The Beith-Luis-Nin
- Corpus
- Non-Monumental Uses
- Unicode
- Neopaganism
- See Also
- General and Cited References
- External Links
It is generally thought that the earliest inscriptions in Ogham date to about the 4th century AD, but James Carney believed its origin is rather within the 1st century BC. Although the use of "classical" ogham in stone inscriptions seems to have flourished in the 5th and 6th centuries around the Irish Sea, from the phonological evidence it is clear...
Strictly speaking, the word ogham refers only to the form of letters or script, while the letters themselves are known collectively as the Beith-luis-nin after the letter names of the first letters (in the same manner as the modern word "alphabet" derives from the Greek letters alpha and beta). The order of the letters is BLFSN, leading the scholar...
Monumental ogham inscriptions are found in Ireland and Wales, with a few additional specimens found in southwest England (Devon and Cornwall), the Isle of Man, and Scotland, including Shetland and a single example from Silchester in England. They were mainly employed as territorial markers and memorials (grave stones). The stone commemorating Vorti...
As well as its use for monumental inscriptions, the evidence from early Irish sagas and legends indicate that ogham was used for short messages on wood or metal, either to relay messages or to denote ownership of the object inscribed. Some of these messages seem to have been cryptic in nature and some were also for magical purposes. In addition, th...
Ogham was added to the UnicodeStandard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0. The spelling of the names given is a standardisation dating to 1997, used in Unicode Standard and in Irish Standard 434:1999[citation needed]. The Unicode block for ogham is U+1680–U+169F.
Modern New Age and Neopagan approaches to ogham largely derive from the now-discredited theories of Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess. In this work, Graves took his inspiration from the theories of the ogham scholar R. A. S. Macalister (see above) and elaborated on them much further. Graves proposed that the ogham alphabet encoded a set o...
Coelbren y Beirdd — A similar runic alphabet based on the Celtic vigesimal system invented by Iolo Morganwgfor the Welsh language.Carney, James. The Invention of the Ogam Cipher'Ériu' 22, 1975, pp. 62–63, Dublin: Royal Irish AcademyDüwel, Klaus. Runenkunde (runic studies). Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 1968. OCLC 183700Forsyth, Katherine. The Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland: An Edited Corpus, PhD Dissertation, Harvard University (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1996). OCLC 48938210Gippert, Jost; Hlaváček, Ivan; Homolka, Jaromír. Ogam. Eine frühe keltische Schrifterfindung, Praha: Charles University, 1992. ISBN 80-901489-3-X OCLC 39570484TITUS: The Ogham Script & Project Ogamica- bottom-to-top, left-to-right
- Alphabet
- c. 4th–10th centuries
The history of the Irish language begins with the period from the arrival of speakers of Celtic languages in Ireland to Ireland's earliest known form of Irish, Primitive Irish, which is found in Ogham inscriptions dating from the 3rd or 4th century AD. [1] .
Irish orthography has evolved over many centuries: since old Irish was first written down in the Latin alphabet circa the sixth century AD. Prior to that primitive Irish was written in Ogham . The origin of Gaelic Gael + Ic represents Scots-Gaelic as a derivative of Gaidheal from 1590-1600. [iii]
An Caighdeán Oifigiúil ([ənˠ ˌkəidʲaːn̪ˠ ˈɛfʲɪɟuːlʲ], "The Official Standard"), often shortened to An Caighdeán, is the variety of the Irish language that is used as the standard or state norm for the spelling and the grammar of the language and is used in official publications and taught in most schools in the Republic of ...
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic [1] [2] [3] ( Old Irish: Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; Irish: Sean-Ghaeilge; Scottish Gaelic: Seann-Ghàidhlig; Manx: Shenn Yernish or Shenn Ghaelg ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from c. 600 to c. 900.
