Primitive Irish or
Archaic Irish () is the oldest known form of the
Goidelic languages. It is known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the
ogham alphabet in
Ireland and western
Great Britain from around the 4th century to 7th or 8th century.
Characteristics
Transcribed ogham inscriptions, which lack a letter for the /p/ phoneme, show Primitive Irish to be similar in
morphology and
inflections to
Gaulish,
Latin, Classical
Greek and
Sanskrit. Many of the characteristics of modern (and medieval) Irish, such as initial mutations, distinct "broad" and "slender" consonants and
consonant clusters, are not yet apparent.
More than 300 ogham inscriptions are known in Ireland, including 121 in
County Kerry and 81 in
County Cork, and more than 75 found outside Ireland in western
Britain and the
Isle of Man, including more than 40 in
Wales, where Irish colonists settled in the 3rd century, and about 30 in
Scotland, although some of these are in
Pictish. Many of the British inscriptions are bilingual in Irish and Latin, but none show any sign of the influence of Christianity or Christian epigraphic tradition, suggesting they date before 391, when Christianity became the official religion of the
Roman Empire; only about a dozen of the Irish inscriptions show any such sign.
The majority of ogham inscriptions are memorials, consisting of the name of the deceased in the
genitive case, followed by...
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