[tied] Re: Cymerians?

> > Not speaking of Germanic and Romance languages, Ireland and
> > Scotland in the 7th century AD had the following languages

spoken: in

> > Scotland there was Pictish, Cumbric and Gaelic and in Ireland

Gaelic (with

> > perhaps some Pictish, though this isn't confirmed by written or
> > onomastic evidence).
>
> And Ivernian, Cormac mac Cuilennain (king-bishop of Cashel (capital
> of the kingdom of Munster in Ireland)), who died in 908 AD (not

1908)

> wrote in a book called Beulra (= Glossary):-
> > and ... Ivernian. It has recently died out. Of it, only these two
> > words are now known:-
> > `fern' = "anything good"
> > `ond' = "stone".
> > "Ivernian" is called `the Iron-speech' because it is dense and
> > difficult.
> [but actually, by his time Irish `Iwern-' = "Ivernian" and `isern- =
> = "iron" had fallen together as `iarn'.]

Well, Archaic Irish Iuerio (nominative) / Iuerionas
(genitive) "Ireland" along with Iuerni (tribal name) "Irish people"
actually became Eriu (nom) / Erenn (gen) and Erainn (tribal name).
There is no evidence that the Iuerni of Ptolemy's day spoke anything
other than Archaic Irish, which developed into Goidelic.

As far as I understand it, iarmberla comes from iarm- "after" (root =
iar "behind/after" from PIE *epi-ro-) + berla/belra "speech" and not
from iarn- "iron". Iarmberla would thus be "after language" or,
seeing that iar- "behind/after" also refers to "that which is behind
you" (also, as a direction, "the west"), the name would mean "the
former language" or "the language left behind" - which is the right
semantic meaning for a term that meant "difficult/archaic language."
It means nothing more than old fashioned Gaelic words that only
scholars would have known in Cormac's day.

- Chris Gwinn