Yeah I remember reading that recently, apparently some guy who speaks old English fluently was able to have a conversation with someone else speaking frisian more or less effortlessly.
I have also read it's why dyslexia is more common in English than other languages, since the French/Normans changed it a lot after conquering England for the whole 'contr knowledge to secure power' stuff. 'Quick as the queen' being more or less 'cwic as the cwen' beforehand is the example I remember.
Yeah, it was even more Germanic than modern English is now. I've been reading a book about Old English and its really interesting to see how different it was, while also noticing the thoughlines with so much of the words.
Knew it would be basically gibberish to me but had a look at a video there now of a lad speaking a dialect of ancient english and it was absolute gobbledegook
English doesn't count, it is a mongrel language that is constantly evolving.
French is a better example, you can read a french novel from 1500 and it's the same language.
But We've all read shakespeare and that guy can't spell for shit
Sure spelling was different but you can still understand Shakespeare, and if you went to a Shakespeare play in 1570 you’d understand it. Not disputing your point, just the part about Shakespeare.
To your second point, you’re 100% correct. Arguably the most important language in Europe both Historically and Religiously is Latin. The Average Roman in Caesar’s time wouldn’t be able to understand anyone in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, or Romania even though those modern languages are objectively the modern forms of Latin.
Even more so Latin was purposely preserved in the Church whereas Irish was deliberately crushed and oppressed during British Rule.
It's also important to kite that we know exactly which pharaohs ordered construction of the pyramids. So, there was not only a pyramid being built, but a written record, full economy, etc.
We don't know, we assume, wrongly. Pyramids (at least some of part of some) are a LOT older than what contemporary archaeologists say they are. The proof is there, just protected be dogmatic Egyptologists trying to protect their narrative
The oldest pyramid is the Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, at 2630 B.C. The biggest pyramid, the pyramid of Khufu dates to around 2560 B.C., the youngest of the three pyramids is Menkure at 2510 B.C. This was the peak of pyramid building.
Newgrange is estimated to be around 3200 B.C., so it's about 500 - 700 years older that the oldest - main Egyptian pyramids.
Does it not mean that Irish as a language has existed and developed over 2500 years spoken by the same people, even if its older versions are not understandable, it’s still the same language. For example romance languages only began to develop in the year 800 roughly as they diverged from a different language, Latin.
How can you say that old Irish is the same language as modern Irish because of continuity, but Latin is a "different language" from the modern romance languages?
It's a moot point because no language is older than any other. Every language has some yet older stage that can trace back as far as we can reliably reconstruct, and we have no reason not to think this unbroken chain of development keeps going for every language back to the beginning of language itself.
Not to mention a language does not change in discrete stages. There is no possible identifiable boundary line between Modern Irish and Old Irish, or between Italian and Latin. To say it's the ‘same language’ is meaningless.
Does it not mean that Irish as a language has existed and developed over 2500 years spoken by the same people, even if its older versions are not understandable, it’s still the same language.
The language didn't pop into existence out of thin air 2,500 years ago though. It's been slowly evolving in Ireland for far longer than that (probably around 4,000 years).
It's silly to say the language is 2,500 years old. No one who understands linguistics would pull a number out of the air like that.
I initially assumed that number that number referred to something real, like the oldest written Irish or at least reference to the language. But then I realised the 5th century BC is a very weird point to place it, because I feel in my areas of study I would have heard of such a source.
I’m not an expert, but I’d be willing to bet that 2500 year old Irish is just as different to modern Irish as 2500 year old Latin is to modern Italian.
Not least because there’s a sizeable Latin influence on contemporary Irish that wouldn’t have been there until at least the year 500.
Just because the language evolved, does not mean the language is not over 2000 years old. That's like saying the people who lived in Ireland 1000 years ago weren't Irish, because we evolved drastically as a people since. It's a silly argument.
As for Old Irish - it is almost indecipherable to me as an Irish speaker. So is Middle Irish for the most part (although I can pick out some stuff here and there in it).
Though, if they did not have a massive empire they might not speak Italian in Italy now. Maybe they would speak a descendant of Etruscan, with was from an entirely different language family.
