March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day, or Lá Fhéile Pádraig (Irish), named for one of the most recognized of the patron saints of Ireland, Saint Patrick, who died on this date around 493 A.D. While St. Patrick is famous for allegedly driving snakes out of Ireland, he is also responsible for the oldest known Gaelic composition in existence. This fact provides to explore the question of why Gaelic uses familiar letters in such unfamiliar ways.
Gaelic, pronounced: /ˈɡeɪlɪk/, is an adjective that means “pertaining to the Gaels” – the speakers of the Celtic language originating in Ireland around the fourth century. Written Irish, or An Caighdeán Oifigiúil, from this period is known as Primitive Irish. The fifth century saw the language transition into Old Irish – which, with the placement of marginalia (marginal notes) from manuscripts, is known to have utilized the Latin alphabet. A hymn entitled “The Cry of the Deer” written by Saint Patrick may be the only written proof of Gaelic from this time. By the 12th century, Middle Irish evolved into the Early Modern Irish which was used through the 18th century.
There is no standard pronunciation of the Irish language, and the phonology varies amongst the Irish Gaelic and its sister languages the Scottish and Manx Gaelic dialects. Even within the language there are three main dialects – Munster (the south of Ireland), Connacht (Connemara and Aran Island in the west of Ireland) and Ulster (the north of Ireland). Each dialect may vary in their word and phrase selection, pronunciation and even grammar. There is, however, a mutual intelligibility amongst speakers of different Gaelic dialects.
In the case of Irish Gaelic, familiar consonants come in pairs, except for /h/: One is’ broad’ – pronounced with the tongue placed on the back of the soft palate; the other is ‘slender’ – pronounced with the middle of the tongue pushed up towards the hard palate. The use of consonant mutations changes a word according to its morphological and syntactic environment. It helps to identify the relationship between two similar words and their various meanings, but also results in written combinations that can be unusual to the non-Gaelic speaker.
As a result of the Great Famine (known outside of Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine) in the mid-nineteenth century, the Irish Gaelic language lost a great number of its speakers to death and emigration due to poverty. The Gaelic Revival movement, which began at the end of the nineteenth century, encouraged the learning and use of the Irish language throughout Ireland. Today there are just over 72,000 people who use Irish Gaelic as a first language throughout different parts of the country.
you guys are crazy! =( 
Thank god tommorrow is saint patricks day
When mentioning Gaelic “sister languages,” the article omitted Welsh Gaelic, or is Welsh Gaelic for some reason (historical, geographical, other?) not a related, Gaelic-based language. I would think if the article cited Scottish Gaelic, then one would expect Welsh Gaelic to be included.
One thing — Scottish Gaelic isn’t a dialect, it’s a different language. Irish and Scots Gaelic do share common roots, but they’re a very long way back. I think Manx is also a language. It’s not just the pronunciation that’s different — there are many similar expressions, but the comparison might be something like that between Spanish and Catalán (please correct me if I’m wrong
Are we reading this right–? Padraig, pronounced, PatrIgk rather than Patrigk … LIk we pronounce I as ‘ai’ (and ai as ‘ae’ (e.g. bait) and ae as ‘ee’ (i.e. Caesar)) rather than ‘ih’…?
Would Gaelic be related to Gaul in an even-earlier era…?
P.S. Please, Spell ‘marginalia’.
Will English reform its spelling first, or Gaelic?: a snail race or what?
In regards to Eyewitness,
The Welsh language is not Gaelic at all and has no Gaelic roots. Welsh is actually what is called today Old English. It’s what the English language was back in the Middle Ages, or maybe further back, I’m not entirely sure. But English evolved over the centuries leaving this version behind, and it had continued to be used as the Welsh language.
Hope this clarifies.
Okay, firstly, Welsh is not of the Gaelic branch of the Celtic languages: it is as Brythonic, as is Cornish and Breton, spoken in Brittany (Little Britain) in France. Brythonic was spoken by the ancient British Celts, of Britain, that evolved into modern day Welsh: Welsh is the oldest spoken language in Europe.
Saint Patrick himself was not Irish, but a Briton (a British Celt), who was taken to Ireland when he was a young man, where he most assuredly learned to speak the Gaelic branch of the Celtic languages. Patrick would have also spoken Latin.
