In grammar , a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an object or subject within a phrase, clause, or sentence.
106-563: Primitive Irish or Archaic Irish ( Irish : Gaeilge Ársa, Gaeilge Chianach ), also called Proto-Goidelic , is the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages , and the ancestor of all languages within this family. This phase of the language is known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the Ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Great Britain between the 4th and
212-544: A or an (in languages that have such articles). Examples of count nouns are chair , nose , and occasion . Mass nouns or uncountable ( non-count ) nouns differ from count nouns in precisely that respect: they cannot take plurals or combine with number words or the above type of quantifiers. For example, the forms a furniture and three furnitures are not used – even though pieces of furniture can be counted. The distinction between mass and count nouns does not primarily concern their corresponding referents but more how
318-445: A person , place , thing , event , substance , quality , quantity , etc., but this manner of definition has been criticized as uninformative. Several English nouns lack an intrinsic referent of their own: behalf (as in on behalf of ), dint ( by dint of ), and sake ( for the sake of ). Moreover, other parts of speech may have reference-like properties: the verbs to rain or to mother , or adjectives like red ; and there
424-555: A phonemic inventory for the properly attested stages of the language using the names used in the scholastic tradition for each letter of the Ogham alphabet, which are recorded in the Latin alphabet in later manuscripts. There is a certain amount of obscurity in the vowel inventory of Primitive Irish: while the letters Ailm , Onn and Úr are recognized by modern scholars as representing /a(ː)/ , /o(ː)/ and /u(ː)/ respectively, there
530-547: A unique dialect of Irish developed before falling out of use in the early 20th century. With a writing system , Ogham , dating back to at least the 4th century AD, which was gradually replaced by Latin script since the 5th century AD, Irish has one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Western Europe . On the island, the language has three major dialects: Connacht , Munster and Ulster Irish . All three have distinctions in their speech and orthography . There
636-717: A bargaining chip during government formation in Northern Ireland, prompting protests from organisations and groups such as An Dream Dearg . Irish became an official language of the EU on 1 January 2007, meaning that MEPs with Irish fluency can now speak the language in the European Parliament and at committees, although in the case of the latter they have to give prior notice to a simultaneous interpreter in order to ensure that what they say can be interpreted into other languages. While an official language of
742-575: A better future for Ireland and all her citizens." The Strategy was produced on 21 December 2010 and will stay in action until 2030; it aims to target language vitality and revitalization of the Irish language. The 30-page document published by the Government of Ireland details the objectives it plans to work towards in an attempt to preserve and promote both the Irish language and the Gaeltacht. It
848-478: A cultural and social force. Irish speakers often insisted on using the language in law courts (even when they knew English), and Irish was also common in commercial transactions. The language was heavily implicated in the "devotional revolution" which marked the standardisation of Catholic religious practice and was also widely used in a political context. Down to the time of the Great Famine and even afterwards,
954-553: A degree course in the NUI federal system to pass the subject of Irish in the Leaving Certificate or GCE / GCSE examinations. Exemptions are made from this requirement for students who were born or completed primary education outside of Ireland, and students diagnosed with dyslexia . NUI Galway is required to appoint people who are competent in the Irish language, as long as they are also competent in all other aspects of
1060-460: A fully recognised EU language for the first time in the state's history. Before Irish became an official language it was afforded the status of treaty language and only the highest-level documents of the EU were made available in Irish. The Irish language was carried abroad in the modern period by a vast diaspora , chiefly to Great Britain and North America, but also to Australia , New Zealand and Argentina . The first large movements began in
1166-463: A language. Nouns may be classified according to morphological properties such as which prefixes or suffixes they take, and also their relations in syntax – how they combine with other words and expressions of various types. Many such classifications are language-specific, given the obvious differences in syntax and morphology. In English for example, it might be noted that nouns are words that can co-occur with definite articles (as stated at
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#17327656198351272-558: A later time, in an old-fashioned form of the Irish language bearing little similarity to formal Old Irish. The first texts which are widely accepted to have been written in Old Irish date from the 7th century, at the inception of a national textual tradition which was cultivated alongside that of Latin by the Catholic Church in Ireland, and which supplanted the archaic literary traditions. The radical changes that characterize
1378-516: A lexical category ( part of speech ) defined according to how its members combine with members of other lexical categories. The syntactic occurrence of nouns differs among languages. In English, prototypical nouns are common nouns or proper nouns that can occur with determiners , articles and attributive adjectives , and can function as the head of a noun phrase . According to traditional and popular classification, pronouns are distinct from nouns, but in much modern theory they are considered
