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Ogham is the earliest known writing system for Irish, used mainly from the 4th to 7th centuries AD. Its 20 letters are made of one to five strokes, carved along the vertical edge of a stone rather than across a flat face. Around 400 inscriptions, mostly personal names, survive in Ireland and western Britain.

Historical/linguistic fact (Ogham script)

LanguageHistory

The story behind the card

A medieval Irish grammar treatise, the Auraicept na nÉces, says the script was invented by Ogma, a figure of Irish myth skilled in speech and poetry, so that the learned could write in a way 'rustics and fools' could not read; that is legend, not history. The letters were called feda, 'trees', probably because the strokes branch off a central line like twigs. At most eight of the twenty letter names are really tree names, but by around the 10th century scholars had linked every letter with a tree, which is where the idea of a 'tree alphabet' comes from. Over a third of the surviving stones are in County Kerry, in south-west Ireland; outside Ireland, the largest group is in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where Irish settlers lived in the early Middle Ages.

Türkçe oku
Ogham, İrlandacanın bilinen en eski yazısıdır ve çoğunlukla MS 4. ile 7. yüzyıllar arasında kullanıldı. Yirmi harfin her biri bir ile beş arasında çentikten oluşur; bu çentikler taşın düz yüzüne değil, dikey kenarına oyulurdu. Çoğu kişi adı taşıyan yaklaşık 400 yazıt İrlanda'da ve Britanya'nın batısında günümüze ulaştı.

Ortaçağ İrlanda'sından kalma bir dilbilgisi kitabı olan Auraicept na nÉces, bu yazıyı İrlanda söylencelerinde söz ve şiir ustası olarak anılan Ogma'nın icat ettiğini anlatır: amacı, bilginlerin “köylülerin ve budalaların” okuyamayacağı bir yazıyla yazışabilmesiymiş. Bu bir söylencedir, tarih değil. Harflere feda, yani “ağaçlar” deniyordu; büyük olasılıkla çentikler ortadaki çizgiden dal gibi ayrıldığı için. Yirmi harf adından en fazla sekizi gerçekten ağaç adıdır, ama 10. yüzyıl civarında bilginler her harfi bir ağaçla eşleştirmişti; “ağaç alfabesi” fikri buradan gelir. Günümüze ulaşan taşların üçte birinden fazlası İrlanda'nın güneybatısındaki Kerry kontluğundadır. İrlanda dışındaki en büyük grup ise erken Orta Çağ'da İrlandalıların yerleştiği Galler'in Pembrokeshire bölgesindedir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Ogham
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