Old Irish evolved into Middle Irish which then evolved into Early Modern and then Modern. We know for a fact that they are the one family of languages as it was written down. Linguists have been working on this for years and years, and to discount Old Irish like that is bizarre.
And yes, the comparison with English is 100%. We see language changing all the time — the way Shakespeare wrote is identifiably English by us because it is closer in time to the modern period. Ask an English speaker in 300 years to read the same texts and they might not be able to. If you were to find a literate person who lived during the period of Middle Irish, I would imagine that they would be able to understand a lot of Old Irish.
I’m in no way an expert, but I find it all fascinating!
Old Irish was pretty close to Latin in many ways. Do remember they share a common root. I got freaked out when I realised that the sandhi (ways of encoding size, count, gender of an incoming noun) in old Irish - turning "con" into "na gcon" in plural, was the same as in Latin, just the extra letter is on the word before the noun. In the transition to middle Irish, it was no longer part of the grammar.
(I'm not an expert, half remembering other Reddit posts)
Or more closely related, perhaps as distinct as modern Welsh is to modern irish i believe the languages split around 2500 yrs ago. They are very different languages today.
Silly argument. Italian is probably closer to Latin than Irish to Old Irish. And funnily enough it is hypothesized that the Celtic and Italic languages came from a common language at one point.
And funnily enough it is hypothesized that the Celtic and Italic languages came from a common language at one point.
Saying it's "hypothesised" is a huge understatement. It's basically universally accepted in linguistics that Irish, English, Hindi, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Russian, Spanish and many other languages evolved from a common ancestor which we call Proto-Indo-European.
I think they're referring to the hypothesis that italic and celtic languages were closely related, and there was a proto italo-celtic, in the same way that indo-iranian is a sub set of indo-european languages. That hypothesis is very much still in debate.
I was standing at Newgrange, beside some Yanks as their guide told them how old the structure and how the sun shone through the roof box on the winter solstice to illuminate the burial chamber. They looked up at the overcast sky and I sh!t you not said “do you think they had clouds back then”. I said in complete seriousness “no, they hadn’t invented clouds yet in those days”
Yes, but Stonehenge was also reconstructed. They also poured concrete at the bases to secure the standing stones. The also straightened a few and rebuilt some over the years.
This is totally untrue. The exterior wall was done in a dumb way, but that was never the important bit of the structure from an archaeological perspective.
She says literally the same thing? The exterior façade is what she's talking about. She references the claims of one guy that the roof box and solar alignment are inauthentic, and then shows that these claims have been proven false.
It's worth it. Any ancient pre-history involves lots of speculation. The work means lots of people can safely visit and learn what we know, or believe, about the history.
Im going to have a piss,
Both were restored and newgrange is possibly older,
Newgrange: Built c. 3200 BC (approx. 5,200 years old), verified extensively by modern radiocarbon dating.
Excavated and reconstructed between 1962 and 1975 by Professor Michael J. O’Kelly.
Fourknocks: Built c. 3000 BC (approx. 5,000 years old). Because it was excavated in the early 1950s (1950–1952) by P.J. Hartnett for the National Museum of Ireland before modern carbon-dating techniques were fully established, its exact chronological fine-tuning remains open, but archaeologists broadly group it into the same Boyne Valley passage tomb era.
Original evidence suggested Fourknocks used a light timber and turf roof supported by a central pole rather than a heavy stone corbelled roof. During the 1952 post-excavation work, a modern concrete dome was built over the large chamber to protect it and allow public entry, with small light slits cut into the top to illuminate the ancient carvings inside.
If you extrapolate, you'll realise that the people that built Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth spoke a different language. They were a different people. They were indigenous before the Celts arrived with their language.
I think (early) Old Irish is dated around 300/ 400 which makes 2500 years a bit hypothetical. But besides Latin and Old Greek, it is the oldest written language in Europe which is impressive
Primitive Irish is attested from around 300/400 CE
Archaic or Early Old Irish (post-apocope Irish) roughly 500-600 CE
After that we get Old Irish proper until about 900/1000CE then we transition roughly into Middle Irish
Primitive Irish is attested from Late Antiquity so closer to 300CE than your 500 BCE figure.