1484-456: A new characteristic that Irish would eventually share with all other modern Celtic languages. Old Irish phonetic conditions generated different allophonic mutations over time, and with the diachronic loss of the conditions which caused the mutations, those mutations became the only way to distinguish between different grammatical forms. Thus, the mutations became differentiated phonemes with their own morphosyntactic functions. For example, in
1590-430: A noun being used as the head (main word) of a noun phrase and a noun being used as a noun adjunct . For example, the noun knee can be said to be used substantively in my knee hurts , but attributively in the patient needed knee replacement . A noun can co-occur with an article or an attributive adjective . Verbs and adjectives cannot. In the following, an asterisk (*) in front of an example means that this example
1696-417: A noun that represents a unique entity ( India , Pegasus , Jupiter , Confucius , Pequod ) – as distinguished from common nouns (or appellative nouns ), which describe a class of entities ( country , animal , planet , person , ship ). In Modern English, most proper nouns – unlike most common nouns – are capitalized regardless of context ( Albania , Newton , Pasteur , America ), as are many of
1802-585: A paper suggested that within a generation, non-Gaeltacht habitual users of Irish might typically be members of an urban, middle class, and highly educated minority. Parliamentary legislation is supposed to be available in both Irish and English but is frequently only available in English. This is notwithstanding that Article 25.4 of the Constitution of Ireland requires that an "official translation" of any law in one official language be provided immediately in
1908-575: A pass in Leaving Certificate Irish or English, and receive lessons in Irish during their two years of training. Official documents of the Irish government must be published in both Irish and English or Irish alone (in accordance with the Official Languages Act 2003, enforced by An Coimisinéir Teanga , the Irish language ombudsman). The National University of Ireland requires all students wishing to embark on
2014-625: A religious context. An Irish translation of the Old Testament by Leinsterman Muircheartach Ó Cíonga , commissioned by Bishop Bedell , was published after 1685 along with a translation of the New Testament. Otherwise, Anglicisation was seen as synonymous with 'civilising' the native Irish. Currently, modern day Irish speakers in the church are pushing for language revival. It has been estimated that there were around 800,000 monoglot Irish speakers in 1800, which dropped to 320,000 by
2120-441: A shift in literature to a vernacular register which had previously been obscured by the conservative influence of the druidic language. This new phase of the language shows influence from Latin, the latter having been introduced to pre-Christian Ireland , which influence became more pronounced following St Patrick 's ministry. Primitive Irish has a morphology similar to other Indo-European languages , however it did not display
2226-586: A singular or a plural verb and referred to by a singular or plural pronoun, the singular being generally preferred when referring to the body as a unit and the plural often being preferred, especially in British English, when emphasizing the individual members. Examples of acceptable and unacceptable use given by Gowers in Plain Words include: Concrete nouns refer to physical entities that can, in principle at least, be observed by at least one of
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#17327656198352332-401: A specific sex. The gender of a pronoun must be appropriate for the item referred to: "The girl said the ring was from her new boyfriend , but he denied it was from him " (three nouns; and three gendered pronouns: or four, if this her is counted as a possessive pronoun ). A proper noun (sometimes called a proper name , though the two terms normally have different meanings) is
2438-470: A subclass of nouns parallel to prototypical nouns ). For example, in the sentence "Gareth thought she was weird", the word she is a pronoun that refers to a person just as the noun Gareth does. The word one can replace parts of noun phrases, and it sometimes stands in for a noun. An example is given below: But one can also stand in for larger parts of a noun phrase. For example, in the following example, one can stand in for new car . Nominalization
2544-405: A subclass of nouns. Every language has various linguistic and grammatical distinctions between nouns and verbs . Word classes (parts of speech) were described by Sanskrit grammarians from at least the 5th century BC. In Yāska 's Nirukta , the noun ( nāma ) is one of the four main categories of words defined. The Ancient Greek equivalent was ónoma (ὄνομα), referred to by Plato in
2650-545: A wider meaning, including the Gaelic of Scotland and the Isle of Man , as well as of Ireland. When required by the context, these are distinguished as Gaeilge na hAlban , Gaeilge Mhanann and Gaeilge na hÉireann respectively. In English (including Hiberno-English ), the language is usually referred to as Irish , as well as Gaelic and Irish Gaelic . The term Irish Gaelic may be seen when English speakers discuss
2756-748: Is a phrase usually headed by a common noun, a proper noun, or a pronoun. The head may be the only constituent, or it may be modified by determiners and adjectives . For example, "The dog sat near Ms Curtis and wagged its tail" contains three NPs: the dog (subject of the verbs sat and wagged ); Ms Curtis (complement of the preposition near ); and its tail (object of wagged ). "You became their teacher" contains two NPs: you (subject of became ); and their teacher . Nouns and noun phrases can typically be replaced by pronouns , such as he, it, she, they, which, these , and those , to avoid repetition or explicit identification, or for other reasons (but as noted earlier, current theory often classifies pronouns as
