Hi!

I was wondering if someone could direct me towards online resources about old Irish. Are there old texts available? I saw some pictures of ancient manuscripts, but they were impossible to read, ideally, i'd just like to see texts dating from before the language was modernised, the time of the ancient font and the long groups of letters that have since been cut off.

Thank anyone for your help,
Michael

What do you mean by Old Irish? Which century?

If you mean texts in Modern Irish, before standardisation of spelling in the 1940s, then try http://folkplanet.com/seanchlo/

It has reproductions of some books in the old (sic) script.

Note that Old Irish means Irish from before the 12th Century, and is a very different language - almost like the difference between Anglo Saxon and English.

Thanks!

That is what I was looking for - and thanks for the distinction about old Irish.

I had some problems viewing some of the pages, but most of them my browser could interpret (more easily than I could, actually!).

It's not easy to read, but I love a challenge - I just hope my dictionary is old enough to help me understand parts of it!

Thanks Again,

Michael

Fáilte romhat.

You might try and get a copy of Dineens 1934 dictionary. It is still in print, uses the ld typeface, and is comprehensive.

Old Irish is not as different from Modern language as Old English is from modern English, BTW, A lot of words are recognizable and all. Its the grammar that was SO complicated - all those verb prefixes, cases and unwritten sound changes. Not to mention the many classifications of nouns they are called stems and there are like 19 of them. . Not fazed yet? How about three genders..... special cases for numbers...... The syntax at least is very similar.

Good luck!

Fun though!