Is acher in gaíth in-nocht...

Dia dibh, (hello!)

O my god, I can't believe it's been a few months since I wrote something! I'm terribly sorry, I didn't have the time and the inspiration, but now I have enough for some more blogposts :)

So I started my second year in the BA Celtic Languages & Culture, and I love how that sounds (H) I'm loving it even more than I did last year, though I am drowning in homework and I am stressed out almost 24/7. But as I passed both stupid obligatory courses (Linguistics and Literature), I will only have to do Celtic courses! Big yay! And that means that I'm studying Old Irish now, the hardest language I have ever tried to understand, and Medieval Latin (lots of monks and saints and popes and..) and still Middle Welsh. Next to my studies there are lots of interesting things happening (lots of musicals, reviews will come), especially with Twibv! Last week we did a mini-gig at an event organized by my mother, we did two songs which was really awesome to do. And this Thursday we will play an hour in the local hospital. Awesome. So we are busy big time!!

Now, to make this blogpost somewhat more interesting, some Old Irish poems!!

This poem is found in a manuscript of Priscian's Institutiones Grammaticae, scribbled on the paper. It is probably written in the 9th century, when monasteries were often raided by the Vikings. The poem speaks about fear for such a raid.
Is acher in gaíth in-nocht
Fu-fúasna fairggae findfolt
Ní ágor reimm mora minn
Dond láechraid lainn ua Lothlind

The wind is bitter tonight
It tosses the sea's white hair
I do not fear the coursing of a quiet sea
By the fierce warriors from Lothlend


Having studied Modern Irish for a few months, I was delighted to notice some words that I recognized immediately! In-nocht is the Old Irish form for anocht, a word that's used a lot in Modern Irish (I'm going to the pub tonight! Will you be at the pub tonight?), and fairggae looks like farraige, meaning sea. I always liked that word, no idea why. It sounds mysterious ^^
But despite these things that do seem familiar, Old Irish is way more complicated than Modern Irish. The verbs are conjugated as many times as you can think of, it's really annoying if you turn a page and see moooore paradigms.. Compare:
O-I:                                                M-I
Do-biru                                           Tabhair mé
Do-bir                                             Tabhair tú
Do-beir                                           Tabhair sé/sí 
Do-beram                                       Tabhair sinn
Do-berat                                         Tabhair sibh
Do-beiraid                                       Tabhair siad
(this is actually the same verb. Explanation for those of you who would like to know: Do-beir is a so-called 'deuterotonic' form, and if you use it in a conjunct form (so after a conjunct) you would get *ní-do-beir. But 'ní' and 'do' are both unstressed, and you can't have two unstressed sounds after each other. SO the stress shifts from 'beir' to 'do', and then something unpredicatble happens: 'do-beir' changes to 'tabair'. And this is the form that survived in Modern Irish) (this is again an example why Old-Irish is annoyingly complicated)


I will write some more about Old-Irish, it's just too weird and I love it, and coming up: Reviews about Miss Saigon, John Spillane's Irish Songs We Learned At School, and some more musicrelated stuff!!


Until next time,
Slán,
Lian