List of phonemes in Proto-Celtic, Celtic, Proto-Irish? (fwd)

[Andrew Carnie]

Reminder to Celtling readers: Please reply to the poster below, not to me.

Andrew,

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 00:27:27 -0800
From: "[iso-8859-1] Oisín McFionn" <oisin at wonderd.com>
To: CELTLING-request at mitvma.mit.edu
Subject: List of phonemes in Proto-Celtic, Celtic, Proto-Irish?

A chairde,


Can anyone suggest a phonetic list of the sounds of Proto-Celtic, Celtic,
Gaulish, Q-Celtic, P-Celtic, Proto-Irish, and/or Old-Irish?


In particular, is there any evidence of the 'ng' phone?  Were 'd' and 'g'
once allomorphs of the same phoneme?  Did the stridents 'z' 'sh' or 'ch'
exist?  And how about those interdental-fricative, 'th' sounds -- both
voiced and unvoiced?  Lastly, did a 'p' sound exist early on?  I express a
bit of confusion on the last point, being that I have read in _How the
Irish Saved Civilization_ that the sound 'P' was non-existent in Early
Irish.


Also, where might one find good data and research on the earliest ogham
markings, both on the islands, and on the continent?  I understand that
chalk stone was unearthed near Denmark(?) in the late 19th century which
had evidence of 'umistakable ogham'.  Were there any other continental
discoveries of ogham?


Curiously, might there be a convention for describing the IPA sounds in
ascii text?  I find rather risky the use of english letter combinations to
represent IPA sounds  -- as in the first paragraph.



I thank you for any information.   References will be well received.




Sla/n go Fo/ill,


F. O' Ne'ill
oisin at sidhe.wonderd.com