Gaelic was most assuredly spoken in Ireland LONG before the 4th century, so this article is erroneous on a number of points. Scots Gaelic came from Ireland, and is related to Irish. In other words, the Scots, known as the Scotti, came from Ireland and settled in Northern Britain.
Let’s not forget the English conquest and hundreds year long occupation of Ireland. That didn’t do much to keep the language alive either.
This is CRAZY! :i}
WHOA… WOW… My head hurts… XD
Eyewitness–Welsh is a seperate language from Gaelic; they are loosely related, but Welsh is a Brythonic language, and Gaelic is a Goidelic language, so they are not that close (for comparison, English is a Germanic language).
If I remember correctly, Irish and Scots Gaelic have their roots in Welsh, which is a Celtic language brought over from the Continent. All three have evolved and grown over time.
The Irish language is actually called ‘Gaeilge’ not ‘Gaelic’. So before you go rambling on about a language its probably best you call it by the correct name.
Beidh ar la linn,
La Fheile Phadraig Shona Diabh
Dear Eyewitness; I believe you have a question and the answer is that I believe Welsh Gaelic is significantly different from the others, it or the others being a much older version (I think the Welsh is the older, and perhaps because of their much earlier inhabitance of the Isle of Britain than the Scots, who came from Ireland after the fall of Roman culture in Britain.
Dear Ray, the Irish from Ireland, my mom and dad among them, pronounce it as if it were spelled “porrig”, with a short, sharp ending of the “g” sound. Perhaps, “porick” may be closer to the sound of that spelling of Patrick in Gaelic. Remember, these are also taking an alphabet fashioned whole cloth from Latin, I believe, by scholars, not the common speakers of the tongue, who spoke it indigenously…without written structure
Dear Arianwen,
relatively speaking, the connection between Irish and Scottish is profound, and not that old. It goes to show how separation of geography and culture can mimic in language the evolution of species in nature. The separation of common intercourse among Irish and Scots (who were Irish) quickly gives rise to the differences between them, but they have happened only since the earliest of the middle ages, I believe. The culture, especially the shared instruments, clothing, dance, etc., is easily recognized and quite close between them.
Just a clarification for Eyewitness’s query: the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages has 2 branches. A Goidelic branch (in Old Irish Goidel meant Gael) which includes Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. And a Brythonic branch which includes Welsh, Breton, and the extinct Cornish. So – Welsh is from a different branch than their main discussion above.
I don’t think Welsh is generally considered to be a Gaelic language.
PR: The soft palate is the part of the roof of the mouth that is toward the back (the part where the roof feels smoother and kind of slippery). The hard palate is the roof of the mouth at the front and has tiny bumps and ridges. The sound of a letter differs depending on its place of articulation in the mouth. For instance, the further forward in the mouth an [s] is produced, the more it sounds hissing (sibilant). As you go further back, it will sound more like “sh” and, near the back of the soft palate, like a deeper “sh,” almost a “shr.”
The soft palate is the back of the roof of your mouth. The method of using the tongue there to form particular sounds in several languages is called lenition. Russian is another language where lenition is noticeable. One good example of familiar words – goleor (can’t remember if it’s accented, sorry) is galore in English.
Ray,
Padraig would be pronounced pawdrik
dictionary.com has some exciting articles but could indeed use a spell-checker. The entry on Atlantis, for instance, refers to a “plato.”
Irish Gaelic is a little different from Scots Gaelic but I think they are mutually intelligible. Lá Fhéile Pádraig (St Patrick’s Day) in Scots Gaelic would be Latha fheill Pàdraig.
Both languages use latin letters in different ways than in English eg. “th” has a silent t and “dh” is a softened g sound. Dipthongs are different eg “io” is a long i sound. For example “fiolm” for film. Other languages do the same such as Polish, Slovak, Russian and so on except Gaelic really goes to town.
Also Gaelic has certain sounds we just don’t have in English (lots of gutteral g and ch sounds) and these have to be represented by grouped consonants (eg. gh, ch, dh)
Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh.
Good article, as always. While it’s true that today only a small percentage of the population of Ireland uses Irish as its first language, the revival of the tongue is definitely ongoing. There is an ever-increasing number of gaelscoileanna (schools where all subjects, including maths, English and other European languges, are thought through the medium of Irish), there are televsion and radio stations broadcasting in Irish, and many feel that some of the best poetry being produced in the country is in the Irish language.