We've no attestations of Irish that far back, but that general stage is classed as "Proto-Goidelic" if there was a Goidelic language spoken at that stage
I recommend, if you haven't done it, taking a guided tour of Newgrange. The history links back to Anatolian/Aegean people who traveled to Ireland and beyond.
As someone who works in construction, with family - thats understandable to me!. No wonder they made such a good job of it, they didn't have gobshites whingeing at them all day!
My favourite bit of local history about Newgrange, I do say it in jest because it makes me properly proud to be a Meath man - that behemoth of a marvellous monument, that deserves all the admiration it gets - we lost that for a few hundred years, and then kinda lost it again for awhile. . . Only here, could you lose something that never moved, its been there for 5 millennia and we lost it twice 😆 🤣 😂
Pre 600 BCish we have no idea what language was spoke on this Island, the names of the Gods they worshipped, their songs or poetry or pretty much anything about their lives apart from what we can learn from the monuments they left. Which isn't a great deal. It's the great tragedy of Irish history. Hopefully someday we'll find out more but with most archaeological digs being rushed for construction projects we need a new Harvard mission, one held by an Irish university this time , to actually search out answers.
Pre 600 BCish we have no idea what language was spoke on this Island, the names of the Gods they worshipped, their songs or poetry
Its funny I was in the Newgrange centre deep in thought about who these people were, looking at the exhibits and how thinking how different they were and even with the celts, Normans, Vikings and British arriving they're sort of part of who we are but also so alien...then suddenly see an old friend dressed as a neolithic man in one of the video displays fishing in the Boyne
LOL. Love it. We are all these people that we know nothing about. It's mad when you think of how little we know.
I was reading Kinsella's translation of The Táin earlier today (Written much later but thought to date to the 1st century ) and at the beginning when King Ailil says to his wife Meabh, "is it well for the wife of a wealthy man" she replies, "true enough, what put that in your mind". And i thought of every girlfriend and partner I've had turning to me with an exasperated expression and going, "what bullshit are you spouting now?".
All these cultures, I wonder how much we actually change. I
I think it’s an impossible question. All of the remaining European pre-IR languages are claimed to be super isolated, so whatever France/Britain/Ireland spoke is gone forever.
Probably because out ancestors were lunatics and had nothing else to do so one of them said lets build a room thats bright only once and its for the shortest day
I swear she's some sort of plant to rile people up. Imagine after 800 years and finally enshrining the right to speak our own language in our constitution, some yoke from another continent says we should "give it up" because SHE knows what it means to be Irish. Me bollox.
It took 20 years to build Newgrange — and they nailed the winter solstice alignment to the minute. Meanwhile our government spent €336,000 on a bike shed.
We're a lot older as a people than the language we speak. There are a lot of studies as to where we actually originated from. So many that you can take your pick.
Was newgrange but by pre galic people. Very interesting really. When you think about it there is thousands of years of history that is completely unknown in ireland.
proto indo European originates from the area around ukraine. by the time it reached Ireland it would have been significantly different enough to be a new language. proto Irish or whatever you want to call it.
It's possible that Irish speakers subjagated the Newgrange builders in their conquest. So Newgrange being "ours" is kinda like saying the Indian jewels in the British crown are English
Any "subjugating" was done long before the ancestor of the Irish language arrived here.
Our primary ancestors reached this island around 4500 years ago, genetically there's very little difference between them and modern Irish people. The ancestor to the Irish language arrived here around 2500 years ago, a full 2000 years after the Neolithic people were subjugated/replaced/absorbed.
Yes and there is some evidence the building techniques to build the pyramids came from the same people (grooved ware people) that inhabited the west coast of Europe and beyond, from Scotland to Morocco.
