Alexander MacBain

“ The Gaelic languages—Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic—have a much closer connection with one another than the Brittonic languages. Till the Reformation and, indeed, for a century or more thereafter, the Irish and Scottish Gaelic had a common literary language, though the spoken tongues had diverged considerably, a divergence which can be traced even in the oldest of our Gaelic documents—the Book of Deer. ”

“ The main difference between these two branches of the Celtic group consists in this: the velar guttural of the Aryan parent tongue, which we represent here by the symbol q, when labialised, that is when the sound w or u attaches itself to it, becomes in Brittonic a simple p and in Gadelic a c (k, Ogam qu) . Thus the Welsh for "five" is pump, Cornish pymp, and Breton pemp, Gaulish pempe, whereas the Gaelic is cóig, Manx queig, and Irish cúig: the corresponding Latin form is quinque. ”

“ Celtic scholars, if they find nothing else in the present Dictionary, will, at least, find a nearly pure vocabulary of Scottish Gaelic, purged of the mass of Irish words that appear in our larger dictionaries ”

“ At the beginning of the Christian era the Celtic languages were distributed much as follows: Gaulish, spoken in France and Spain, but fast dying before the provincial Latin (and disappearing finally in the fifth century of our era) ; Gallo-British or Brittonic, spoken in Britain by the conquering Gaulish tribes; Pictish, belonging to the Gallo-Brittonic or P group, and spoken in Scotland and, possibly, in northern England; and Gadelic, spoken in Ireland and perhaps on the West Coast of Scotland and in the Isles. ”

“ The sound of ao differs materially in the two Dialects, the Southern having the sound opener than the Northern Dialect.13 The Southern Dialect is practically the literary language.
Modern Gaelic has far more borrowed words than Irish at any stage of its existence. The languages borrowed from have been mainly English (Scottish) and Norse. Nearly all the loan-words taken directly from Latin belong to the Middle or Old period of Gaelic and Irish; and they belong to the domain of the Church and the learned and other secular work in which the monks and the rest of the clergy engaged. ”

“ Irish, Old and New, have the same letters as the Gaelic. As this number of letters in no way adequately represents the sounds, signs and combinations are necessary.
Firstly, the long vowels are denoted by a grave accent: à, ì, ù, è, ò, the latter two having also the forms é, ó, to denote sounds analogous to those in English vein, hoar. Whereas à, ì, ù, which have only one sound, represent corresponding Indo-European sounds (ā, ī, ū) , none of the long sounds of e or o represent simple corresponding I.E. sound. ”

“ Aspiration, which affects all consonants now, (though unmarked for l, n, r) , has come to play the part of inflection largely; this is especially the case with the article, noun, and adjective. Eclipsis by n is practically unknown; but phonetic decay is evidenced everywhere in the loss of inflection and the uniformising of declension and conjugation.
There are two main Dialects of Gaelic, and these again have many sub-dialects. The two leading Dialects are known as the Northern and Southern Dialects. ”

“ The Brittonic languages—Welsh, Cornish, and Breton—appear first in glosses as early as the eighth century. These glosses are marginal or super-linear translations into Celtic of words or phrases in the Latin texts contained in the MSS. so "glossed." The period of the glosses is known as the "Old" stage of the languages—Old Breton, Old Cornish, Old Welsh. Real literary works do not occur till the "Middle" period of these tongues, commencing with the twelfth century and ending with the sixteenth. ”

“ All the explosives, when intervocalic, are “aspirated” in Gaelic—p to ph, b to bh (= v) , t to th (= h) , d to dh (= y) , c to ch, g to gh, (= y) ; the cor­respond­ing Welsh changes are the tenues to mediæ, and the mediæ to f, dd, and nil in the case of g. Inter­vocalic preserved explo­sives in Gaelic arise from a doubling of the explosive, the cause of which in many cases is obscure. The following are the leading cases and causes of inter­vocalic G. mutes:
(1) Doubling of the explosive in the course of inflection or word-building. ”

“ As against this criticism, I was especially congratulated by Prof. Windisch for attempting to redd these same marches. A funny criticism was passed on the style of printing adopted for the leading words; no capitals are used at the beginning of each article. The critic had not seen a dictionary before without such capitals, and it offended his eye to see my work so "headless" as it is! ”

“ The Aryan or Indo-European languages fall into six leading groups (leaving Albanian and Armenian out of account) , thus:—
I. Indo-Iranian or Arian, divisible into two branches:
(a) Indian branch, including Sanskrit, now dead, but dating in its literature to at least 1000 b.c., and the descendant modern (dialects or) languages, such as Hindustani, Bengali, and Mahratti. ”

“ A great levelling, as compared with what one must infer from the historic development of Indo-European, has taken place in Gadelic. Dr MacBain's Indo-European Alphabet is therefore simplified in the gutturals, although perhaps it would have been more regular to have put in a labio-velar series apart. ”

