Thread: Gaelic language

Are English and Gaelic somehow related?

No, not in the least.
They're about as different as languages get...

Gaelic isn't a language as such, it's really the name of a group of languages that have their roots with the Celts (Irish, Scottish, Breton etc...).

There's a bit on Irish here:
http://www.gaeltalk.net/the_language.html

It's a very beautiful language, but totally unintelligible....
As far as I've looked into it, very, very difficult grammar too

And the spelling is crazy, hehe.... I can say two and a half words (hello, goodbye, welcome, thank you - and of course a couple of toasts and *bad words* ), but don't ask me to spell them!

Are Russian and Georgian related?

Well I've read this article and I saw some similarities so I've asked.
Gaelic is a VERY BEAUTIFUL language, I have a CD with the British and Irish folk rock and some songs are in gaelic. I even consider learning Gaelic but ... I've no time at all for that right now

Originally Posted by Barmaley

Are Russian and Georgian related?

I really don't know It could just happen that they are

Originally Posted by Ramil

I saw some similarities so I've asked.

What was similar for you exactly?

Originally Posted by Rtyom

What was similar for you exactly?

Well I can't even describe it. It just seemed to me, that's all. I've looked through the old english texts and some gaelic text. Some words were familiar, that's all.
And there - so close live native carriers of English and Gaelic that there's bound to be some penetration (of English to Gaelic and vice versa).

Here, compare the Old English with the modern one:

An original text of Beowulf

Originally Posted by Ramil

Here, compare the Old English with the modern one:

An original text of Beowulf

Owowow, Ramil - I see where you're coming from now: you seem to be confusing old English and Gaeilge - and they have nothing to do with each other (except for some loan words in both directions, like there are between so many languages ).

Gimme time to get home from work, get some dinner, and get some books out, and I'll tell you a bit more about the differences, OK?

Originally Posted by BabaYaga

Originally Posted by Ramil

Here, compare the Old English with the modern one:

An original text of Beowulf

Owowow, Ramil - I see where you're coming from now: you seem to be confusing old English and Gaeilge - and they have nothing to do with each other (except for some loan words in both directions, like there are between so many languages ).

Gimme time to get home from work, get some dinner, and get some books out, and I'll tell you a bit more about the differences, OK?

I know that they are two different languages (Gaelic and Old English I mean) but to me, there are some similarities. Of course I might as well be wrong. Also Old English seems to me completely different language from the modern English. Can you read Old English?

And is there some "per line" translation of Beowulf into the modern English?

Originally Posted by Ramil

Originally Posted by BabaYaga

Originally Posted by Ramil

Here, compare the Old English with the modern one:

An original text of Beowulf

Owowow, Ramil - I see where you're coming from now: you seem to be confusing old English and Gaeilge - and they have nothing to do with each other (except for some loan words in both directions, like there are between so many languages ).

Gimme time to get home from work, get some dinner, and get some books out, and I'll tell you a bit more about the differences, OK?

I know that they are two different languages (Gaelic and Old English I mean) but to me, there are some similarities. Of course I might as well be wrong. Also Old English seems to me completely different language from the modern English. Can you read Old English?

And is there some "per line" translation of Beowulf into the modern English?

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/19.html



And now I'm really going home, I'm hungry.....

Originally Posted by Ramil

Here, compare the Old English with the modern one:

An original text of Beowulf

Gaelic belongs to the Celtic group of languages when English belongs to the Germanic group. They cannot be similar at least so in the first place. Then, contacts of people speaking Goidelic and Old English couldn't be vere extensive. Of course, they had some loans mutually...

It's not new to me because I know the basics of Old English due to my occupation. It's not hard to read. I'd like to give you a link with a very good free textbook with some FAQ and exercises but unfortunately I've lost it. Instead, I can offer you another, just to clear up some differences:
http://www.tutorpal.com/Our_English/old ... h/oev.html

Артем!

Ramil, if you want to know more about old English, Артем's your man, I know nothing about it...
All I know is that it is of Germanic origin, and got influenced a lot by Latin (shows in Beowulf), Norse and Danish (also shows in Beowulf).

As for Gaelic, there are resources on the 'net that can explain much more eloquently than I what you need to know - so I've dug up a couple of links for you:
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/january/Irish.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/gaelic/canan.html

http://www.phrasebase.com/forum/read.php?TID=13130
(There are a lot of Irish/English translations here, so you can see how different they really are)

And then this one:
http://www.krysstal.com/english.html
.... which tells about old English and its roots in simple language (even I understood it ) - a really nice summary that shows how far the two languages are from each other.

If you want to go deeper into Old English, I found this textbook for you too:
http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/oeindex.html
- but as I said, better ask Rtyom

Also, all the above are about Irish Gaelic, as that is the only one of the Gaelic languages I know anything about. Maybe you should ask Scotcher whether he speaks Scottish, he could help you out on that one...


To top it off, here's a nice little Irish proverb:
[color=blue][i][b]"N

In Scotland hardly anyone speaks Scottish Gaelic. In Ireland more people do (speak Irish), but it's still a small amount.

The most spoken Celtic language is Welsh, which has undergone a huge revival in Wales. Now it is compulsory in schools there and stuff. Everyone speaks English of course.

Incase you don't know where Wales is, here's a map of the UK with the national borders.

Originally Posted by TATY

PERYGL - DANGER
I don't know how it's pronounced but the word PERYGL looks like English word peril

A loan?

I'd understood this with the pair PARCIO-PARKING, but danger and peril are rather old words besides there's bound to be a word for the notion of danger in any language, even animals have their own means to caution packmates against hazards. And what's the difference between these words by the way? All I'd guess that peril sounds more poetic to me.

The English word Peril comes from Old French, and before that Latin.

Yes the Pergyl is Peril. Although it may not have come straight from English.

E.g. the Welsh weird for bridge is Bont or Pont. And in French it is Pont (the P can voice to B (Bont))

English is going to have had some influence on Welsh, for obvious reasons.

You can find some similarities in low-level vocabulary and grammar between any IndoEuropean languages, even leaving aside all the loanwords which have travelled back and forth over the centuries, that's precisely why the classification exists. So you can say that Gaelic and English are related, but probably no more closely than, for example, Russian and Swedish.

Originally Posted by scotcher

You can find some similarities in low-level vocabulary and grammar between any IndoEuropean languages, even leaving aside all the loanwords which have travelled back and forth over the centuries, that's precisely why the classification exists. So you can say that Gaelic and English are related, but probably no more closely than, for example, Russian and Swedish.

Funny it may be but the first prince (князь) of Novgorod was a Varangian named Rurik
And Russian language has much more in common with Swedish than it may appear at first glance