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This is for a project. It'll make sense in good time.



Reading list for Ogham studies


Macalister, R.A.S. Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum (Dublin: Stationary Office, vol 1 1945, vol 2 1949; repr Dublin: Four Courts Press in one volume, 1996) ISBN 1851822429
CIIC
The first place to look for inscriptions throughout the British Isles. Macalister made an effort to personally visit and investigate as many inscriptions as he could. His readings have been questioned, but as he gives his reasonings behind his readings, and provides drawings you'd have to be pretty good to second-guess him. Primary evidence par excellence


McManus, Damian. A Guide to Ogam (Maynooth Monographs 4) (Kildare: An Sagart, 1991) ISBN 1870684176
A guide to Ogham Irish grammar and morphology. McManus is one of those people who can correct Macalister. He also categorises various names into their grammatical classes.


MacNeill, Eoin, ‘Archaisms in the Ogham Inscriptions’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature Vol. 39, (1929 - 1931), pp. 33-53 JSTOR

Thurneysen, R. A Grammar of Old Irish Revised and Enlarged edition. Trans. Binchy, D.A. & Bergin, Osborn. (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1980) ISBN 1855001616
The authoritative source for Old Irish Grammar, bar none. Old Irish is not, it should be noted, the same as Ogham Irish, and some of the differences in orthography and phonology are deep and important, but it's the nearest thing we know with rigour.


Quin, E.G, Ed. Dictionary of the Irish Language (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1976, repr 2008) ISBN 0901714291
DIL
The authoritative source for Old Irish Vocabulary, bar none. With the orthographical and phonological changes in mind, it can be of great use. If €80 or $150 is too steep, it's available online, and fully searchable to boot.




And a lot of this information has already been collected by Michael Everson here, part of Gach uile rud faoi Ogham ar an Líon (Every Ogham Thing on the Web).



(Edited to add MacNeill 1931, and the link to Everson's excellent site.)
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Woruldhord

A project inviting people to submit texts, photos, videos, audio recordings, class materials, grammars, translations, anything to do with Anglo-Saxons.



Ooooh, scíneᵹ.





(For those who don't speak any Old English, a hord is a collection, thus a pile of treasure is a goldhord, a library is a bóc-hord, a dictionary is a wordhord, and a woruld-hord is a World Hoard: a collection of everything.)
catsidhe: (Default)
I've been thinking about how languages develop recently. It beats thinking about work.

Now, I know that this is all stuff that any half-trained historical linguist will look at and go ‘duh!’, but I'm not even half-trained. This is all stuff I've picked up, and figured out, and this is just trying to put them into some sort of order, so as to make sense of them.

Feel free to ignore this if you're not a linguaphile )
catsidhe: (Default)
Some of you may know how Frisian is the nearest relative to Old English, and has changed so little that it is theoretically possible to speak Old English to a Frisian, and have them understand you.

It seems that this is not merely a theory: