INTRODUCTION
THE IRISH LANGUAGE
Irish is
one of the many languages spoken across Europe and as far
east as India, that trace their descent from Indo-European,
a hypothetical ancestor-language thought to have been spoken
more than 4,500 years ago. Irish belongs to the Celtic
branch of the Indo-European family. It and three other
members of this branch – Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton –
are today alive as community languages.
The form
of Celtic that was to become Irish was brought to Ireland by
the invading Gaels – about 300 B.C. according to some
scholars. Later it spread to Scotland and the Isle of Man.
Scottish Gaelic and Manx gradually separated from Irish
(and, more slowly, from each other), and they can be thought
of as distinct languages from the seventeenth century
onwards. The term 'Gaelic' may be used to denote all three.
It
appears that the early Irish learned the art of writing at
about the time of their conversion to Christianity, in the
fifth century. After that, the language can be seen to go
through four stages of continuous historical development, as
far as its written form is concerned: Old Irish
(approximately A.D. 600 - 900), Middle Irish (c. 900 -
1200), Early Modern Irish (c. 1200 - 1650), and Modern
Irish. Throughout this development Irish borrowed words from
other languages it came into contact with, pre-eminently
from Latin, from Norse, from Anglo-Norman (a dialect of
French), and from English.
From the
earliest times Irish has been cultivated for literature and
learning. It in fact possesses one of the oldest literatures
in Europe.
MODERN IRISH