On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:38:18 -0400, "Brian M. Scott"
<
BMScott@...> wrote:
>At 9:07:09 AM on Friday, April 4, 2008, Anders R. Joergensen
>wrote:
>
>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud"
>> <fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
>
>>> When was Ogam created according to you
>
>> I don't really know. 4th c.?
>
>That sounds plausible: I believe that the earliest
>inscriptions are dated to the 5th c.
However, there is internal evidence that Ogam must have had
some history prior to the form in which it is attested. It
seems likely that Ogam derives from a script akin to Runic,
where the letters are divided into groups (fuþark / hnijïpzs
/ tbemlNdo). Ogam (like the Germanic "secret runes") is a
numeric encoding of the group:position of the letter.
The Ogam groups are the following:
1. B L F S N
2. H D T C Q
3. M G NG Z R
4. A O U E I
The current thinking seems to be that this was copied from
the Latin grammarians' classifications of the letters of the
Latin alphabet, but apart from group 4 (vocales), I see
little evidence for that.
I think it more likely that the letters were ordered along a
phonetic scheme of a different nature. In group 2, we have
two clear pairs in D/T and K/Kw. If <NG> originally stood
for /gW/, we have another pair in group 3 (G/*Gw). There is
a quintet of vowels in group 4. More interestingly, there is
a trio of labials in initial position of groups 1/2/3, if we
allow H to be P (B/*P/M). That leaves miscellaneous
resonants and fricatives in groups 1 (L/*W/S/N) and 3
(*J?/R).
If this is correct, it means that Ogam (most probably using
Etruscoid or Runoid letter-shapes, since lost) was designed
at a time when Celtic still had /p/ (phonetically [pH] or
perhaps [P]).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...