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Brent Allen
May You Live To Wear It I´ve heard of banshees and leprechauns. I´ve seen shamrocks galore and I often wear trousers. I know a girl named Colleen, I know that Baltimore is not a shanty town, and I have never tasted whiskey. The connection between most of these things is quite obvious, but what does Baltimore have to do with banshees? Who is Colleen? Does anyone care if I wear trousers? There is, in fact, a connection between all of these things. They are all derived from Gaelic words. Gaelic belongs to the Celtic family of languages which are spoken in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and by small groups of emigrants who speak Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia and Welsh in Patagonia. I find Irish Gaelic of particular historical linguistic importance, not because it is strong today or has superseded other languages, but because it has survived for centuries despite countless attempts to destroy it and has left behind a great legacy of literature. Because of this literature, we are able to trace some of the sound changes that have taken place in Irish over the centuries. I will explain some of these sound changes during Ogam Irish, Old Irish, Middle Irish and Modern Irish; how they took place and other languages affected these changes. First, to explain the words above, a banshee is a fairy woman, derived from the Irish bean sí /bæn Ri/. Another mythical figure is from Old Irish lú chorpán /lu u orpan/, (small body), which through metathesis comes to us today as leprechaun. The Irish have a favorite drink, in Irish called uisce beatha /iRge bæhe/, (literally the "water of life"), and if the word uisce were seen by a non-Gaelic speaker, it would likely be pronounced something like "whiskey" (which happens to be exactly what happened). From the Gaelic word triubhas /trues/ (pants) we get trousers, galore comes from go leor /ge lior/ (plenty), shanty comes from sean tí /Ran ti/ (old house), and shamrock comes from seam róg /Ræm rog/. A few proper names include Colleen from cailín /kalin/ (girl); Killeen, Texas derives its name from cillín /kilin/ (little church or churchyard), and Baltimore is derived from baile an tí mhóir /bale an ti voir/ (town of the big house). Although these few words represent most of what has been borrowed from Irish Gaelic into other languages, it is nonetheless a rich language and enjoys interesting greetings such as the phrase go maire tú is go gcaithe tú é /ge mere tu is ge gæhe tu e/ (may you live to wear it, the title of this paper) (Owens intro.) Given this small sample of modern Irish words and their pronunciation, I will now go about explaining a small part of Irish history and how these words have come to be pronounced as they are.
Introduction As stated above, these words are examples of derivations from Irish Gaelic. It was words such as these that sparked my interest a few years ago when I began my studies of the Celtic languages. At that time, I knew very little about the Celtic languages. I actually thought once that Gaelic and Welsh were simply local variations of English. As I learned exactly how different they are from English, I began to appreciate little words like "galore" and "banshee" a great deal. Irish had little effect on its neighbors and lexical borrowing from Gaelic into English has traditionally been extremely minimal, being limited mostly to place names and geographical features such as crag (rock) and glen (valley). These are examples of a few words which were lucky enough to enjoy usage in both languages. With Celtic as a substrate language, the Roman armies and the Germanic tribes who came after them had apparently no interest in helping the Celts retain their language and culture, nor in learning anything about them. As a result, the Celts and their languages have suffered great losses over the centuries. Taking all of this into account, it sometimes amazes me that there is as much left of the Celtic languages as there is today. Some of the Celtic languages have not been as fortunate as Irish and have died, as is talked about in the following poem:
The darkness grows behind the cottage-wall,
This poem was dedicated to the memory of Dolly Pentreath, the last native speaker of Cornish who died in 1777, and Ned Maddrell, the last native speaker of Manx who died in 1974. (Gregor vii). This poem expresses the tragedy of the loss of these two Celtic languages. The other Celtic languages have also suffered great losses and are only spoken by a very small number of people. It´s hard to believe that, at one point in European history, from approximately 500 B.C. to 100 A.D., the Celts maintained control over most of western Europe (from the Atlantic to the Danube and from the Pyrenees to the Black Sea) and had so much power that even the Romans feared them (Gregor 1). As the Celts began to lose this power, they were conquered and driven back into the hills for centuries. Their very existence and that of their languages was constantly threatened. The discovery of Gaelic in the British Isles in the first century A.D. marks the beginning of the distinction between the Q-Celtic and the P-Celtic languages, which distinction is still used today. D.B. Gregor states that, originally, all Celtic languages had no phoneme /p/. As the languages changed, they divided themselves into two groups, those which kept the original Indo-European q and those which changed it to p. Languages which kept the original q are called Goidelic (derived from Welsh Gwyddel meaning "raider") and include Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx. Languages which changed q to p are called Brythonic (from Welsh and Latin military name for Britons, Brittones). The P-Celtic languages include Breton, Cornish and Welsh. It is also argued that Pictish, the language spoken in Scotland before the Gaels arrived, was probably a P-Celtic language, but so little is left of their language that we are unable to ascertain if the Picts even spoke a Celtic language (Gregor 17, 18, 139, 140). The Celtic languages, however, are not the only ones to have P and Q variations. Gregor notes that some of Latin´s linguistic neighbors, Oscan and Umbrian, as well as the Greek dialects of Boeotia, Aeolia and Lesbos, belong to a P-group as well (pump, pempe, "five", cf. Wel. pump Cor. pymp Bre. pemp "five"). Latin and its neighbor Faliscan belong to a Q-group (Lat. quinque, Ir. and Sc. cuig, Manx queig "five"). The only other Indo-European language family to change to p is the Germanic, which must have had p at some point in order to produce f in Gothic fidwor "four" and fimf "five" (Gregor 139,140). As discussed above, Cornish and Manx are now extinct, and the other Celtic languages are in danger of becoming so. Irish Gaelic has suffered severely, as have other Celtic languages, but Irish is of particular linguistic interest because of the literature it has left behind for us to study.