2862-439: Is a process whereby a word that belongs to another part of speech comes to be used as a noun. This can be a way to create new nouns, or to use other words in ways that resemble nouns. In French and Spanish, for example, adjectives frequently act as nouns referring to people who have the characteristics denoted by the adjective. This sometimes happens in English as well, as in the following examples: For definitions of nouns based on
2968-452: Is also An Caighdeán Oifigiúil , a standardised written form devised by a parliamentary commission in the 1950s. The traditional Irish alphabet , a variant of the Latin alphabet with 18 letters , has been succeeded by the standard Latin alphabet (albeit with 7–8 letters used primarily in loanwords ). Irish has constitutional status as the national and first official language of
3074-511: Is divided into four separate phases with the intention of improving 9 main areas of action including: The general goal for this strategy was to increase the number of daily speakers from 83,000 to 250,000 by the end of its run. By 2022, the number of such speakers had fallen to 71,968. Before the partition of Ireland in 1921, Irish was recognised as a school subject and as "Celtic" in some third level institutions. Between 1921 and 1972, Northern Ireland had devolved government. During those years
3180-516: Is equivalent to Proto-Celtic *i -stems and *u -stems , while -AS corresponds to *ā -stems . The exact function of -AIS remains unclear. Furthermore, according to Damian McManus, Proto-Celtic nasal , dental, and velar stems also correspond to the Primitive Irish -AS genitive, attested in names such as GLASICONAS , CATTUBUTTAS , and LUGUDECCAS . It is possible, through comparisons with other languages, to reconstruct
3286-442: Is little difference between the adverb gleefully and the prepositional phrase with glee . A functional approach defines a noun as a word that can be the head of a nominal phrase, i.e., a phrase with referential function, without needing to go through morphological transformation. Nouns can have a number of different properties and are often sub-categorized based on various of these criteria, depending on their occurrence in
Primitive Irish - Misplaced Pages Continue
3392-587: Is only in Gaeltacht areas that Irish continues to be spoken as a community vernacular to some extent. According to data compiled by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht , Sport and Media , only 1/4 of households in Gaeltacht areas are fluent in Irish. The author of a detailed analysis of the survey, Donncha Ó hÉallaithe of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology , described
3498-522: Is some difficulty in reconstructing the values of Edad and Idad . They are poorly attested, and scholars believe the distinction between them might be arbitrary, in the same way as the runes peorð and cweorð in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet , but they are transcribed as E and O , respectively, and probably had the respective pronunciations of /e(ː)/ and /o(ː)/ . There were also two diphthongs, transcribed as AI and OI . In later stages of
3604-412: Is still spoken daily to some extent as a first language . These regions are known individually and collectively as the Gaeltacht (plural Gaeltachtaí ). While the fluent Irish speakers of these areas, whose numbers have been estimated at 20–30,000, are a minority of the total number of fluent Irish speakers, they represent a higher concentration of Irish speakers than other parts of the country and it
3710-447: Is ungrammatical. Nouns have sometimes been characterized in terms of the grammatical categories by which they may be varied (for example gender , case , and number ). Such definitions tend to be language-specific, since different languages may apply different categories. Nouns are frequently defined, particularly in informal contexts, in terms of their semantic properties (their meanings). Nouns are described as words that refer to
3816-704: Is written in both Irish and English. Transcribed Ogham inscriptions , which lack a letter for /p/ , 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
3922-666: The Fíor-Ghaeltacht (true Gaeltacht ), a term originally officially applied to areas where over 50% of the population spoke Irish. There are Gaeltacht regions in the following counties: Gweedore ( Gaoth Dobhair ), County Donegal, is the largest Gaeltacht parish in Ireland. Irish language summer colleges in the Gaeltacht are attended by tens of thousands of teenagers annually. Students live with Gaeltacht families, attend classes, participate in sports, go to céilithe and are obliged to speak Irish. All aspects of Irish culture and tradition are encouraged. The Act
4028-611: The Cratylus dialog , and later listed as one of the eight parts of speech in The Art of Grammar , attributed to Dionysius Thrax (2nd century BC). The term used in Latin grammar was nōmen . All of these terms for "noun" were also words meaning "name". The English word noun is derived from the Latin term, through the Anglo-Norman nom (other forms include nomme , and noun itself). The word classes were defined partly by
4134-474: 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 filed , "poet (gen.)", 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. Gradually, the grammaticalization of consonant mutations introduced
4240-638: 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; however, none show any sign of the influence of Christianity or Christian epigraphic tradition, suggesting they date from before 391, when Christianity became the official religion of
