Primitive Irish Totally Explained

Everything about Ivernic totally explained

Primitive Irish is the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages, known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the Ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Great Britain up to about the 6th 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 MAQI, MAQQI, "of the son", and the name of his father, or AVI, AVVI, "of the grandson", and the name of his grandfather: for example DALAGNI MAQI DALI, "[thestone] of Dalagnas son of Dalas". Sometimes the phrase MAQQI MUCOI, "of the son of the tribe", is used to show tribal affiliation. Some inscriptions appear to be border markers.

Transition to Old Irish

Old Irish, written from the 6th century on, has most of the distinctive characteristics of Irish, including "broad" and "slender" consonants, initial mutations resulting from the loss of inflectional endings, and consonant clusters created by the loss of unstressed syllables, along with a number of significant vowel and consonant changes including the presence of the letter p.
As an example, a 5th century king of Leinster, whose name is recorded in Old Irish king-lists and annals as Mac Caírthinn Uí Enechglaiss, is memorialised on an ogham stone near where he died. This gives the late Primitive Irish version of his name (in the genitive case), as MAQI CAIRATINI AVI INEQUAGLAS. Similarly, the Corcu Duibne, a people of County Kerry known from Old Irish sources, are memorialised on a number of stones in their territory as DOVINIAS. Old Irish fili, "poet", appears in Ogham as VELITAS. In each case the development of Primitive to Old Irish shows the loss of unstressed syllables and certain consonant changes.
These changes, traced by historical linguistics, are not unusual in the development of languages but appear to have taken place unusually quickly in Irish. According to one theory given by John T. Koch, If such a language existed, its speakers were eventually absorbed into the Goidelic-speaking population, and by the time the Vikings had established Limerick in about 850, only the Goidelic language Irish was spoken. However, most linguists now explain these Brythonic loanwords as borrowings directly from Welsh, noting that Ogham inscriptions attest to an early Irish presence in Wales. Cormac mac Cuilennáin, king and bishop of Cashel in Munster in Ireland, born 836, died 908, wrote a large Glossary which said that the "Iron-speech" was "dense and difficult" and had recently died out and that two words of it were remembered: ond = "stone" and fern = "anything good".

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