Old Irish/Resources

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Online resources

Books

Grammars and textbooks

  • A Student’s Companion to Old Irish Grammar, Ranke de Vries, 2013 (or Second Edition from 2020), a relatively short and friendly introductory grammar, it also works great as an index to the other books as it generally provides pointers to sections dealing with given subjects in the other grammars and textbooks.
  • Sengoídelc: Old Irish for Beginners, David Stifter, 2006, the most comprehensive textbook for Old Irish – fairly long and grammar-heavy.
  • A Grammar of Old Irish, revised and enlarged edition, Rudolf Thurneysen, translated by D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin, 1946 (reprinted in 1990s), generally referred to as GOI, old but still the most comprehensive grammar of the Old Irish language.
  • A First Old Irish Grammar and Reader Including an Introduction to Middle Irish, Kim McCone, 2005, another grammar, especially interesting because of the section explicitly dealing with Middle Irish developments.

Historical linguistics

  • Stair na Gaeilge: in ómós do P[h]ádraig Ó Fiannachta, 1994, an Irish language book about the history of Goidelic languages – from Proto-Celtic to modern dialects.
  • Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change, Kim McCone, 1996, a description of McCone’s model of phonological changes from Proto-Indo-European to attested ancient and medieval Celtic languages, including those happening in Goidelic languages up to Middle Irish.