4346-631: The Republic of Ireland , and is also an official language of Northern Ireland and among the official languages of the European Union . The public body Foras na Gaeilge is responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island. Irish has no regulatory body but An Caighdeán Oifigiúil , the standard written form, is guided by a parliamentary service and new vocabulary by a voluntary committee with university input. In An Caighdeán Oifigiúil ("The Official [Written] Standard ")
Primitive Irish - Misplaced Pages Continue
4452-603: The Roman Empire . Only about a dozen of the Irish inscriptions show any such sign. There is speculation about the orthodoxy of one inscription in Hampshire and two in Scotland, but there is no academic consensus on the matter. The majority of ogham inscriptions are memorials , consisting of the name of the deceased in the genitive case , followed by MAQI, MAQQI , "[the stone] of the son" ( Modern Irish mic ), and
4558-442: The foilceasta , also presented particular difficulties due to apparently being a silent letter . It was probably pronounced as /j/ in an early stage of Primitive Irish, disappearing before the transition to Old Irish. Consonant lenition and palatalisation, which feature heavily in later stages of the language , may already have existed in an allophonic form, i.e., they were not phonemically contrastive yet. McManus describes
4664-441: The senses ( chair , apple , Janet , atom ), as items supposed to exist in the physical world. Abstract nouns , on the other hand, refer to abstract objects : ideas or concepts ( justice , anger , solubility , duration ). Some nouns have both concrete and abstract meanings: art usually refers to something abstract ("Art is important in human culture"), but it can also refer to a concrete item ("I put my daughter's art up on
4770-443: The sex or social gender of the noun's referent, particularly in the case of nouns denoting people (and sometimes animals), though with exceptions (the feminine French noun personne can refer to a male or a female person). In Modern English, even common nouns like hen and princess and proper nouns like Alicia do not have grammatical gender (their femininity has no relevance in syntax), though they denote persons or animals of
4876-634: The 17th century, largely as a result of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland , which saw many Irish sent to the West Indies . Irish emigration to the United States was well established by the 18th century, and was reinforced in the 1840s by thousands fleeing from the Famine . This flight also affected Britain. Up until that time most emigrants spoke Irish as their first language, though English
4982-734: The 1998 Good Friday Agreement , the language gradually received a degree of formal recognition in Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, and then, in 2003, by the British government's ratification in respect of the language of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . In the 2006 St Andrews Agreement the British government promised to enact legislation to promote the language and in 2022 it approved legislation to recognise Irish as an official language alongside English. The bill received royal assent on 6 December 2022. The Irish language has often been used as
5088-400: The 2021 census of Northern Ireland , 43,557 individuals stated they spoke Irish on a daily basis, 26,286 spoke it on a weekly basis, 47,153 spoke it less often than weekly, and 9,758 said they could speak Irish, but never spoke it. From 2006 to 2008, over 22,000 Irish Americans reported speaking Irish as their first language at home, with several times that number claiming "some knowledge" of
5194-427: The 6th century AD, before the advent of Old Irish . These inscriptions are referred to as Orthodox Ogham , although scholastic use of the script continued residually until the early 19th century. Primitive Irish is the oldest recorded form of the Goidelic languages . It was written in the Ogham alphabet, the usage of which can be divided into two phases, Orthodox Ogham and Scholastic Ogham . The former represents
5300-403: The 6th century, used the Latin alphabet and is attested primarily in marginalia to Latin manuscripts. During this time, the Irish language absorbed some Latin words, some via Old Welsh , including ecclesiastical terms : examples are easpag (bishop) from episcopus , and Domhnach (Sunday, from dominica ). By the 10th century, Old Irish had evolved into Middle Irish , which
5406-571: The Act all detailing different aspects of the use of Irish in official documentation and communication. Included in these sections are subjects such as Irish language use in official courts, official publications, and placenames. The Act was recently amended in December 2019 in order to strengthen the already preexisting legislation. All changes made took into account data collected from online surveys and written submissions. The Official Languages Scheme
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#17327656198355512-471: The European Union , only co-decision regulations were available until 2022, due to a five-year derogation, requested by the Irish Government when negotiating the language's new official status. The Irish government had committed itself to train the necessary number of translators and interpreters and to bear the related costs. This derogation ultimately came to an end on 1 January 2022, making Irish
5618-549: The Irish language policy followed by Irish governments as a "complete and absolute disaster". The Irish Times , referring to his analysis published in the Irish language newspaper Foinse , quoted him as follows: "It is an absolute indictment of successive Irish Governments that at the foundation of the Irish State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi Irish-speaking areas, but
