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Classical Gaelic or Classical Irish () was a shared literary form of Gaelic that was in use by poets in
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...
and
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...
from the 13th century to the 18th century. Although the first written signs of
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
having diverged from
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
appear as far back as the 12th century annotations of the
Book of Deer The ''Book of Deer'' (''Leabhar Dhèir'' in Gaelic) (Cambridge University Library, MS. Ii.6.32) is a 10th-century Latin Gospel Book with early 12th-century additions in Latin, Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It contains the earliest survivin ...
, Scottish Gaelic did not have a separate standardised form and did not appear in print on a significant scale until the 1767 translation of the
New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christi ...
into Scottish GaelicThomson (ed.), ''The Companion to Gaelic Scotland'' although John Carswell's ', an adaptation of
John Knox John Knox ( gd, Iain Cnocc) (born – 24 November 1572) was a Scottish minister, Reformed theologian, and writer who was a leader of the country's Reformation. He was the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Born in Giffordgat ...
's ''
Book of Common Order The ''Book of Common Order'' is the name of several directories for public worship, the first originated by John Knox for use on the continent of Europe and in use by the Church of Scotland since the 16th century. The Church published revised ed ...
'', was the first book printed in either Scottish or Irish Gaelic. Before that time the vernacular dialects of Ireland and Scotland were considered to belong to a single language and in late 12th century a highly formalized standard variant of that language had been created for the use in bardic poetry. The standard was created by medieval Gaelic poets based on the vernacular usage of the late 12th century and allowed a lot of dialectal forms that existed at that point in time, but was kept conservative and had been taught virtually unchanged throughout later centuries. The grammar and metrical rules were described in a series of grammatical tracts and linguistic poems used for teaching in bardic schools.


Grammar

The grammar of Classical Gaelic is laid out in a series of grammatical tracts written by native speakers and intended to teach the most cultivated form of the language to student
bard In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise ...
s, lawyers, doctors, administrators, monks, and so on in Ireland and Scotland. Some of the tracts were edited and published by
Osborn Bergin Osborn Joseph Bergin (26 November 1873 – 6 October 1950) was a scholar of the Irish language and early Irish literature, who discovered Bergin's Law. He was born in Cork, sixth child and eldest son of Osborn Roberts Bergin and Sarah Reddin, a ...
as a supplement to ''
Ériu In Irish mythology, Ériu (; modern ga, Éire ), daughter of Delbáeth and Ernmas of the Tuatha Dé Danann, was the eponymous matron goddess of Ireland. The English name for Ireland comes from the name Ériu and the Germanic (Old Norse or Ol ...
'' between 1916 and 1955 under the title ''Irish Grammatical Tracts'' and some with commentary and translation by
Lambert McKenna Lambert McKenna S.J. ( ga, An tAthair Lámhbheartach Mac Cionnaith) (16 July 1870 – 27 December 1956) was a Jesuit priest and writer. He was born Andrew Joseph Lambert McKenna in Clontarf, and studied in Europe. He collected and edited reli ...
in 1944 as ''Bardic Syntactical Tracts''. Neuter nouns still trigger
eclipsis Irish, like all modern Celtic languages, is characterized by its initial consonant mutations. These mutations affect the initial consonant of a word under specific morphological and syntactic conditions. The mutations are an important tool ...
of a following complement, as they did in Middle Irish, but less consistently. The distinction between preposition + accusative to show motion toward a goal (e.g. "into the battle") and preposition + dative to show non–goal-oriented location (e.g. "in the battle") is kept in the standard even though it is lost in the spoken language during this period. The standard also keeps the distinction between
nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
and
accusative case The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
in some classes of nouns and requires the use of accusative for
direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
of the verb if it's different in form from the nominative. Verb endings are also in transition. The ending ''-ann'' (which spread from conjuct forms of Old Irish n-stem verbs like "(he) hits, strikes"), today the usual 3rd person ending in the present tense, was originally just an alternative ending found only in verbs in dependent position, i.e. after particles such as the negative, but it started to appear in independent forms in 15th century prose and was common by 17th century. Thus Classical Gaelic originally had " epraises" versus or " edoes not praise", whereas later Classical Gaelic and Modern Irish have and . This innovation was not followed in
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
, where the ending ''-ann'' has never spread, but the present and future tenses were merged: "he will grasp" but "he will not grasp".


Encoding

ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for i ...
gives the name "Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic" (and the code ghc) to cover both Classical Gaelic and
Early Modern Irish Early Modern Irish ( ga, Gaeilge Chlasaiceach, , Classical Irish) represented a transition between Middle Irish and Modern Irish. Its literary form, Classical Gaelic, was used in Ireland and Scotland from the 13th to the 18th century. Externa ...
.


Notes


References

* * * * * * {{Celtic languages Gaelic Irish dialects Scottish Gaelic dialects History of the Irish language