Internationally, interest is also increasing in the language. A case in point is Poland, where the language is actively taught in the Celtic Studies Departments of two major universities, Poznan and Lublin.
Anyway, enough proselytising – time perhaps for a pint (the soft power of Irish culture…..)
Sláinte.
This doesn’t answer the question posed. Why such a similarity?
Most Irish names were translated by British map makers – some with an anti-Irish agenda, some were very sympathetic. (in Ireland btw we call it Irish – not Gaelic though in Irish it is correctly called Gaeilge – teanga na gael = language of the Irish) .
Most place names were (sort of) translated, others Anglicised. My home town Dún Dealgan -fort on a man-made hill of Dealga, became Dundalk. Dubh Linn (Black Pool) became Dublin. Corcaigh (Place of the Marshes) became Cork. Lios Mór(Fort at the confluence of the Big River – and another) simply Lismore. Others were translated – Tobar Óin = John’s-well or Johnstown.
Much was lost as driving around or even looking at a place name will tell you something of the landscape or history of a place – Carrick on Suir the cliff at the river, Cluan Méala (Meadow of Honey) became Clonmel. Glen Ribín where we now have our B&B (Valley of the thread-like river) became Glenribbeen. Most names were shortened Monín na gClícán (Little bog of the small skull) became Boston (Co Clare).
English is a wonderful (global) language and I love it – but I miss my Irish placenames greatly. Is trua liom é nach bhuil sé so – ach tá sé anois.
The Irish language was sytematically eradicated from use by the Orangemen (British) who forbade and punished its use!
Eyewitness:
In answer to your question, the article omits Welsh from its list of Gaelic “sister languages” because Welsh (Cymru) is not part of the Gaelic language family. Welsh, along with Cornish and Breton, are Brythonic languages.
@Arianwen Dialects normally differ by more than pronunciation, and whether two closely related languages are dialects or distinct languages is not a black and white question, but a matter of degree. For example, whether Catalan is a “closely related language” to Castilian or a “regional dialect” of Spanish is largely a political question in Spain of unitary nationalism versus regionalism.
In any event, Irish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic and Scots Gaelic are all descended from Classical Gaelic, also known as Early Modern Irish, just as Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan are all descended from the common Iberian Latin of the early part of the first millenium.
@Eyewitness: Welsh is more closely related to Breton. Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and Manx Gaelic have a common ancestor within the last thousand years, while at the time of Roman conguest, British Gaelic was a distinct language in the general Celtic family of languages (like Romance languages today ~ Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.).
@Ray Yes, Gaul was a general Roman term for some of the Celtic-speaking peoples and the territory they inhabited. Pre-Rome and before great migrations of the first millenium, Celtic-speaking people in Europe extended from the British Isles in the west as far east as the Black Sea. When Julius Caesar got appointed proconsul of “Cisalpine Gaul” ~ the part of the Italian peninsula north of the Rubicon river up to the alps ~ he cleverly got it extended to “Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul”, which basically implied that he would be proconsul for as much of the territory north of Italy and Spain as he could grab.
After the Romans and then the Huns, Vandals, Goths and German migrations, Norse invasions, etc. etc., only Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Welsh and Breton are really left, with some language revivals of Manx Gaelic in the western branch and Cornish in the british branch.
Eyewitness, there is no such thing as “Welsh Gaelic”. Welsh is a Cymric (or Brythonic) as opposed to a Gaelic (or Goidelic) language. Welsh and the Gaelic languages are, however, all classed in a wider group known as “Celtic”. But Scottish Gaelic is much more closely related to Irish Gaelic than it is to Welsh.
Richard: There was an attempt in the mid-20th century to simplify English spelling, and write everything exactly as it sounded.
Welsh and Cornish are from a different branch of the Celtic tree (Brythonic) than Irish and Scottish (Goidelic). They are far enough removed linguistically and culturally that they tend to be treated differently.
Hi Eyewitness, the reason for considering Scottish and Manx as ’sister languages’ to Irish (i.e. Gaelic, or Gaeilge, as it’s known in the Irish language) is that there are two strains of Celtic languages, the ‘P’ Celtic and the ‘Q’ Celtic. Irish, Scottish and Manx are examples of ‘Q’ Celtic languages. Welsh, Breton and Cornish are all examples of ‘P’ Celtic languages. The two types of languages are quite different, and the characterstic difference is that one strain substitutes a ‘k’ sound where the other uses a ‘p’ sound.