5724-399: The Primitive Irish phrase SINDHI MAQQI ("of the son", SINDHI being a form of the definite article ), originally pronounced ˈsɪndiː ˈmakʷiː , the initial M would have lenited to /β̃/ due to the influence of the -I ending of the preceding word. The variation in the pronunciation of the word would not have caused a difference in meaning; it would be allophonic. In a later stage of
5830-620: The Republic of Ireland ), new appointees to the Civil Service of the Republic of Ireland , including postal workers , tax collectors , agricultural inspectors, Garda Síochána (police), etc., were required to have some proficiency in Irish. By law, a Garda who was addressed in Irish had to respond in Irish as well. In 1974, in part through the actions of protest organisations like the Language Freedom Movement ,
5936-759: The adjectives happy and serene ; circulation from the verb circulate ). Illustrating the wide range of possible classifying principles for nouns, the Awa language of Papua New Guinea regiments nouns according to how ownership is assigned: as alienable possession or inalienable possession. An alienably possessed item (a tree, for example) can exist even without a possessor. But inalienably possessed items are necessarily associated with their possessor and are referred to differently, for example with nouns that function as kin terms (meaning "father", etc.), body-part nouns (meaning "shadow", "hair", etc.), or part–whole nouns (meaning "top", "bottom", etc.). A noun phrase (or NP )
6042-639: The ancient scholastic Oghamists as foilceasta (questions) due to the obsolescence of their original pronunciations: the first two, /kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ , had merged with plain velars in Old Irish, and the third, probably /st/ , merged with /s/ . However, evidence of the original distinction between straif and sail was still present into the Old Irish period, as the séimhiú ( lenition ) of /s/ produced /f/ (< Primitive Irish /w/ ) for lexemes originally represented by Straif but /h/ for lexemes originally represented by Sail . The letter Úath or hÚath (transliterated as H ), although not counted among
6148-746: The beginning of the following academic year. For a number of years there has been vigorous debate in political, academic and other circles about the failure of most students in English-medium schools to achieve competence in Irish, even after fourteen years of teaching as one of the three main subjects. The concomitant decline in the number of traditional native speakers has also been a cause of great concern. In 2007, filmmaker Manchán Magan found few Irish speakers in Dublin , and faced incredulity when trying to get by speaking only Irish in Dublin. He
6254-401: The definite article is le for masculine nouns and la for feminine; adjectives and certain verb forms also change (sometimes with the simple addition of -e for feminine). Grammatical gender often correlates with the form of the noun and the inflection pattern it follows; for example, in both Italian and Romanian most nouns ending in -a are feminine. Gender can also correlate with
6360-443: The dictionaries of such languages are demarked by the abbreviation s. or sb. instead of n. , which may be used for proper nouns or neuter nouns instead. In English, some modern authors use the word substantive to refer to a class that includes both nouns (single words) and noun phrases (multiword units that are sometimes called noun equivalents ). It can also be used as a counterpart to attributive when distinguishing between
6466-482: The earliest inscriptions range between the 1st and 5th centuries. Scholars agree that the orthodox written tradition is older than the surviving inscriptions. The latest inscriptions of the orthodox tradition appear to come from the 6th century. The scholastic use of Ogham continued until the early 19th century, the last inscription being found on the tomb of Mary Dempsey at Ahenny in County Tipperary , which
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#17327656198356572-474: The end of the famine, and under 17,000 by 1911. Irish is recognised by the Constitution of Ireland as the national and first official language of Republic of Ireland (English being the other official language). Despite this, almost all government business and legislative debate is conducted in English. In 1938, the founder of Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League), Douglas Hyde , was inaugurated as
6678-519: The exception of a few inscriptions in the singular dative case , two in the plural genitive case and one in the singular nominative case , most known inscriptions of nouns in orthodox Ogham are found in the singular genitive, so it is difficult to fully describe their morphology. The German philologist Sabine Ziegler, however, drawing parallels with reconstructions of the Proto-Celtic language 's morphology (whose nouns are classified according to
6784-614: The family and is indigenous to the island of Ireland . It was the majority of the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century, in what is sometimes characterised as a result of linguistic imperialism . Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in Ireland's Gaeltacht regions, in which 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2022. The total number of people (aged 3 and over) in Ireland who declared they could speak Irish in April 2022
6890-560: The first President of Ireland . The record of his delivering his inaugural Declaration of Office in Roscommon Irish is one of only a few recordings of that dialect. In the 2016 census, 10.5% of respondents stated that they spoke Irish, either daily or weekly, while over 70,000 people (4.2%) speak it as a habitual daily means of communication. From the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 (see History of
