Wiktionary talk:About Old Irish

Lemmata

While, overall, this looks pretty good so far, I'm a little bit queasy about using the DIL as a standalone determiner for lemma status. Now, I'm sure that it's an excellent work (perhaps distinctly the best in existence), since you chose it, and I have to imagine that this is probably a good approach for most words. However, I just don't think it prudent to make such an arbitrary standard like that. Perhaps if it was reworded to something like, "the spelling in the DIL will be used as the lemma unless some compelling evidence is brought forth to support an alternative approach." Quite frankly, if you simply admitted here, on the talk page, that this not going to be some rigid standard that couldn't be overturned for a word where common sense and good evidence dictated otherwise, that would really assuage my anxiety. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 11:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Of course common sense can take precedence over the DIL on a case by case basis. In particular because the DIL's lemma is sometimes an unattested spelling, or at least a spelling unattested in Old Irish (i.e. not attested until Middle Irish). But in general the DIL will have had good reasons for picking the spelling they did. Angr 12:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

The modification is most satisfactory. Thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 12:12, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

A few basic normalisations

I propose that we use a few basic normalisations, to aid users in figuring out the pronunciation. We can apply these to only the lemma form, or to all inflections.

• Write i when the next consonant is palatalised (beirid, not berid).
• Write áe, óe when the following consonant is not palatalised, aí, oí when it is (óen, not oín).
• Write ai when the preceding consonant is unpalatalised, never i (beraid, not berid).

These are basically variations that already occur in Old Irish texts, so we're merely choosing the ones that are the clearest. —CodeCat 21:06, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Glossary

Pinging some who I know are involved with Old Irish here: @Mahagaja, Mellohi!, Silmethule, but anyone is welcome to comment. I compiled a list of terms which come up in Old Irish entries but might need some clarification for beginners: User:Caoimhin_ceallach/alt_Appendix:Old_Irish_glossary. I thought of putting it here: Category:Language-specific_Wiktionary_glossary_pages. But first I want to know if

• a) you agree with the need for such a thing,
• b) these are terms we should use in entries (and not avoid at all costs),
• c) there are other terms that should be included,
• d) you have any other comments.

—Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 22:20, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it’s a good idea, and it looks good! As for quick comments, you say “aspiration” changes “plosives to fricatives” (those are consonants) and that by it “vowels are weakened”. You also use the symbol ^H there. Seems you’re mixing to things together (both of which, confusingly, were by different authors called “aspiration”): lenition (which weakens consonants and we mark it with ⟨^L⟩) and h-prothesis (marked with ⟨^H⟩, it adds a /h/ sound before a vowel and remains mostly unmarked during the Old Irish period; called gemination by Thurneysen; it mostly results from lenition of word-final -s). I’d either remove the term aspiration completely or note its ambiguity (meaning either lenition or h-prothesis, depending on author) and discourage its used in the context of Goidelic on Wiktionary. // Silmeth ^@talk 11:31, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I made similar comments on the talk page of the glossary. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:49, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: Oups, I should’ve checked the discussion page there first. At least seems we agree on the issue! :) // Silmeth ^@talk 12:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah that was a mistake. I replied here.

One thing I wanted to call attention to is the term "augment". Do we agree on using that? McCone introduced it and as far as I can tell it's gained widespread acceptance. At least Stifter, Schrijver, Schumacher, Stüber use it in their works. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:59, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't taught that term when I was learning Old Irish, but if McCone and all those S's use it, let's go for it. It's definitely convenient to have some name for it, and I'm not aware of any other candidates. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:10, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I’m well familiar with ‘augment’ in this sense but I’ve been reading a lot of McCone and Stifter so I can’t judge how common the term is elsewhere. But anyway I like it cause by Middle Irish it becomes a marker of past tenses, so it is kinda parallel to Balkan IE / Indo-Iranian augment. // Silmeth ^@talk 14:49, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Indeed; it's still around as modern Irish d'. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:52, 10 April 2024 (UTC)