Ogam Irish Cathair Ó Dochartaigh explains that the earliest known records of any Q-Celtic language are said to date back to between the first and fifth centuries A.D. These lithograph inscriptions, which have been found throughout the southern parts of Ireland, were written in what is called the Ogam alphabet. Briefly, the Ogam alphabet was written on the edge of a stone, consisting of one to five notches along the edge of the stone for the vowels (A, O, U, E, I), and for the consonants, one to five horizontal strokes to the right (B, L, F, S, N) or to the left (H, D, T, C, Q) and one to five diagonal strokes (M, G, NG, Z, R) (McCone 22). Ó Dochartaigh believes that this alphabet had its foundation in the Latin alphabet (MacAulay 12). Kim McCone seems to agree. According to her, Palladius was sent by Pope Celestine from Rome to be bishop of Ireland in 431 A.D. This suggests that there was already an established Christian community in Ireland, which in turn implies some degree of Latin literacy among the Irish people. This could have been the foundation for the Ogam alphabet. There were also Irish colonies in Wales during the fourth century A.D. This would have also brought the Irish into contact with Latin which suggests another possibility for the innovation of the Ogam alphabet.
Old Irish At about the same time as Palladius arrived in Ireland, the Irish language began to be written in the Latin alphabet. Ó Dochartaigh explains that this brought in its wake greater literacy in Ireland. With a greater number of people able to read and write Latin, they began to use the Latin alphabet to write their own language. As the new alphabet was applied to the Irish sound system, the beginnings of a somewhat standard Irish orthography were introduced. This contact with the church naturally brought with it numerous Latin loan words. This period of borrowing probably lasted for about a century, with another major period of borrowing in about the seventh century. These two major periods of borrowing allow us to reconstruct the phonological changes (too extensive to go into in any detail in this paper) that must have taken place during that time and create a relative chronology for those changes (MacAulay 13). This also marks the beginning of the Old Irish period, which lasted from approximately the seventh century (Archaic Old Irish) to the ninth century (Late Old Irish). During this time, the first Gaels started migrating to Scotland and the Isle of Man. The Gaelic that is spoken in Ireland, Scotland, and on the Isle of Man remained virtually the same language up until about the tenth century. Most of the linguistic evidence from this period is found in the translations of the Bible and in the margins of various Latin texts. This is also probably the period of the most widespread use of Irish in Ireland. Beginning in the end of the eighth century, Norse settlements in Dublin, Wexford and Limerick were large enough to have an effect on the Irish language, but mainly in the area of lexical borrowings connected with coastal life and seafaring. This did not have a lasting effect, however, as the Norse language had all but disappeared in Ireland a few centuries later (MacAulay 13). The Old Irish consonant inventory was three times as large as the Ogam Irish inventory. McCone describes the inventory as having the following consonants and features: palatal and non-palatal voiced and voiceless stops and fricatives, nasals, sibilants, aspirates and liquids. A few of the Latin digraphs were used somewhat consistently in Old Irish orthography, such as th, ch and sometimes even ph to distinguish between the voiceless fricatives and their voiceless stop counterparts, where the graphemes t and c were normally used and became fricatives only in certain environments (McCone 27,29).