6996-555: The following sound shifts from Proto-Celtic as being attested in the earliest Primitive Irish inscriptions: Old Irish , written in the Latin alphabet , has its earliest recorded texts possibly in the late 6th century; this is the traditional date of composition for the Amra Coluim Chille , a poetic elegy to St Columba of Iona by St Dallán Forgaill, the first identifiable author in the Irish language. This work, however, survives only in heavily annotated manuscripts from
7102-474: The forms that are derived from them (the common noun in "he's an Albanian "; the adjectival forms in "he's of Albanian heritage" and " Newtonian physics", but not in " pasteurized milk"; the second verb in "they sought to Americanize us"). Count nouns or countable nouns are common nouns that can take a plural , can combine with numerals or counting quantifiers (e.g., one , two , several , every , most ), and can take an indefinite article such as
7208-482: The fridge"). A noun might have a literal (concrete) and also a figurative (abstract) meaning: "a brass key " and "the key to success"; "a block in the pipe" and "a mental block ". Similarly, some abstract nouns have developed etymologically by figurative extension from literal roots ( drawback , fraction , holdout , uptake ). Many abstract nouns in English are formed by adding a suffix ( -ness , -ity , -ion ) to adjectives or verbs ( happiness and serenity from
7314-413: The grammatical forms that they take. In Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, for example, nouns are categorized by gender and inflected for case and number . Because adjectives share these three grammatical categories , adjectives typically were placed in the same class as nouns. Similarly, the Latin term nōmen includes both nouns (substantives) and adjectives, as originally did the English word noun ,
7420-659: The language family, is derived from the Old Irish term. Endonyms of the language in the various modern Irish dialects include: Gaeilge [ˈɡeːlʲɟə] in Galway, Gaeilg / Gaeilic / Gaeilig [ˈɡeːlʲəc] in Mayo and Ulster , Gaelainn / Gaoluinn [ˈɡeːl̪ˠən̠ʲ] in West/Cork, Kerry Munster , as well as Gaedhealaing in mid and East Kerry/Cork and Waterford Munster to reflect local pronunciation. Gaeilge also has
7526-496: The language used by druids in their ceremonies and teachings. Koch believed that with the decline of paganism and the corresponding loss of influence by the druids, the language of the Irish Christian nobility would have supplanted the ancient Primitive Irish register of the pagan priests, eclipsing it completely in the 7th century. This would give the impression of rapid linguistic development, while actually representing
7632-410: The language was in use by all classes, Irish being an urban as well as a rural language. This linguistic dynamism was reflected in the efforts of certain public intellectuals to counter the decline of the language. At the end of the 19th century, they launched the Gaelic revival in an attempt to encourage the learning and use of Irish, although few adult learners mastered the language. The vehicle of
7738-465: The language, scholastic Oghamist traditions incorporated five new letters for vowels, called forfeda (supplementary), corresponding to digraphs of the orthodox spelling, but these no longer corresponded to Primitive Irish sounds. The consonant inventory of Primitive Irish is reconstructed by Celticist Damian McManus as follows: The letters Cért , Gétal and Straif , transliterated as Q , NG (or GG ) and Z , respectively, were known by
7844-434: The language, the Primitive Irish word SINDHI became Old Irish in , losing the final vowel which caused the lenition. However, in the Old Irish phrase in maicc ("of the son"), the m is still lenited, so the pronunciation would be /ɪn β̃ak/ . The lenition was 'reinterpreted' as being caused by the fact that maicc follows the definite article in , a rule of morphosyntax (grammar) rather than phonology . What
7950-476: The language. For most of recorded Irish history , Irish was the dominant language of the Irish people , who took it with them to other regions , such as Scotland and the Isle of Man , where Middle Irish gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx . It was also, for a period, spoken widely across Canada , with an estimated 200,000–250,000 daily Canadian speakers of Irish in 1890. On the island of Newfoundland ,
8056-433: The loss of grammatical suffixes , the introduction of the letter p through loanwords and proper names, the simplification of the inflectional system, the alteration of some short vowels through vowel harmony , and, most notably, vowel elisions which resulted in distinctive consonant clusters. This last phenomenon, especially marked in the genesis of Old Irish proper, began with an application of secondary stress to
8162-582: The mid-18th century, English was becoming a language of the Catholic middle class, the Catholic Church and public intellectuals, especially in the east of the country. Increasingly, as the value of English became apparent, parents sanctioned the prohibition of Irish in schools. Increasing interest in emigrating to the United States and Canada was also a driver, as fluency in English allowed
8268-433: The middle of the 6th century, respectively. This loss of vowels caused consonant clusters to develop. 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 INEQAGLAS . Similarly,
8374-405: The most distinctive characteristics of other phases of the language including velarized ("broad") and palatalized ("slender") consonants (such consonant alterations may have existed, but they would have been allophonic ), initial mutations , some loss of inflectional endings , but not of case marking , and consonant clusters . Old Irish does carry with these distinctive features, as well as
8480-412: The name of his father, or AVI, AVVI , "[the stone] of the grandson", (Modern Irish uí ) and the name of his grandfather, e.g. DALAGNI MAQI DALI , "[the stone] of Dalagnos son of Dalos". Sometimes the phrase MAQQI MUCOI , "of the son of the tribe", is used to show tribal affiliation. Inscriptions demonstrating additional information are rare, such as QRIMTIR RON[A]NN MAQ COMOGANN , "[the stone] of
