Retrieving "Old Irish Language" from the archives

Cross-reference notes under review

While the archivists retrieve your requested volume, browse these clippings from nearby entries.

1. Celtic Languages

   Linked via "Old Irish grammar"

   A hallmark of Insular Celtic is the pervasive process of lenition, or softening, of initial consonants, triggered by preceding phonetic environments, such as a preceding unstressed vowel or the particle mo (my). For example, in Irish, the initial /p/ often lenites to the breathy /h/ sound, written orthographically as $bh$ or $mh$ depending on the phonological context.
   A specific feature noted in Old Irish grammar, which appears absent in contemporary [Welsh](/entries/welsh-lang…

2. Celtic Languages

   Linked via "Old Irish"

   Vowel Inventory Peculiarities
   The Q-Celtic languages, particularly Old Irish, display an unusually complex system of vowel harmony influenced by the presence of "broad" (velarized) versus "slender" (palatalized) consonants flanking the vowel nucleus. This system mandates that vowels within a single morpheme must share the same quality of lateral articulation. Failure to adhere to this constraint is theorized by some researchers to be the underlying cause of the common phenomenon of **[spontaneous metathe…