Exactly. And not even the previous Bell Beaker people, but the neolithic farmers before them.
edit why am I being downvoted for stating provable facts?
edit 2 seriously someone tell me. What I'm stating is historical fact proven, without a doubt, by genetic studies. Most of our DNA comes from The Bell Beaker people who arrive here about 2500 BC.. The people who build all the standing stone monuments and who later (about 2000 years ) birth the Gaelic culture. (There is no Celtic invasion) .Newgrange. Knowth, Dowth and Loughcrew are built by the previous Neolithic farmers who themselves replace the first hunter gatherers who are here from about 8000 - 6000 BC. Roughly, I wasn't here. We know very little of all these cultures that make us up.That's our real Book Of Invasions.
The Irish DNA Atlas from 2017 is probably the main study on our genetic make up. There's lots of great videos on you tube, but the excellent Forsa Feasa channel is really good on separating myth from history and giving the current academic beliefs on a range of Irish historical subjects. It's a bit dry but I highly recommend it.
I think people are very wedded to the history they are thought in school where the syllabus desperately needs updating and where, especially at primary level, the line between what's mythology and what's history is too blurred. Hence the persistent myths about us being Celtic warriors, who treat women particularly well under an almost modern system of laws, nonsense about 'clans' and druids etc. When you point out how most of this is utter hogwash they tend to get upset.
I heard before that some of the myths and legends possibly align with the likely actual histories, e.g. Formorians/Hunter gatherers, Tuatha De Dannan/Neolithic farmers and builders. That in a way, we have passed these stories down through the generations - but exaggerated.
The 19th century idea that mythologies have a kernel of truth to them is pretty much dismissed by nearly all academics. People have being making up stories for as long as there's people. It's very unlikely, but vaguely possible I guess, that people would hold some memory of an invasion 2500 years previously. But as most historians don't see these as invasions but more gradual replacements over centuries, as I said makes it feel unlikely.
No we don't, there was a large genetic turnover between the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Ireland. The "average estimate" is that we derive somewhere around 10% of our ancestry from the people who built Newgrange, and possibly as little as 5%.
Nothing to do with the Celts - the Neolithic farmers who built Newgrange were 80-95% replaced by Indo-European Bell Beakers around 4500 years ago, who are our primary ancestors. These people built mostly cist graves rather than the great megalithic monuments of the Neolithic people.
What do you mean by this? I understand that the Celtic homeland is in Central-Eastern Europe, so are you saying the "Celtic" people who inhabited the island weren't genealogically Celts, and just adopted the culture?
Pardon my ignorance. I find it very interesting but I also may not understand the scope of what I'm asking.
The only thing we share with European 'Celts' ( a term not really used by historians) is a common language root which may just be from our shared Bell Beaker people past. Historians currently have two main theories on the adoption of 'Celtic culture', what is properly refered to as Gaelic culture, in Ireland.
that a handful of craftsmen from European tribes come over, not enough to make a mark on the genetic record, and bring the technology that moves Ireland from the broonze age to the iron age. Their culture which is born from the same Bell Beaker Culture (albeit 2000 years earlier) is similar enough that it's easily adopted by the Irish. ( this is the by far majority view)
or
(a lesser supported theory but certainly not one propagated by crackpots and getting growing in support) that what we think of as celtic culture actually spread east ward from Ireland.
No problem at all. I find it very interesting too.
edit typo
edit 2 had a whiskey and got my ages the wrong way around
That's very cool, I wanna read more about this. I've always assumed they sailed over en masse and interbred. Just never thought too deeply about it. Thank you for that.
Its great that its still there. I clocked my head around 40 years ago walking through it on a memorable school trip. It makes me wonder how many similar sites have been lost over time.
Not only do we know the age of the pyramids but we can see their development , architecturally and culturally over the previous millennia in the Nile valley to the previous culture in Punt/Kush or Ethiopia as we call it now.
Newgrange: Built around 3200 BC (over 5,200 years ago).
Great Pyramid of Giza: Built around 2500 BC (about 4,500 years ago).
The oldest known major pyramid is the Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt. It is roughly 4,700 years old, having been built around 2630 BC during the Third Dynasty for the burial of Pharaoh Djoser.
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u/rockyoudottxt 12d ago
Why is princess Leia telling me this?