8586-804: The name of the language is Gaeilge , from the South Connacht form, spelled Gaedhilge prior the spelling reform of 1948, which was originally the genitive of Gaedhealg , the form used in Classical Gaelic . The modern spelling results from the deletion of the silent ⟨dh⟩ in Gaedhilge . Older spellings include Gaoidhealg [ˈɡeːʝəlˠəɡ] in Classical Gaelic and Goídelc [ˈɡoiðʲelɡ] in Old Irish . Goidelic , used to refer to
8692-469: The new immigrants to get jobs in areas other than farming. An estimated one quarter to one third of US immigrants during the Great Famine were Irish speakers. Irish was not marginal to Ireland's modernisation in the 19th century, as is often assumed. In the first half of the century there were still around three million people for whom Irish was the primary language, and their numbers alone made them
8798-467: The nouns present those entities. Many nouns have both countable and uncountable uses; for example, soda is countable in "give me three sodas", but uncountable in "he likes soda". Collective nouns are nouns that – even when they are treated in their morphology and syntax as singular – refer to groups consisting of more than one individual or entity. Examples include committee , government , and police . In English these nouns may be followed by
8904-655: The number now is between 20,000 and 30,000." In the 1920s, when the Irish Free State was founded, Irish was still a vernacular in some western coastal areas. In the 1930s, areas where more than 25% of the population spoke Irish were classified as Gaeltacht . Today, the strongest Gaeltacht areas, numerically and socially, are those of South Connemara , the west of the Dingle Peninsula , and northwest Donegal, where many residents still use Irish as their primary language. These areas are often referred to as
9010-436: The original Druidic tradition of memorials, whereas the latter resulted from a tradition of scholarly restoration of the writing system as part of the development of a Celtic style of Catholic art, in parallel with the use of the Latin alphabet in ordinary writing. Primitive Irish is known only from Ogham fragments, usually personal names, the earliest being dated by academics to the 4th century, although some estimates for
9116-503: The other official language, if not already passed in both official languages. In November 2016, RTÉ reported that over 2.3 million people worldwide were learning Irish through the Duolingo app. Irish president Michael D. Higgins officially honoured several volunteer translators for developing the Irish edition, and said the push for Irish language rights remains an "unfinished project". There are rural areas of Ireland where Irish
9222-557: The political party holding power in the Stormont Parliament , the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), was hostile to the language. The context of this hostility was the use of the language by nationalists. In broadcasting, there was an exclusion on the reporting of minority cultural issues, and Irish was excluded from radio and television for almost the first fifty years of the previous devolved government. After
9328-480: The priest Ronán son of Comgán". Some inscriptions appear to be border markers. The brevity of most orthodox ogham inscriptions makes it difficult to analyse the archaic Irish language in depth, but it is possible to understand the basis of its phonology and the rudiments of its nominal morphology . Surviving Ogham inscriptions are written exclusively with nouns. It is possible to deduce some morphological features of Primitive Irish nouns from these inscriptions. With
9434-492: The relationship between the three Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx). Gaelic is a collective term for the Goidelic languages, and when the context is clear it may be used without qualification to refer to each language individually. When the context is specific but unclear, the term may be qualified, as Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic or Manx Gaelic. Historically the name "Erse" ( / ɜːr s / URS )
9540-432: The requirement for entrance to the public service was changed to proficiency in just one official language. Nevertheless, Irish remains a required subject of study in all schools in the Republic of Ireland that receive public money (see Education in the Republic of Ireland ). Teachers in primary schools must also pass a compulsory examination called Scrúdú Cáilíochta sa Ghaeilge . As of 2005, Garda Síochána recruits need
9646-647: The revival was the Gaelic League ( Conradh na Gaeilge ), and particular emphasis was placed on the folk tradition, which in Irish is particularly rich. Efforts were also made to develop journalism and a modern literature. Although it has been noted that the Catholic Church played a role in the decline of the Irish language before the Gaelic Revival, the Protestant Church of Ireland also made only minor efforts to encourage use of Irish in
9752-461: The start of this article), but this could not apply in Russian , which has no definite articles. In some languages common and proper nouns have grammatical gender, typically masculine, feminine, and neuter. The gender of a noun (as well as its number and case, where applicable) will often require agreement in words that modify or are used along with it. In French for example, the singular form of
9858-401: The third syllable of most words with four or more syllables, and also to the fifth syllable of words with six or more, in addition to the primary stress , which fell on the first syllable, as is typical of Celtic languages . This caused apocope of (final) syllables, syncope of stressless (internal) syllables, and the shortening of all long vowels in non-initial syllables, around 500 AD and