“ In Gaelic the vowel or vowel combination of a syllable may undergo “mutation” (German umlaut) in the course of inflection or word-building. This mutation is caused by the influence exerted backward by the vowel of the next syllable now or previously existent. There are three classes of mutation in Gaelic caused either by a following (1) e or i, (2) a or o, or (3) u. ”

“ VI. Balto-Slavonic or Letto-Slavonic, which includes Lithuanian, dating from the seventeenth century, yet showing remarkable traces of antiquity, Lettic, Old Prussian of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, now extinct, Old Bulgarian or Church Slavonic, into which the Bible was translated in the ninth century, and the Slavonic modern languages of Russia, etc. These six groups cannot, save probably in the case of Latin3 and Celtic, be drawn closer together in a genealogical way. ”

“ Radiating as they did from a common centre, the adjacent groups are more like one another than those further off. The European languages, inclusive of Armenian, present the three primitive vowels a, e, o intact, while the Indo-Iranian group coalesces them all into the sound a. Again the Asiatic languages join with the Balto-Slavonic in changing Aryan palatal k into a sibilant sound. Similarly two or three other groups may be found with common peculiarities (e.g., Greek, Latin, and Celtic with oi or i in the nom. pl. masc. of the o- declension) . ”

“ The prepo­sition con, when accented, was always con, when un­accented it was com (comh) . In the un­accented syllables, long vowels become short (àireamh from *ád-rîm, anail for O. Ir. anál) , and in many cases change complete­ly their grade, as from small to broad (e.g. còmhnadh, O. Ir. congnam, from gnìomh, and the compounds in ‐radh and ‐lach) .
II. Word-building.
Word-building consists of two parts—composition and deriva­tion. The first deals with the compound­ing of separate words; the second deals with the suffixes (and prefixes) that make up the stem of a word from its root. ”

“ Nothing has been left out which could be deciphered, or applied with any measure of confidence. Even queried suggestions have been given, in the belief that mere flashes of thought by an expert may often point the way towards correct findings. ”

“ Brigte or Brigtae : *Bṛgṇtî (Stokes) , an old Gaelic goddess of poetry, etc. (Corm.) ; usually referred to the root bṛg, high, Celtic Brigantes, high or noble people ; Skr. bṛhatî, high (fern.) ; further Ger. berg, hill, Eng. burgh. The Norse god of poetry was Bragi, whose name may be allied to that of Brigit. The name of the Gr. goddess 'Αφροδίτη (Bhṛg-îtâ) and the Teutonic name Berhta (from the same stem as Eng. bright) , have been compared to that of Bridget (Hoffman, Bez. Beit. 18, 290) ; but this deriva- tion of Aphrodite ("foam-sprung"?) is unusual. ”

“ The most character­istic roots of the I. E. languages are at least triple-barrelled, so to speak: they show three grades of vowels. The root pet, for instance, in Greek appears as pet, pot, pt (πέτομαι, fly, ποτάομαι, flutter, πτερόν, wing) . The first grade—e—may be called the “normal” grade, the second the “deflected” grade, and the last—pt—the “reduced” or “weak” grade. The reason for the reduced grade is evident; the chief accent is on another syllable. Why e inter­changes with o is not clear. ”

“ Inflection. The participle passive in ‐te preserves the t or d of the root as t; thus [caith gives caithte,] bàth (for bàdh) gives bàite, ràdh gives ràite, etc. b. Word-building. The prepositional prefixes which end or ended in a consonant preserve the succeed­ing explosive; even vowel-ending prepo­sitions like air (*are) , aith- (*ati) do the same, if the accent is on the prepo­sition. ”

“ Latin and Celtic, further, show intimate relations in having in common an î in the gen. sing, of the o- declension (originally a locative) , -tion- verbal nouns, a future in b, and the passive in -r.
The Celtic group now comprises five living languages; in. the 18th century there were six, when Cornish still lived. These six Celtic languages are grouped again into two branches, which may be named the Brittonic and the Gadelic. The former includes the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton; the Gadelic comprises Irish, Manx, and (Scottish) Gaelic. ”

“ Before the explosives, s is preserved before the tenues, which in the modern language become mediæ. The combi­nation sp is not certain; but ‐sc becomes ‐sg (see fasgadh, seasg, measg, etc.) , st becomes s (older ss) simply, as in seas (= *sisto‐) , fois, fàs, dos, etc. Before the medials s becomes z, which see for results in Gaelic; *sg becomes g; sp becomes s. ”

“ West Teutonic, which divides again into High German (whence modern German) , the Old High German being a language contemporary with Old Irish, and Low German, which includes Old Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, English, Dutch, and Frisian. ”

“ Zimmer takes the word to mean "to fire, bake", from the Norse funi, flame, fire, E. Ir. oc-fune = Norse við funa, a-roasting; but unlikely. Possibly *voni-, "dress", root ven, von, Lat. Venus, Eng. venerate.
fuirbidh, a strong man, also fuirbearnach; compounds of bì and beir, with for, super.
fuirearadh, a parching of corn; see eararadh.
fuirich, stay, Ir. fuirighim, E. Ir. fuirigim, noun fuirech, O. Ir. fuirset (s future) : *vo-reg; root reg, stretch, go; Lat. porrigo, rego. See rach.
fuirm, stools, a form, Ir. fuirm, W. ffurf; from Eng. form. ”

