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Spread of Gaelic

  • 07-08-2019 10:37am
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,565 ✭✭✭


    I have a curious question for those that know more than me about this topic,

    Having been researching the story of Queen Scotia, I found a reference to the Scotii bringing Gaelic to Scotland.
    However, from what I have picked up over the last twenty something years I have found that the Gaels and Gaelic first landed on English soil, then spread across mainland UK, then to Ireland.
    During this period the Scottish were speaking Pictish.
    So how could the Scotti have brought Gaelic to Scotland?


    Thoughts people?


Comments

  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan



    Thoughts people?

    Uncertain of the Scotland name origin. There was little or no rigorous scientific evidence to support the myths and folklore that suggested where it came from. Kingdom of the Ark by Lorraine Evans suggests that "Scota, the Egyptian princess and daughter of a pharaoh who fled from Egypt with her husband Gaythelos with a large following of people and settling in Scotland." Or did the Romans somehow label and spread the Scottish name?
    The Romans called the Gaels Scotti and they eventually spread the Gaelic language throughout most of Scotland.

    Also uncertain how Ancient Egyptian relates to Gaelic or Old Irish? Ancient Egyptian language has a 3-consonant structure like Arabic and Hebrew. It seems unlikely that an Ancient Egyptian speaking princess Scotii somehow contributed to the linguistic foundation of Gaelic or Old Irish.

    Granted, this was not my area of study, so perhaps someone else more qualified answering your OP could set us straight?


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Black Swan wrote: »
    Uncertain of the Scotland name origin. There was little or no rigorous scientific evidence to support the myths and folklore that suggested where it came from. Kingdom of the Ark by Lorraine Evans suggests that "Scota, the Egyptian princess and daughter of a pharaoh who fled from Egypt with her husband Gaythelos with a large following of people and settling in Scotland." Or did the Romans somehow label and spread the Scottish name?


    Also uncertain how Ancient Egyptian relates to Gaelic or Old Irish? Ancient Egyptian language has a 3-consonant structure like Arabic and Hebrew. It seems unlikely that an Ancient Egyptian speaking princess Scotii somehow contributed to the linguistic foundation of Gaelic or Old Irish.

    Granted, this was not my area of study, so perhaps someone else more qualified answering your OP could set us straight?

    It is a fascinating area and there has been murmurings of conversations between Moroccans in the mountains that contained words from the Irish language (overheard by native Irish speakers at the time) back in the 1800s. Naturally, not much has been proven, but the Ulster Journal of Archaeology (Volume 7, 1859) did feature it at the time.

    Summary is as follows:
    The foregoing is all the information I have yet been able to collect on this subject. It is, no doubt, quite possible that persons entirely ignorant of the Irish and Arabic languages, may have confounded the two from the similarity of pronunciation, especially as they both abound in guttural sounds not heard in our cultivated western tongues. But, if the statement of the Morocco merchant can be relied on, that he actually held a short conversation with the Irish-speaking peasants of Kilkenny, by employing a dialect spoken in the mountains of Morocco, the question assumes sufficient probability to deserve further investigation. In this country we know nothing of the dialects spoken in Northern Africa, farther than that there are such, and that they differ essentially from the Arabic used by the Moors. In all parts of the world, mountain ranges have formed the refuge of broken or vanquished tribes: hence it is that so many totally distinct languages are at present found existing among the recesses of the Caucasus. May the same not be the case in the Atlas mountains? We know that, at some remote and undefined period, the ancestors of the present Irish came from the East. The ancient traditionary history of the people themselves may not be trustworthy as to details, but it uniformly asserts their eastern origin; and modern philology corroborates this by proving the affinity of the Irish language with the Persian and Sanscrit. The old and circumstantial account of a colony established in Ireland from Spain takes us a long way on the road to North Africa; and, if true, would render it very probable that these colonists or their ancestors came previously from that country to Spain. In such case, it would not be at all impossible that some tribe of the same race may have remained and settled in the present Morocco or Tunis, and have been eventually driven to the mountains at the time of the destruction of Carthage, or subsequently by the overwhelming pressure of the Moors. Speculation, however, is useless, until we obtain more definite information regarding the supposed cognate language existing in that country; and the object of the present article is merely to place the preceding facts together on record, and to direct the attention of competent inquirers to a curious subject.


    The full article is here: https://www.libraryireland.com/articles/IrishLanguageAfricaUJA7-1859/index.php


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,995 ✭✭✭Ipso


    Given that modern Irish is different from old Irish (Primitive Irish is supposed to have similarities to Proto Indo European and Gaulish) then the chances of an ancient link between Gaelic and Berber languages are slim. If you want to compare languages for similarity you need to look at earlier versions.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,565 ✭✭✭cfuserkildare


    Ipso wrote: »
    Given that modern Irish is different from old Irish (Primitive Irish is supposed to have similarities to Proto Indo European and Gaulish) then the chances of an ancient link between Gaelic and Berber languages are slim. If you want to compare languages for similarity you need to look at earlier versions.

    Irish, or Gaelic as we know it only arrived in Ireland around 600bc, so chances are very slim of a link between Berber and Irish speakers.
    Original language may have been more like the Pictish language, ( but that's just a guess ).


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,586 ✭✭✭victor8600


    Ipso wrote: »
    Given that modern Irish is different from old Irish (Primitive Irish is supposed to have similarities to Proto Indo European and Gaulish) then the chances of an ancient link between Gaelic and Berber languages are slim. If you want to compare languages for similarity you need to look at earlier versions.

    There could be a link. It is known that Barbar pirates captured Irish (among other peoples living in coastal regions) as slaves. Some of these Irish might have been assimilated in Morocco and retained some of their language.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,995 ✭✭✭Ipso


    Ipso wrote: »
    Given that modern Irish is different from old Irish (Primitive Irish is supposed to have similarities to Proto Indo European and Gaulish) then the chances of an ancient link between Gaelic and Berber languages are slim. If you want to compare languages for similarity you need to look at earlier versions.

    Irish, or Gaelic as we know it only arrived in Ireland around 600bc, so chances are very slim of a link between Berber and Irish speakers.
    Original language may have been more like the Pictish language, ( but that's just a guess ).

    Pictish was a P celtic language similar to Cumbrian and Welsh. I read that the shift to P celtic on Britain was influenced by by Gauls.
    There is the chance that an early version/versions of celtic arrived with the bell beakers (last big population shift in ireland) and something called dialect leveling happened, which I think means the language doesn’t really change too much over time.

    https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?2929-P312-and-the-Ancient-Celts


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