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The traditions of the Irish people are the oldest of any race in Europe north and west of the Alps, and they themselves are the longest settled on their own soil - Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922) The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth. For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish. - Edmund Spenser (writer, and British Government Official in Ireland, AD 1596). The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation. - Arsene Darmesteter, Professor of Old French and Literature Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation. - Heinrich Zimmer, Professor of Celtic and Sanskrit, Member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences |
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Can a speaker of Irish Gaelic understand Scottish Gaelic?
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They wouldn’t understand it entirely.
However, if they spoke slowly then they probably would be able to get the basic gist of what was being said. However, I think they would have a more difficult time when reading each other’s language/dialect as the Scottish version retains an older system which includes letters that are barely pronounced and thus it ends up having very long words. The spelling in Irish was revised in the 20th century to do away with many of these letters and thus reduce the size of words (the aim being to make learning the language easier) although it could be argued that by deleting them it also lost some subtle nuances. The matter is complicated by the fact that there are 3 major dialects (in fact there are various other smaller ones which are all inter-related) within Irish itself and even they may not be mutually intelligible to each other when spoken at normal conversational speed.
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The traditions of the Irish people are the oldest of any race in Europe north and west of the Alps, and they themselves are the longest settled on their own soil - Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922) The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth. For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish. - Edmund Spenser (writer, and British Government Official in Ireland, AD 1596). The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation. - Arsene Darmesteter, Professor of Old French and Literature Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation. - Heinrich Zimmer, Professor of Celtic and Sanskrit, Member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences |
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My God! I have the impression that the Irish orthography is so extremely complicated. And now you say that the present-day Irish orthography is a "simplified" version of the older one.
And Scottish has even more complicated writing system, you say. I can't possibly imagine how it looks like...
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But Milesian is much more competent to answer.
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![]() As you know well, but perhaps some not,having a standard is absolutely necessary for every language. Quote:
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A comparison can be found here
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The traditions of the Irish people are the oldest of any race in Europe north and west of the Alps, and they themselves are the longest settled on their own soil - Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922) The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth. For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish. - Edmund Spenser (writer, and British Government Official in Ireland, AD 1596). The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation. - Arsene Darmesteter, Professor of Old French and Literature Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation. - Heinrich Zimmer, Professor of Celtic and Sanskrit, Member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences |
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Standard Irish is what's taught in Irish schools. It is heavily based on the Munster dialect (southern) yet it is somewhat artificial. It is not a historic dialect spoken by people in the Gaeltachtai, but it is a standard by which everyone can understand each other - in theory ![]() Quote:
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The traditions of the Irish people are the oldest of any race in Europe north and west of the Alps, and they themselves are the longest settled on their own soil - Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922) The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth. For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish. - Edmund Spenser (writer, and British Government Official in Ireland, AD 1596). The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation. - Arsene Darmesteter, Professor of Old French and Literature Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation. - Heinrich Zimmer, Professor of Celtic and Sanskrit, Member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences |
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The various dialects were either mutually unintelligible or hard to understand from one to another. Basque being a Paleolithic language, it lacked many words and not just fairly modern ones. The Basque philosopher don Miguel de Unamuno noticed this when he argued that Castilian was the language spoken by the Basque people, because "the Basque language falls short for us to express our ideas". It is safe to assume here that he also meant that the Castilian language was in fact, in its origins, the vulgar Romance language spoken by Basques, attested by the heavy loans that it had from the speak of the Basques which makes it unlike other Romance languages (save the Occitan Gascon language). One fun account is the adoption of a word for 'airport' in Basque. The logical thing to do would have been to translate "air" and "port". In Basque, "air" is haizea and "port" is kaia. But the pronounciation of haizea kaia in Basque sounds like in Castilian ahí se caía, which means "there it fell down" (or "there it crashed"). Therefore they opted out for the basquicized Latin word aeroportua! (note of discharge: I cannot assure that this is not a urban legend)
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'Dardanidae duri, quae uos a stirpe parentum prima tulit tellus, eadem uos ubere laeto
accipiet reduces. Antiquam exquirite matrem: hic domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris, et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis.' We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. --Plato-- |
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In the case of Basque it was more difficult to decide how create one standard, because of you say well: the many differences between the seven dialects. Not all speakers got satisfied, but it was a necessary step for keeping the language alive.
Even more, from the standard you can also study the dialects and compare differences between them, something impossible without the help of a standard (cultured) language.
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Maybe he personally doesn't like this standard you are talking about, based on the Munster dialect, maybe he has some personal objections to it, and for that reason he refuses to "acknowledge" it. Standard is important anyway. So I'm glad to hear the Irish has a standard after all.
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