Middle Irish Middle Irish (Mid. Ir.) lasted from the ninth century until the twelfth, and some of the phonological changes that occurred during this period are reflected in the orthography. The Old Ir. cland /kland/ became Mid. Ir. clann /klan/ (offspring) with cases of hypercorrective spellings in Mid. Ir. cend /ken/, spelled in Old Ir. cenn /ken/ (head). There was a distinction in Old Ir. between the allophones /m/ and /b/, which, in lenited position, represented nasalized and non-nasalized /v/ respectively. In Mid. Ir., this distinction became less clear, as evidenced by the spellings of the word for "broke" in Mid. Ir. mebaid /mevað/ from Old Ir. memaid /mevað/ which represents dissimilation of nasalized to non-nasalized /v/ after /m/ followed by a vowel. An example of reverse assimilation of non-nasalized to nasalized /v/ after /n/ followed by a vowel can be seen in Mid. Ir. náem vs. Old Ir. nóeb /noiv/ "saint." Old Ir. initial /mr/ and /ml/, mrath /vrat/ "treachery" and mligid /vligið/ "milks" become Mid. Ir. /br/ and /bl/, brath and bligid (McCone 141). A few other features of Irish which up until this point have been retained are /ð/ and /t/, as in fiadib /fiaðev/. This brief look at Mid. Ir. phonology and phonemics in relation to its orthography is very inadequate if we are to understand how the whole system functions, but it is enough to give us an appreciation of modern Irish orthography and pronunciation.
Modern Irish Modern Irish is usually divided into Early Modern (or Classical) Irish (from mid-twelfth century to mid-sixteenth century) and Modern Irish (from mid-sixteenth century to present-day), although reasons for this division seem to be more socially than linguistically based. During this period of Irish, the interdental fricatives /t/ and /ð/ are lost, which is also reflected in many dialects of Irish English, which do not have these phonemes. Another common feature of Modern Irish is the weakening of unstressed vowels to schwa. This period of Irish saw a steady increase in the use of English as the language of prestige in Ireland. At the same time English was increasing in use, the first Irish grammars were also being written, perhaps out of desperation to counter the effects English was having on the language. It was forbidden and punishable to speak Irish in schools even up until this century. Irish has survived, but not by a very wide margin. Today, according to MacAulay, there are probably fewer than 70,000 fluent speakers of Irish in Ireland. A similar situation exists in Scotland, where there were 250,000 (6.3 percent of the population) speakers of Scottish Gaelic in 1891 compared to 70,000 today (less than 1.4 percent of the population) (MacAulay 15, 16, 22). Fortunately, a strong literary and musical tradition exists in both countries, which helps tremendously to preserve the language.
Conclusion In order to encourage further use of Irish and Scottish Gaelic, there are many societies and associations making efforts to preserve these languages through TV and radio programs in Gaelic, but, due to the historical linguistic deterioration that I have described, the Celtic languages will never again enjoy such wide expansion as they once did. There are a few Scottish and Irish Gaelic speaking communities, called the Gháidhealtachd in Scotland and the Gaeltacht in Ireland, which serve to preserve the language and lifestyle of the Celts living in these areas. These languages may only be spoken by a few as a native language, but there are plenty of enthusiasts out there, such as myself, to help this resurgence of interest in the Celtic languages keep gaining momentum. It is also mandatory in Ireland to study Irish Gaelic in school. It is studied in much the same way that English is studied in the United States, and is met with support and optimism. Although it is difficult to predict the phonological progress of the Celtic languages and Irish in particular, it is fairly certain that these languages will survive. These languages are officially endangered, and perhaps it is for this reason that people are starting to ensure some sort of a future for them. To those who speak these languages and who are fighting to keep them alive, go maire tú is go gcaithe tú é, go n-éirí an bóthar leat, agus go dtuga Dia fairsinge do chroí i gcónaí duit! (May you live to wear (enjoy) it, may the road rise (succeed) with you, and may God maintain the bounty of your heart always!) (Owens 37,38). Works Cited Gregor, Douglass Bartlett. Celtic: A Comparative Study,Cambridge. Eng.: Oleander Press, 1980. Herm, Gerhard. The Celts, The People Who Came Out of the Darkness. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993. MacAulay, Donald. The Celtic Languages. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1992. MacLennan, Malcolm. A Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language. Edinburgh, Scotland: Acair Ltd and Mercat Press, 1995. McCone, Kim. Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Sound Change. Maynooth, Ireland: Cardinal Press, 1996. Owens, Cóilín. Irish Gaeilge., Washington, D.C.: Educational Services Corp., 1986. |