@Eyewitness: Welsh isn’t Gaelic, it is however Celtic. Modern Celtic is a language sub-group that encompasses Gaelic (Scottish, Irish, and Manx) also known as the Goidelic language grouping, and the Brythonic language grouping (Welsh, Breton and Cornish.) Modern day Scottish and Irish are derived from Classical Gaelic, while Welsh and Breton come from the Roman British era language.
@Ray:There are two other language groupings within Celtic (or Proto-Celtic) that are extinct, Gaulish and Celtiberian. So yes Gaelic and Gaulish are related
IM IRISH PPL. PRAISE ME WOMEN KISS ME LIFE GUD ALL HAIL ST.PATRICK!!!!!!!!
Both are Germanic languages, and English is relatively newer than most. So what’s the point of reforming its spelling?
Modern English would include up to Shakespeare. Anything before his time is ridiculous when trying to read it, especially old English. Middle isn’t too bad at all, but even that still has its difficulties. Then English language, sir, has reformed a lot during the last 1000 years if you think about it.
Eyewitness,
Welsh, Cornish and Breton are also modern survivors of ancient Celtic languages but they form a distinct group, considered to be younger than the Irish/Scottish/Manx grouping. The former are normally described as “P” Celtic or Brythonic languages, the latter as “Q” Celtic or Goidelic languages.
Sadly, I speak none of them, beyond a few words of Welsh my Grandfather taught me!
@Eyewitness: No, Welsh is not Gaelic. It’s a Celtic language but finds pedigree in an altogether dissimilar matrix, namely, Brythonic-Celtic. Perforce,these are the two bisected variants of the Celtic language: Brythonic and Gaelic.
@ Arianwen: Yes, Scots-Gaelic is just an offshoot, dialect, variant (whatever you want to call it) of the Irish language (what this site calls Gaelic). Irish nomads arrived in their thousands to Scotland in the Middle Ages, bringing the Irish language with them. The same goes for Manx. Both are derivative of the Irish tongue.
What this article fails to mention is how the use of Irish Gaelic (known as Erse) was FORCED to decline as a result of the English.
In the 1600s, Ireland fell to the English conquests militarily. With the infusion of Anglo settler/colonists, soon the parliament was taken over. The Irish were forced out of their own parliament. British rule outlawed the use of Erse – England’s attempt to dominate the island – and the language went underground.
The Irish people became second-class citizens in their own country, and forced into poverty. When the Great Famine hit, the poorest areas of the country suffered the most. Death and immigration resulted in the use of the language to practically die out.
@PR …. If you push your tongue straight up, it’s hard (“roof of your mouth”). Further back, it’s soft–your soft palate.
@Eyewitness … I think the reason it said “sister languages” for Scots Gaelic and Manx is that they are those two along with Irish are all Goidelic languages whereas the other known Celtic languages–Welsh, Breton and Cornish–are Brythonic.
Can you guys write a blog about my other half now- Armenian? It is one of the oldest languages and Armenians are the first known accepters of Christianity. I don’t follow religion myself, but it’s an interesting “information tid-bit.” Anyway, awesome entry.
By the way, there are only 18 letters in the Irish alphabet.
Accents ( ´ and ˙) are placed over certain letters to obtain a different pronunciation, as well, letters are combined to create different sounds.
Scots, Manx & Irish Gaelic are closely related – belonging to the Goidelic grouping.
Welsh is realted to Cornish and Breton – in the Brythonic grouping.
“The Great Famine” is what it’s called in English history books. Ireland was a food exporter throughout the period that some us know as “The Great Starvation.” People just don’t want to acknowledge that the cuddly British committed genocide.
There is no such thing as ‘Welsh Gaelic’. Welsh is Welsh. It IS related to Scottish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, however, it’s from a different branch. There two branches of extant Celtic languages: Goidelic and Brythonic. Goidelic = Irish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic. Brythonic: Breton, Cornish, Welsh.
Irish, Manx and Scottish are no more dialects of each other than Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan are. That is to say, they aren’t dialects. They’re very close, and speakers of any one of these will be able to understand quite a bit if spoken to or if reading a text written in one of these languages, but there isn’t total mutual intelligibility.