9964-420: The transition from Primitive Irish to Old Irish are not uncommon in the development of other languages, but appear to have occurred rapidly in the case of Irish. John T. Koch , an American Celticist , theorized that these changes coincide with the conversion of the island to Christianity and the introduction of Latin as a literary language. The Irish language would then have derogated from the formal register of
10070-424: The two types being distinguished as nouns substantive and nouns adjective (or substantive nouns and adjective nouns , or simply substantives and adjectives ). (The word nominal is now sometimes used to denote a class that includes both nouns and adjectives.) Many European languages use a cognate of the word substantive as the basic term for noun (for example, Spanish sustantivo , "noun"). Nouns in
10176-726: The vacancy to which they are appointed. This requirement is laid down by the University College Galway Act, 1929 (Section 3). In 2016, the university faced controversy when it announced the planned appointment of a president who did not speak Irish. Misneach staged protests against this decision. The following year the university announced that Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh , a fluent Irish speaker, would be its 13th president. He assumed office in January 2018; in June 2024, he announced he would be stepping down as president at
10282-416: The vowels that characterize their endings ), limited the archaic Irish endings of the singular genitive case to -I , -AS , -OS and -AIS . The first ending, -I , is found in words equivalent to the so-called Proto-Celtic category of *o -stem nouns . This category was also recorded in the dative case using -U , with an inscription possibly in the nominative case also using -U . -OS , in turn,
10388-594: The work of such writers as Geoffrey Keating , is said to date from the 17th century, and was the medium of popular literature from that time on. From the 18th century on, the language lost ground in the east of the country. The reasons behind this shift were complex but came down to a number of factors: The change was characterised by diglossia (two languages being used by the same community in different social and economic situations) and transitional bilingualism (monoglot Irish-speaking grandparents with bilingual children and monoglot English-speaking grandchildren). By
10494-465: Was 1,873,997, representing 40% of respondents, but of these, 472,887 said they never spoke it and a further 551,993 said they only spoke it within the education system. Linguistic analyses of Irish speakers are therefore based primarily on the number of daily users in Ireland outside the education system, which in 2022 was 20,261 in the Gaeltacht and 51,707 outside it, totalling 71,968. In response to
10600-531: Was also sometimes used in Scots and then in English to refer to Irish; as well as Scottish Gaelic. Written Irish is first attested in Ogham inscriptions from the 4th century AD, a stage of the language known as Primitive Irish . These writings have been found throughout Ireland and the west coast of Great Britain. Primitive Irish underwent a change into Old Irish through the 5th century. Old Irish, dating from
10706-668: Was enacted 1 July 2019 and is an 18-page document that adheres to the guidelines of the Official Languages Act 2003 . The purpose of the Scheme is to provide services through the mediums of Irish and/or English. According to the Department of the Taoiseach, it is meant to "develop a sustainable economy and a successful society, to pursue Ireland's interests abroad, to implement the Government's Programme and to build
10812-513: Was establishing itself as the primary language. Irish speakers had first arrived in Australia in the late 18th century as convicts and soldiers, and many Irish-speaking settlers followed, particularly in the 1860s. New Zealand also received some of this influx. Argentina was the only non-English-speaking country to receive large numbers of Irish emigrants, and there were few Irish speakers among them. Noun In linguistics , nouns constitute
10918-534: Was originally a phonological feature of the language therefore became grammaticalized . Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish : Gaeilge ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( / ˈ ɡ eɪ l ɪ k / GAY -lik ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family . It is a member of the Goidelic language group of the Insular Celtic sub branch of
11024-474: Was passed 14 July 2003 with the main purpose of improving the number and quality of public services delivered in Irish by the government and other public bodies. Compliance with the Act is monitored by the An Coimisinéir Teanga (Irish Language Commissioner) which was established in 2004 and any complaints or concerns pertaining to the Act are brought to them. There are 35 sections included in
11130-637: Was spoken throughout Ireland, Isle of Man and parts of Scotland . It is the language of a large corpus of literature, including the Ulster Cycle . From the 12th century, Middle Irish began to evolve into modern Irish in Ireland, into Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, and into the Manx language in the Isle of Man . Early Modern Irish , dating from the 13th century, was the basis of the literary language of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland. Modern Irish, sometimes called Late Modern Irish, as attested in
11236-442: Was unable to accomplish some everyday tasks, as portrayed in his documentary No Béarla . There is, however, a growing body of Irish speakers in urban areas, particularly in Dublin. Many have been educated in schools in which Irish is the language of instruction. Such schools are known as Gaelscoileanna at primary level. These Irish-medium schools report some better outcomes for students than English-medium schools. In 2009,
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