Ежелгі Ирланд тілі: Гаэль тілінің бастауы

Oldest widely attested Gaelic language

Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; Sean Ghaeilge; Seann Ghàidhlig; or Shenn Ghaelg), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The main contemporary texts are dated 700–850; by 900 the language had already transitioned into early Middle Irish. Some Old Irish texts date from the 10th century, although these are presumably copies of texts written at an earlier time. Old Irish is thus forebear to Modern Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic. neither characteristic was present in the preceding Primitive Irish period, though initial mutations likely existed in a non grammaticalised form in the prehistoric era. Contemporary Old Irish scholarship is still greatly influenced by the works of a small number of scholars active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rudolf Thurneysen (1857–1940) and Osborn Bergin (1873–1950).

Old Irish was the only known member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, which is, in turn, a subfamily of the wider Indo European language family that also includes the Slavonic, Italic/Romance, Indo Aryan and Germanic subfamilies, along with several others. Old Irish is the ancestor of all modern Goidelic languages: Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. A still older form of Irish is known as Primitive Irish. Fragments of Primitive Irish, mainly personal names, are known from inscriptions on stone written in the Ogham alphabet. The inscriptions date from about the 4th to the 6th centuries. Primitive Irish appears to have been very close to Common Celtic, the ancestor of all Celtic languages, and it had a lot of the characteristics of other archaic Indo European languages.

Stress is generally on the first syllable of a word. However, in verbs it occurs on the second syllable when the first syllable is a clitic (the verbal prefix as in as·beir "he says"). In such cases, the unstressed prefix is indicated in grammatical works with a following centre dot .

Old Irish underwent extensive phonological changes from Proto Celtic in both consonants and vowels. Final syllables were lost or transphonologized as grammatical mutations on the following word. In addition, unstressed syllables faced various reductions and deletions of their vowels.

Old Irish is a fusional, nominative accusative, and VSO language. Nouns decline for 5 cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, prepositional, vocative; 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; 3 numbers: singular, dual, plural. Adjectives agree with nouns in case, gender, and number. The prepositional case is called the dative by convention. Verbs conjugate for 3 tenses: past, present, future; 3 aspects: simple, perfective, imperfective; 4 moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 2 voices: active, and passive; independent, and dependent forms; and simple, and complex forms. Verbs display tense, aspect, mood, voice, and sometimes portmanteau forms through suffixes, or stem vowel changes for the former four. Proclitics form a verbal complex with the core verb, and the verbal complex is often preceded by preverbal particles such as ní (negative marker), in (interrogative marker), ro (perfective marker). Direct object personal pronouns occur between the preverb and the verbal stem. Verbs agree with their subject in person and number. A single verb can stand as an entire sentence. Emphatic particles such as sa and se are affixed to the end of the verb. Prepositions inflect for person and number, and different prepositions govern different cases, sometimes depending on the semantics intended.