For instance, as a Spanish speaker, I can tell what most texts written in Catalan or Portuguese are saying, but when I hear people speak, not so much; I’ll pick out words here and there but I can’t make out a lot of it.
Anyways, this article is useless for people without a linguistic and/or phonetic basics background, i.e. if you don’t know so much as the basics you won’t know wtf the soft palate vs. the hard palate is. Furthermore most people which have never read a book or taken a course on such things won’t understand any of the “consonant mutation” or “morphological or syntactic environment” mumbo-jumbo. Try Wikipedia.
Actually, Welsh is not a Gaelic dialect. It’s a Brythonic language and is considered to be one of the original languages of the British Isles.
My former father-in-law was a “come over” and still spoke Gaelic, as well as English. He was from County Kerry, the town of Dingle. When his nephew emigrated to the states he lived with my father-in-law. This young man’s gaelic was nearly impossible for my father-in-law to understand. The reason was a difference in dialect despite having lived only a few miles apart
Eye witness, Welsh is a Celtic language, but it is not a Gaelic language. Gaelic is one of two subsets of the Celtic languages in Britain and Ireland; Gaelic and Brythonic. Welsh is a Brythonic language.
Welsh is actually different. I speak some Scot, some Irish, and a good deal of Welsh and see very little (if any) similarity in sentence construct or word sound between Gaelic and Welsh. There are several varieties but I do not believe it is much different than saying “varieties” for US English Slang versions.
Just a humble observation
If you cite wikipedia, you lose all credibility…
The Hot Word, 2011/03/16
Yes, PR (03/16/2011 at 3:53 pm), the soft pallet is made of balsa wood instead of fine oak.
(Cf. “portable platform”. Maybe, PR means Pretty Rough, my dear sir and good sport?)
The soft palate, also anatomically called the “velum” (adjective “velar”)
is the flexible back of the roof of the mouth.
The proverbial doctor (general practitioner of medicine) asks you, the patient, to say “ah” [ɑː] to make you raise your velum (soft palate).
It leads you concurrently to open your mouth and to breathe through it, and it exposes your throat (upper pharynx) to his/her diagnostic vision.
One pronounces [m] with the velum down (nasal passage open) and [b] with it up (sealed); otherwise, the two consonants are pronounced substantially the same.
In contrast, the hard palate (just “palate”, adjective “palatal”) is inflexible and cannot be moved relative to the neighboring tissue.
Owing to the resulting different sizes and shapes of the oral cavity, a palatal consonant (pronounced near or against the “hard” palate) exhibits more high-pitch sound partials than a velar consonant (pronounced against the “soft” palate).
This makes them distinguishable in listening to speech.
In most languages, adolescents and adults learn to ignore the difference.
(Commonly, they learn that the pairs of consonants are “the same”, but really they are merely not meaningfully different in their own language.)
In the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association,
the unvoiced,
fortis,
lamino-palatal
fricative consonant is symbolized as ç,
and the unvoiced, fortis, dorso-velar fricative consonant is symbolized as x.
(“Lamina”
and “dorsum”
in phonetics refer to areas of the tongue’s upper surface, the active articulator.
Untrained English speakers listening to the sounds commonly confuse the slit fricatives ç and its more frontal neighbor ɕ
with ʃ, a groove fricative: “sh”.
For example, the Austrian and Swiss [ʔɪç] is mistakenly recognized as [ɪʃ].)
The corresponding plosive consonants are written c (high pitched) and k (low pitched) in the IPA alphabet, making ç/c and x/k matched pairs.
Divvie (are you reading this?), the 03/16/2011 column/blog shows my lack of erudition!
I know practically nothing about the Gaelic and Celtic languages!
The orthography stumps me! Shame on me!
(Is my comment today any more intelligible than my previous ones?
Regardless, it merely regurgitates stale information, manifesting nary an insight.)
If only I had the spare time, I would devote today, St. Patrick’s Day, to penitential learning of some of the basics of Irish Gaelic. Alas, I don’t, so I will persist in loathsome ignorance.
When I was in Eire, the bus tickets in Dublin were printed in Gaelic. In Galway, the center of the Gaeltacht, where Gaelic is spoken, the bus tickets were printed in English.
[...] add “Gaelic” and onions to every stir fry meal. — Bill Russel, Larry Bird, Coach Red and Pistol Pete of [...]
