Gaelic: the language of Eden?

The Western Isles 3

Image by drewbhoy

tjj Apr 11, 2013 14:28:35

Have a copy of a beautifully photographed book on Lewis & Harris by Francis Thompson. He writes a section the Gaelic language describing the people of the islands as living depositories of an ancient history - the Gaelic language and its attendant culture. As a little sub-note headed 'A Language Family' he writes the following text:
Gaelic is a member of the Celtic group of languages; they, in turn constitute of the Indo-European family of languages. Thus Gaelic is a cousin to Latin, English, Russian and Urdu. The present day Celtic languages are Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Manx and Cornish, though the latter died out but has since been revived.
Other Celtic languages once existed in Europe, such as Gaulish in what is now France, but are now long since extinct. These tongues spread far and over Europe some two thousand years ago and exist only in place-names and loan-words.

The origins of language is a fascinating subject, would love to learn more ...

ryaner Apr 11, 2013 15:02:35

Replying to tjj

Have never seen this http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translations#section_4 but have been told I'd enjoy it. The joy in unravelling the hidden meaning of Irish place names is one of the nicer side-effects of megalithic obsession.

The Eternal Apr 12, 2013 00:07:22

Replying to tjj

Hi June,

A lot of languages, spoken by the natives, sound beautiful. Gaelic is one of them. I also find a lot of the African languages sound just as good, as the vowels and consonants, as well as their usage for different meaning and emotion, if you know what I mean, result in an entrancing sound.

However, Gaelic, both Scottish and Irish, is my favourite language. Never has any nation on Earth ever used so many letters of the alphabet that have never been pronounced in so many words, as the Irish! But what a beautiful language, just beating the Scots by a whisker.

All the best,
TE.

ryaner Apr 12, 2013 11:09:27

Replying to tjj

tjj wrote:

The origins of language is a fascinating subject, would love to learn more ...

I've often wondered about vocabulary in the neolithic. How many words did our ancestors have, given the limited nature of their culture?

Here's a tract from Wikipedia on modern vocabulary: Native speakers' vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study shows that junior-high students would be able to recognize the meanings of about 10,000-12,000 words, while for college students this number grows up to about 12,000-17,000 and for elderly adults up to about 17,000-21,000 or more.

Astralcat Apr 12, 2013 11:44:00

Replying to tjj

I've always been fascinated by the widely held theory that Sanskrit may be the root of all modern European languge eg. Yoga in Sanskrit means 'union' and the English word 'yoke' is said to be a derivation of this.

http://mutiny.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/sanskrit-mother-of-european-languages-says-prof-dean-brown/