Classical Gaelic or Classical Irish () was a shared
literary form of Gaelic that was in use by poets in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
and
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
from the 13th century to the 18th century.
Although the first written signs of
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well ...
having diverged from
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
appear as far back as the 12th century annotations of the
Book of Deer, Scottish Gaelic did not have a separate standardised form and did not appear in print on a significant scale until the 1767 translation of the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
into Scottish Gaelic
[Thomson (ed.), ''The Companion to Gaelic Scotland''] although
John Carswell's ', an adaptation of
John Knox's ''
Book of Common Order
The ''Book of Common Order'' is the name of several directories for public worship, the first originated by John Knox for use on the continent of Europe and in use by the Church of Scotland since the 16th century. The Church published revised ed ...
'', was the first book printed in either Scottish or Irish Gaelic.
Before that time the vernacular dialects of Ireland and Scotland were considered to belong to a single language and in late 12th century a highly formalized standard variant of that language had been created for the use in
bardic poetry. The standard was created by medieval Gaelic poets based on the vernacular usage of the late 12th century and allowed a lot of dialectal forms that existed at that point in time, but was kept conservative and had been taught virtually unchanged throughout later centuries. The grammar and metrical rules were described in a series of grammatical tracts and linguistic poems used for teaching in bardic schools.
Grammar
The grammar of Classical Gaelic is laid out in a series of grammatical
tracts written by native speakers and intended to teach the most cultivated form of the language to student
bards, lawyers, doctors, administrators, monks, and so on in Ireland and Scotland. Some of the tracts were edited and published by
Osborn Bergin
Osborn Joseph Bergin (26 November 1873 – 6 October 1950) was a scholar of the Irish language and early Irish literature, who discovered Bergin's Law.
He was born in Cork, sixth child and eldest son of Osborn Roberts Bergin and Sarah Reddin, ...
as a supplement to ''
Ériu
In Irish mythology, Ériu (; modern ga, Éire ), daughter of Delbáeth and Ernmas of the Tuatha Dé Danann, was the eponymous matron goddess of Ireland.
The English name for Ireland comes from the name Ériu and the Germanic (Old Norse or Ol ...
'' between 1916 and 1955 under the title ''Irish Grammatical Tracts'' and some with commentary and translation by
Lambert McKenna
Lambert McKenna S.J. ( ga, An tAthair Lámhbheartach Mac Cionnaith) (16 July 1870 – 27 December 1956) was a Jesuit priest and writer.
He was born Andrew Joseph Lambert McKenna in Clontarf, and studied in Europe. He collected and edited rel ...
in 1944 as ''Bardic Syntactical Tracts''.
Neuter nouns still trigger
eclipsis of a following complement, as they did in Middle Irish, but less consistently. The distinction between preposition + accusative to show motion toward a goal (e.g. "into the battle") and preposition + dative to show non–goal-oriented location (e.g. "in the battle") is kept in the standard even though it is lost in the spoken language during this period. The standard also keeps the distinction between
nominative and
accusative case in some classes of nouns and requires the use of accusative for
direct object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
of the verb if it's different in form from the nominative.
Verb endings are also in transition.
The ending ''-ann'' (which spread from conjuct forms of Old Irish n-stem verbs like "(he) hits, strikes"), today the usual 3rd person ending in the present tense, was originally just an alternative ending found only in verbs in
dependent position, i.e. after particles such as the negative, but it started to appear in independent forms in 15th century prose and was common by 17th century. Thus Classical Gaelic originally had "
epraises" versus or "
edoes not praise", whereas later Classical Gaelic and Modern Irish have and .
This innovation was not followed in
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well ...
, where the ending ''-ann'' has never spread, but the present and future tenses were merged: "he will grasp" but "he will not grasp".
Encoding
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for ...
gives the name "Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic" (and the code
ghc
) to cover both Classical Gaelic and
Early Modern Irish
Early Modern Irish ( ga, Gaeilge Chlasaiceach, , Classical Irish) represented a transition between Middle Irish and Modern Irish. Its literary form, Classical Gaelic, was used in Ireland and Scotland from the 13th to the 18th century.
External ...
.
Notes
References
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{{Celtic languages
Gaelic
Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Gaelic languages are spoken in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ca ...
Irish dialects
Scottish Gaelic dialects
History of the Irish language