Hats off to you ‘Patt’ for sppeaking the truth. Let us not forget or diminish the blinding cruelty of the British. Although the Great Famine claimed many Irish lives, it was the jolly old Brits who almost terminated the laguage along with the people. During the Famine they promised Irish people hope and prosperity by sending them to the “New World” on ships that were then intentionally sunk at sea. My grandparents immigrated to the United States in their early teens around 1917 for fear that their heads would end up detached by the Orangemen and displayed on pikes in public squares and at crossroads as they had seen of their family members and friends. That’s right, the British were still Medieval and barbaric less than 100 years ago! Although they had “Irish” accents, my grandparents never learned to speak any form of Gaelic out of fear for their lives. The fact that much of the language survived merely verbally may explain why there is so much variation.
Irish people speak Irish. Nobody calls it Gaelic in Ireland so the rest of the world should follow suit.
i’m confused….
David, they still do call it Gaelic. Just to let you know. I lived there.
I had two posts from earlier, but somehow they’ve disappeared.
The article does not mention that the decline of Irish Gaelic (also known as Erse – which predates the Scots using the term) was forced by British Rule.
When the Anglo settlers/colonists infiltrated the country, eventually the parliament was dominated by non-Irish. One law was the ban on speaking Gaelic, so the language went underground. Irish were forced into poverty (land ownership was outlawed and therefore many were forced into slums).
When the Great Famine hit, the poorest areas of the country were hit hardest. Death and immigration further led to the decline of the language.
Note, too, that there are only 18 characters in the Irish alphabet, so spelling (using the English alphabet) looks rather strange. Accents (´ and ˙) are used over certain characters, and letters are also grouped to form different sounds. It may seem strange to non-Irish, but have you seen some of the village signs in Wales?
DaNcErGiRl isn’t the only confused one.
I’m still looking for the answer to the question in the headline of this story that got me to read it in the first place:
“Why DOES spelling in Irish (Gaelic) looks so familiar, yet unfamiliar?”
Also, at HenlnLA, I do not see where they answered the initial question. Thumbs up for bringing that out. From my perspective, this whole thing is more so about St. Patrick’s Day, than the question that it asked. Bloody hell.
Wacky! Happy Saint Patricks Day!
Liz Nicholson,
Welsh is part of the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages. It’s not related to English in the way you described.
Alex, Plato is the proper name of a famous Greek philosopher and writer who lived shortly after the time the Jews returned to Israel from the Babylonian Captivity (b. 429 years Before the Christian Era). Evidently Plato is at present not sufficiently famous for you.
The point you make about checking spelling is a good one, that is, where the English language is used. I have no idea if an Irish Gaelic automatic spell checking dictionary exists, or if one does, whether the spell checker can distinguish between English and Gaelic words and apply the correct dictionary.
i’ve always wanted to learn Gailec. My family’s all from England and Ireland, but living in Ontario, Canada, there’s not a lot of resources to learn it 
You forgot the Celts in Brittany, France.
When you’ve solved that, you can move on to explaining how a Bernardo O’Higgins gets to be the Liberator of Chile after 1810…
(When somebody has to do it, you can count on a fighting Celt…20 to one against us? Finally, an even fight…)
My nose bleeds.
Entertaining and educational discourse going here – even the Brit bashing. Love the Welsh – especially their Rarebit.
I know, right? @ HenInLA
Anyways, I’d say it’s because: 1) it’s extremely difficult to spell in Irish how a word actually sounds. Its phonology and morphology are what I call “much too volatile”. The whole soft vs. hard palate business? Yep. And the fact that shit changes the way it sounds depending on whether is before or after this consonant or that vowel and so does the morpheme blah blah blah. Basically Irish’s phonology just isn’t straightforward the way that, say, Hawaiian’s is. This isn’t wrong or right, it’s just how it is; some languages like Irish have an extemely inflection-prone phonology while others, like Spanish, not so much.
tl;dr – To me it looks very unfamiliar b/c there simply isn’t a truly accurate way to spell the way Irish sounds unless you use IPA. This is also true of English, in my opinion; you can reform all the spelling you like, but personally I think it’s just easier to stick to what’s current and be done with it. Some languages just don’t seem to be “meant” to have a writing system that is more or less phonetically accurate; Danish, English and Irish are the best examples I can think of. On the other hand, languages such as Finnish, Italian and Turkish have almost completely phonetically-accurate spelling, i.e. words are spelled almost exactly how they sound.
