Old Irish (sometimes called Old Gaelic) is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish. Old Irish is thus the ancestor of Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. Broadly speaking, the grammar and sound systems of the modern languages are simpler than those of Old Irish.
Contemporary Old Irish scholarship is still greatly influenced by the works of a small number of scholars active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, among them Rudolf Thurneysen (1857–1940) and Osborn Bergin (1873–1950).
Read more about Old Irish: Classification, Sources, Orthography, Syntax
Famous quotes containing the word irish:
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)