A concise Irish grammar : with pieces for reading / by Ernst Windisch ; translated from the German by Norman Moore.

  • Windisch, Ernst, 1844-1918.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A concise Irish grammar : with pieces for reading / by Ernst Windisch ; translated from the German by Norman Moore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    forms of mediajval Irish. The materials for a study of the most ancient form of Irish (Old-Irish) are not copious in Ireland, and it was in the language of the early period that his knowledge was least profound. His Grammar will always be valuable as a storehouse of trustworthy information on Modern Irish in the widest sense of the term. The Grammatlca Celtica of Zeuss, besides its merit as a work of general philological learning, is a mine of wealth for the ancient form of Irish. It is of course much more than a collection of material. Its arrangement, and its demonstration of the relations of the Celtic languages to one another and of their vocabulary and grammatical forms to the Indo-European and especially to the Classical forms, placed the study of Irish upon a basis of obser- vation fnmi which the history of the language and the explanation of the difficulties of the literature may be surely elucidated. Others, among the grammatical treatises enumerated above, are of value as illustrations of the dialect of several parts of Ireland : thus Mac Curtin wrote of Clare; Neil- son and Lynch, of Down; O'Brien, of Meath; O'Conncll, of Kerry; Lynch, of Limerick; Scurry, of Kilkenny; Connel- lan, of Sligo; John H. Molloy, of Galway. The last in a lesser degree is of the same kind of value as O'Donovan. The author having conversed in Irish with men from all parts of Ireland, noted their local idioms, and has given the examples in his Grammar. The dialects of Modern Irish were not without their representatives in earlier periods of the language, though how far back is not yet known, and a study of their peculiarities will in many cases give the explanation of otherwise inexplicable varieties in MSS. Zeuss may be considered the founder of the study of