…So why can’t you do that for English and Irish? B/c they have an unusually large consonant-vowel inventory, and, phonetically speaking, the languages are doing too many things at once that would just be too complicated to note in spelling without resorting to just using the IPA.
This is just my opinion, however, as an undergrad linguistics student. I don’t know the definite reasons behind Irish’s bizarre spelling, but I still think it’s probably b/c of its phonology, as well as language change (i.e. it used to sound this way but now it sounds this other way yet the spelling remains the same – English “knight” is a perfect example of a word whose spelling actually made sense centuries ago but it no longer sounds anything like its spelling suggests lol).
Pogue mahone.
I don’t understand why people call is Gaelic outside of Ireland! For example, in Ireland, on our school timetables it would say Gaeilge (prounanced gay-ill-ga), definitely not Gaelic!
Slán.
HenInLA – The letters in Gaelic look familar but are often pronounced differently.
For example “cafaidh” is pronounced the same as the English “Cafe”, “tìops” is “chips” and “cidsin” is “kitchen”. “Glè bhath” (meaning ‘very well’) is pronounced “gley vaar”, which may come as a surprise to an English speaker.
Chinese languages (Manadarin, Cantonese) when written in latin script do the same.
ps. Welsh is neither Gaelic nor Old English. It’s the modern form of Old Welsh/Brytonnic once spoken across the UK. It’s one of the oldest languages in Europe but not as old as Basque, Albanian or Greek.
the reason irish (gaeilge) looks so familiar to anglophones is because most place names in ireland are (rather unsympathetic) english phonetic renditions or (VERY loose) translations of their irish original.
interesting. im part irsish and i didnt know that!
@HenInLA Go back and read the article I wrote. It answered the question as concisely as I could make it without getting into either politics or pedantics.
Consider for a moment the pronunciation of Paris. Or the fact that English speakers speak of Holland when meaning The Netherlands (Koningrijk van de Nederlands) why/how indeed are many North American place names “lifted” from the First Nations languages etc etc
Places like Mostrim became Edgworthstown under the British. However most Irish nameplaces were (very) simply Anglicised and therefore seem to be similar. Lazyness accounts for part of it too English is creeping in even to Irish conversations – my (Irishspeaking ) family will often say CAR when the ‘correct’ term is gluasteán. A fiddle – as I’ve played for the last 48years is now called a veidhlín – which actually brings a whole new letter into the alphabet. In German it’s a Geige – in Hungarian it’s Hegedu in Dutch – Viool, Swedish – fiol and so forth – we in Ireland now use an English word to describe an instrument that has many other names.
This article fails to answer the question it seeks to answer. It leaves out the part about how monks were responsible for writing down the language. Monks transcribed Gaelic with Latin phonology although their understanding of Latin itself was limited.
I agree with Andi above that the article fails (singularly) to answer the question itself posed. Can we now move on??
Slànte! I’m Scottish myself, but I just thought I’d drop by to leave a couple of notes.
It’s pronounced “gah-lik” not “gay-lick”. Well, at least that’s the way we pronounce it around here.
Neither Manx nor Scots Gaelic are dialects of Irish. They are different languages that share the same root as Gaelige (the Irish language), in the same way that Dutch and German are considered distinct languages.
As already pointed out, there’s no such thing as Welsh Gaelic as Welsh is not a Goidelic language. It is a Brythonic language, much closer to Cornish and Breton (spoken in Brittany, France).
@Liz Nicholson, Welsh is Old English??
“HereIAm on March 17, 2011 at 6:49 am
Both are Germanic languages, and English is relatively newer than most. So what’s the point of reforming it”
I just hope that, by “both”, you are not referring to Irish/Gaelige and English. Irish is a Celtic language. Nothing to do with the Germanic branch.
And concerning the answer, I believe it has been answered only partially. The reason as to why the words are spelt in such unique ways has to do with the fact that Old Irish employed the Ogham system as its sole writing system. When Christianity was introduced in Ireland, priests had a difficult time attempting to transcribe Irish phonemes into the limited Latin alphabet, especially due to the fact Irish consonants undergo slenderisation. As a result, ‘extra’ letters had to be added to reproduce variations in sound that could be reproduced by slenderisation and lenition. The spelling was indeed complicated, but it served its purpose well – the pronunciation of Old Irish is much more loyal to its spelling. With time, however, the phonology of Irish changed greatly, yet the spelling did not fully reflect the changes that occurred over time. Scots Gaelic is even more conservative. Whereas Irish is referred to as “Gaelige”, we call Scots Gaelic “Gàidhlig”. The Irish-speaking areas are collectively called Gaeltacht. Scots Gaelic-speaking areas are called, erm.. the Gàidhealtachd.