“ Those early forms and the Norse Finnleihr prove that the name means "Fair hevo" (fionn and laock) . It is a popular (10th and 11th century) rendering of Finnlug, "Fair attractive one," the older name. It has been explained as " Fair calf," which would suit the phonetics also. ”

“ Nothing has been added to Dr MacBain's work except the Supplement to The Outlines of Gaelic Etymology, the words and letters in square brackets, and a few slight changes from the original text, which are the work of the Rev. Dr George Henderson, Lecturer in Celtic Languages and Literature in the University of Glasgow, who found it necessary to abandon his intention of seeing the Gaelic Etymological Dictionary through the press, after reaching the sixteenth page of the "Outlines" ”

“ The I. E. explosives formed a possible sixteen in number between tenues, mediæ and the double set of aspirates (ph, bh, th, dh, kh, gh, qh, ꬶh) . The tenues aspirate were “rare and of no import­ance” in the resulting languages, save only in Sanskrit and Greek. The mediæ aspirates are the prede­cessors of aspirates of the modern languages. But in the Celtic languages these media aspirates were merged into the mediæ them­selves, so that b and bh appear in Celtic as b, d and dh as d, g and gh as g, and ꬶ and ꬶh as g. The Balto-Slavonic, in this matter, shares the peculi­arity of the Celtic. ”

“ Ancient Greek was divided traditionally into three dialects—Ionic (with Attic or literary Greek) , Doric, and Æolic.
III. Italic, divided in early times into two main groups—the Latin and the Umbro-Oscan. From Latin are descended Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Rhoeto-romanie and Roumanian, called generally the Romance languages. IV. Celtic, of which anon.
V. Teutonic, which includes three groups— (a) East Teutonic or Gothic (fourth cent, A.D.) ; (b) North Teutonic or Scandinavian, inclusive of Old Norse and the modern languages called Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish ”

“ The s of the Gaelic really belongs to the pronoun sé or sì, said he, said she, "ar sé, ar sì". Cf. M.G. "ar san tres ughdar glic"—said the third wise author (san being the full art.; now ars an. The E. Ir. forms bar and for, inquit, point to the root sver, say, Eng. swear, answer. Stokes refers it to the root ver, verdh, Eng. word, adducing E. Ir. fordat, ordat, oldat, inquiunt, for the verdh root. Thurneysen objects that ol or for is a preposition, the -dat being the verb ta on analogy with other forms indás, oldáte. The original is al, propter, "further" (see "thall") , like Lat. ”

“ S. hosa, g. hosan, now hose, hōsen, Norse hosa.
oscach, eminent, superior (Sh., O'B.) , Ir. oscách; from os and cách.
oscarach, oscarra, bold, fierce, Ir. oscar, champion; from the heroic name Oscar, son of Oisian (Ir. Oisín, little deer or os, q.v.) . Possibly Oscar stands for *ud-scaro-, "out-cutter", root scar of sgar, q.v. Zimmer derives it from Norse Ásgeirr, spear of the Anses or gods, and Oisian from the Saxon Óswine, friend of the Anses; which should give respectively Ásgar and Óisine, but the initial vowels are both o short in Oscar and Oisian. Doomsday Book has Osgar. ”

“ It was spoken, it is believed, some three thousand years B.C. in ancient Sarmatia or South Russia; and from this as centre2 the speakers of the Aryan tongue, which even then showed dialectal differences, radiated east, west, north and south to the various countries now occupied by the descendant languages. The civilization of the primitive Aryans appears to have been an earlier and more nomadic form of that presented to us by the Celtic tribe of the Helvetii in Caesar's time. ”

“ He regards the passive in r in Celtic and Italic as an independent creation, the common element r going back to the period of Indo-European unity. Even the future in -bo he regards as a possibly analogous formation and different in origin and development. Compare critique in Revue Celtique, 18, 343, where M. D'Arbois de Jubainville takes exception to some points. Irish, contrary to the Latin, has conserved the Indo-European perfect. ”

“ This word seems borrowed from the Sc. kep, of like meaning, a bye-form of Eng. keep. The Ir. ceap, bound, bind, stop (?) , seems from ceap above.
†ceapach, a tillage plot, Ir. ceapach. This Stokes refers to a Celtic keppo‐, garden, root kep, kāp, Lat. campus, Gr. κῆπος, garden, Ger. hube, piece of land. Satisfactory though the meaning be, the derivation is doubtful as involving the preservation of p, even though flanked by a second p (or ‐nó‐, i.e. kep-nó‐, which is still more doubtful) . Perhaps from ceap, a block, in the sense of a “holding.” Hence the common place name Keppoch. ”