Etymology of Irish Language Words

Múinteoir

Dennis King has put together an excellent etymological study on the net of hundreds of selected Irish words here(click on 'Focal Archives' in left-hand column).

See for example:

Word: beannacht (BAN-uhxt; x = the guttural sound in loch, Bach)


Meaning: beannacht = blessing, greeting


Usage: Beannacht is often seen in the complimentary close of letters:



Beir beannacht = Best wishes to you

Slán agus beannacht = Farewell and a blessing

History: Beannacht comes from Old Irish bendacht, which comes from Latin benedictio. This is one of many words relating to Christianity and book learning that were borrowed from Latin early on. The Scottish Gaelic spelling is beannachd.

Piste

Irish etymology is very interesting, we did a module on it in school this year. Irish language was never written down until the Irish met with the Romans and adopted their alphabet. Interestingly enough, there was no punctuation in Latin before written Irish came along, the ancient Irish introduced full stops, commas etc. to written Latin.

Most Irish words to do with religion come from Latin because of the whole Catholocism thing. The Irish word for priest saggart is very close to the Latin sacerdos.

Just My View

Piste wrote:

Irish language was never written down until the Irish met with the Romans and adopted their alphabet.

Are you sure about that? The old Irish alphabet did not look anything like the inscriptions on Roman tombs and buildings that I have seen. Even that alphabet was preceeded by Ogham which was totally different and comprised essentially of groups of lines written to comprise individual letters.

Múinteoir

Just My View wrote:

Are you sure about that? The old Irish alphabet did not look anything like the inscriptions on Roman tombs and buildings that I have seen. Even that alphabet was preceeded by Ogham which was totally different and comprised essentially of groups of lines written to comprise individual letters.

The Irish had a distinct way(or shape) of writing down the letters certainly(commonly referred to as the Gaelic script), but they were still using the (Greco-)Roman alphabet .i.e even if they shaped them slightly differently, there were still using the letters A,B,C,D,E,F,G, etc. which are originally Roman characters.

Even the Ogham script is based on Latin letters(the vowels and consonants in Ogham correspond exactly to Latin letters even if the symbols used to portray the letters are different)

When you consider a language that has it's own completely independently formed alphabet like Chinese or Arabic, their letter don't correspond exactly to Roman letters like A,B,C,D, etc. But Irish does.

Just My View

Possibly connected with Roman scipt but the experts are not unanimous on that.

http://www.ancientscripts.com/ogham.html

Gael

Just My View wrote:

Possibly connected with Roman scipt but the experts are not unanimous on that.

http://www.ancientscripts.com/ogham.html

True, but the experts are not unanimous on global warming either but it's still fundamentally accepted as the most likely scenario. Does it not strike you as odd that every Ogham letter correspondes to a Latin one, if it developed completely independent of it?

Gael

Piste wrote:

Most Irish words to do with religion come from Latin because of the whole Catholocism thing.

Don't you be overwhelming me with your uber-academic terminology now!

Piste

Transition Year Gaeilge right there

Just My View

Gael wrote:

True, but the experts are not unanimous on global warming either but it's still fundamentally accepted as the most likely scenario. Does it not strike you as odd that every Ogham letter correspondes to a Latin one, if it developed completely independent of it?

Fair point, but why bother evolving an alphabet when all you are doing is duplicating the Roman one. Why not just use the Roman one? Why make life hard for yourself? Seems to make no sense.

Gael

Just My View wrote:

Fair point, but why bother evolving an alphabet when all you are doing is duplicating the Roman one. Why not just use the Roman one? Why make life hard for yourself? Seems to make no sense.

The Celts were a very proud people and they were not under Roman control at the time. So they may well have appreciated the usefulness of Roman writing but also sought to put their own cultural twist on it. I can't say for sure though.