Prag yth erow’whei ow leverel dr’ew marow an Kernowek? Nag ew hedna gwir! Mirewgh orthi’vy! Th ero’vy orth y usya!
“Why are you saying that Cornish is dead? That’s not true! Look at me! I’m using it!”
The three Gaelic language communities maintained a long cultural and linguistic connection until the early modern age. That’s why they are referred to as Gaelic. Later specifications were made to distinguish Scottish Gaelic from Irish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic. It was only the establishment of the Irish nationalist movement in the later 19th and early 20th century that insisted on calling Irish Gaelic “Irish”. This is why “Irish” is used in Ireland whereas the rest of the English speaking world says Gaelic.
I would say that the three Gaelic languages are as close to each other as the three continental Scandinavian languages. They are even mutually intelligible to some degree. Especially the (now largely extinct) dialects of north eastern Ireland and the western Scottish Highlands. But Manx is also intellgible to speakers of south western Scottish Gaelic. An Irish native speaker once told me she couldn’t make heads or tails (or in this case ‘tales’) of a passage of written Manx, but once it was read out aloud to her by a Manx speaker she claimed to understand every word.
Welsh, Breton and Cornish are also similar to each other, but not as close as the three Gaelic languages.
What’s this about the claim that specific languages are “old”? What a weird statement to make. A language is as old as the generations alive that speak it. Languages ‘reinvent’ themselves all the time – and every language is ancient, or derived from another equally ancient language, but living languages change all the time and become something slightly different generation by generation. Some cease to be spoken, other languages are consciously resurrected.
Irish and Scottish Gaelic spelling actually works quite well for the phonology of these languages. Yet, especially Irish has a lot of “silent” letter combinations which were pronounced at an earlier point in its history, some of these features may be alive in one dialect, but not in another.
St Patrick was a Welsh, and his first language was Welss/Cymru
I believe George Bernard Shaw advocated the reform of English orthography, but met all kinds of criticism and sarcastic commentaries. In this ‘word processor’ age, I challenge some young bright linguist to ‘give it another go’ and post a better version where we all can see it–and possibly write articles in it. Esperanto has a very logical orthography: example using c and k differently.
Gaeilge has become known as Irish here in Ireland for the same reason that French is called French or German is called German; it’s simply the language’s country of origin. In Scotland, on the other hand, there was already a “language” called Scotts – not Celtic in origin – so Gaidhlig remained as Scotts Gaelic, or simply Gaelic. It does annoy me a bit when people refer to Gaelic solely as the Scottish variety, it is just as correct to call Irish Gaelic, it is simply not done as much. Go n-éirí libh.
Dia dhaoibh ‘a chuile dhuine !
Tá daoine annseo go bhfuil a fhios acu céard atá siad a caint faoi, ach tá go leor eile nach bhfuil a fhios acu aon rud faoi’n Ghaedhilge, nó aon rud eile ach an oiread, tá mé a’ ceapadh !
Slán tamaill.
Seosamh
Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton are all CELTIC languages – The Gaelic branch belong to the CELTIC Q branch and Welsh, Cornish and Breton to CELTIC P. Welsh, Cornish and Breton are sister languages but only cousins to the Gaelic languages – if that helps. Some of the explanations were really long winded and foggy.
Erin-I found this website recently and started to learn irish…Im nowhere near knowing much, but it might be a good place for you to start! http://www.irishpage.com/irishpeople/
I don’t know if all the links work, but I think this is great!!!
hope this helps
Morvil73- you are too cool! when I was really small I read this series called ’seahorses’ and there was a section of cornish which i learned off by heart 
wish I could speak cornish—we need to give it a revival! otherwise it will die!!! NOOO
Margh Glas-Margh a Hav, My a wra delwel- dhiworth mor, tewes, ha men..
no idea what it is, i think it’s a spell or something XD
haha just went on your blog and you already use those lessons, erin, oops ;D
soft pallet?