Old Irish at U of T
- Old Irish belongs to the Celtic Branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The other Celtic Language are Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Manx, Breton and Cornish. Old Irish, is, as the name suggests, an older form of Modern Irish.
- Modern Irish is spoken in areas of Ireland, especially on the West coast, these areas are known as "Gaeltachtaí." The last census indicated there were 100,000 native speakers with another one million declaring to have a working knowledge of the language.
- The study of Old Irish will open up to the student a vast body of ancient literature. Through this written tradition we can learn a great deal about how a European barbarian nation organized itself, its social customs and laws, its entertainments, its concepts of time and space, its ideas about the cosmos and the other world.
- It is always important to realize that as we engage with our own conceptions of the shape of our world we need to be able to think outside the box of the present; the past may be very different; the languages, cultures and nations that matter in our contemporary world are frequently not those who mattered in the past. Learning another ancient language can give us a vital new perspective from which to see how history and historical change works.
| From a ninth-century poem about a scholar and his cat: | |
| Irish | English |
| Mise agus Pangur bán | I and white Pangur |
| Ag cleachtadh ár gceirde féin: | Practise each of us his special art: |
| Seilg is mian leis sin de ghnáth; | His mind is set on hunting; |
| M’aigne féin ar mo shaincheird. | My mind on my special craft. |
- Visit the St. Michael's College website for more information.
- Consult the A&S calendar for specific course offerings.
- Why study such an ancient language?
Surely Greek and Latin are the only ancient languages we would ever want to know, since it is through them we learn all we need to know about the ancient world? Besides, only really important European languages like English, French and Spanish have any kind of interesting history in the past. The first statement is only partially true and the second is actually not true at all. It comes as a surprise for many that early Christian Ireland had a flourishing intellectual life and an extremely rich literary tradition in the Irish language that surpasses anything we would find elsewhere in Europe at this time. - Is Old Irish difficult to learn?
Learning a new language is not a scary thing at all; it is actually fascinating and fun to plot the unfamiliar shapes languages take as they create their systems of meaning for their worlds. Learning Old Irish, for example, will allow you to understand much better how Sanskrit and Persian relate to Latin. By learning a new "old" language you get a great view of a vast landscape of communication systems stretching East and West; you see "bothersome" grammar in a new way. For example, you begin to realize that something you take for granted in your own language - say, the articles "the" and "a" - are really new innovations; some languages in this family do not have them at all. Learning why languages behave in different but beautifully symmetrical ways is a truly exhilarating and liberating process. Why not learn a new old one next year!
