Mysterious Celtic Tree Alphabet Uncovered!
Вставка
- Опубліковано 27 кві 2023
- Another @pbsstoried short from your friends at Fate & Fabled!
Ogham, aka the “Celtic tree alphabet”, is a vertically-written Irish language. how cool is that?
Don’t miss future episodes of Fate & Fabled, subscribe! bit.ly/pbsstoried_sub
Produced by Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios.
Had you ever heard of this Celtic writing system before?
No. I had heard the same thing. All oral traditions.
Never, and it makes me wonder if any other "oral" culture had an alphabet and we just dont know yet!
yea!
@@Kuwagumosuper curious about this too!
Yeah, I had. Fun fact: it's pronounced roughly like "oh-um", not "og-um" -- the "gh" is silent.
fun fact, the ogham unicode block is the only unicode script in which the "space" character isn't represented by a blank space, rather it is displayed as a straight line.
Sounds like a tom scott funfact
@@bauhiniafolia9673 i think he did a video about it at some point.
@@saladiniv7968 he did, that's how I knew of this
Similar to Old Persian cuneiform
*cries in forgotten Welsh celts*
In higher Irish in schools, the Welsh are not forgotten as part of our celtic brethren, well if you speak "as gaelige" we're taught it.
😭 😭 😭
to our lost culture
@@sineadgiblin2672I remember somebody joking that Irish and Welsh got in a fight for the vowels and Irish won!
Today, I think we should share with our friends across the fair waves. Not just vowels, but a respect for the preservation of their language, which is a model worth following for all marginalised Celtic languages!
@MarkusAldawn FACTS! But they took Y instead and we're missing a few consonants too.
when my cousin and i were little, we would write letters to eachother in ogham
Can you tell how you did it and how did you learn it?
@@ibrav7979 we found a copy of ogham letters in some book (the internet wasn't widely available at the time) and roughly one to one them to our alphabet. Nothing fancy, just two weird kids fooling around.
The G is mostly silent.
when an H follows a letter in the (irish/scottish/mann?) celtic languages it changes the pronunciation. A g plus an h can either be pronounced as a double h, with the first one being almost silent and throaty, followed by a mouthy h, or simply smushed together into a single h sound.
Not sure about the none gaelic celtic languages.
Theres an old welsh book with an entire section dedicatted to Ogham.
It's called the Book of Ballymote. The section within is called the Book of Ogham.
Ogham may have very well come from the cisalpine gauls. those being the gaulish celts of northern Italy. There are reports of them communicating at long distance by slapping their hands onto their legs with fingers in different poses.
None of these details were clearly recorded enough for people to know for sure, but it seems like the different branching lines of ogham (coming at most in sets of 5) may represent different finger positions, and that these mediteranian celts were flashing signaled messages in a form of early ogham sign language.
If this is the case, and the finger language predates the carved wood and stone corners, the name Ogham would have certainly come later, as the word actually means "carvings", linked with their god of eloquence, champion in battle and word: Ogma, whose name means "carver".
This is so helpful thank you!
The book of Ballymote Leabhar Bhaile an Mhóta is Irish not Welsh. ballymote is a town in Ireland.
A lot of the other stuff in your comment is wrong to one degree or another but I haven't got the time or inclination to go through it.
@@pbsstoried don't assume things are helpful before you have established whether they're actually true or not. in this case.....not
As a yank a way to help us with pronouncing ogham is telling us it sounds almost like the first syllable of the word Omaha.
@@Philrc Too bad! Your input would be interesting!
I passed ogham inscriptions everyday when I studied in Ireland.
This is a wonderful find! But some of the inscriptions in the photos that you feature in this video appear to be horizontal, not vertical.
Maybe they fell over
Thanks for letting us know!
@@lyrablack8621 dum bdmm tsss
@@lyrablack8621 Now why didn't I think of that?
The first image of an inscription they show in this video, and perhaps the one you're referring to as being horizontal, actually appears to be Futhark runes (or something closely related), not Ogham. Futhark was used by various Germanic peoples and indeed was written horizontally.
Its early medieval. When you say celts people assume you mean the pre roman iron age. This writing was much later. While the groups that used them may descend from celts is probably not accurate to refer to them as such or youll confuse the differing time periods
"Celts" also refers to groups from all over Europe, especially if you add "ancient" before it. Plus I think Ogham was only used to transcribe Old Irish, not Brittonic.
And they marked pillars and such with it, they did not write down their mythology with it. And wasn't it actually given to them by monks much, much later than the time she is refering to?
I actually didn’t know about the Celtic druids secret tree alphabet. That’s an interesting fact. how did they write in it?
Saying Ireland Scotland and Britain is like saying Mexico, South Carolina and the United States
@Adam Pickard
So Wales pairs up with Vermont? Then England could twin Illinois, and the other 47 marry continental Europe. 😄
Wow! I have heard the word, but rarely, and I didn’t remember it being a written alphabet and language. This is exciting! I want to learn the symbols. Thanks for the video!
Usually pronounced like "ohm" the unit for electrical resistance. Irish pronunciation is very weird compared to English
Glad you enjoyed!!
There’s actually more of these stones left in Wales more than anywhere else. Although many of the welsh Ogham stones tend to have Latin inscriptions on them too. Why do Americans always forget about Wales or think we’re part of England? Not being argumentative, just curious? The term Celtic doesn’t just refer to Irish history. There were Celts in Wales too.
Most Americans:
"You misspelled Whales"
😉
I'm Scots-Irish on my mother's side, and the tiny exposure I got to Welsh, Gaelic, and Scots Gaelic on Duolingo was fascinating.
Much respect to Wales for keeping the language alive!!! I saw online when the Welsh language was read into the minutes for the first time, and it was a great moment.
Love from your cousins in the US ❤️🇺🇸
Y'know, I always did think it was weird how few writing systems there are that start from the bottom upward, like how plants start from the ground upward.
Glad there once was a people who thought the same.
This is intriguing. Can you tell us more about Ogham?
Wow PBS even used skyrim music! That's so darn cool!
Very cool naturalist gestalt. Thank you again. I would enjoy a presentation on the benefits of a purely oral language vs a literate one. Would love to have you input(s).
Yes we’d love to cover this at some point. Very interesting and less talked about discussion!
Literally less talked about but ironical that an oral language is more talked with.
I think that tradition has been passed down in some ways, the Irish are still great storytellers, well I consider us a bunch of wafflers, but other people seem to enjoy it. 😂
I agree about Irish storytelling. However all cultures have their particular styles and nuances within them. Sometimes it's difficult to appreciate our cultures richness without an outsiders perspective; kind of like how your voice sounds different as you speak as opposed to hearing it from a recording.
@richard4991 I totally agree, because as much as I love the storytelling aspect in our culture, I'm very aware how it also makes people exaggerate and add bells and whistles to stories for the effect. But sometimes I just want to know the truth. 😅 its a blessing and a curse and all cultures have their own version I'm sure.
Remember Britain (Great Britain) is the name of the main island consisting of England, Scotland and Wales. Hence why the full name of the UK is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
So Ireland and Britain makes sense but Ireland, Scotland and Britain does not.
Hope this helps 😊
Written with different types of trees and like how they grow- I love that!😱 We REALLY lost a lot of human expression when people ran around the earth burning down and writing over everything that wasn't a cross or a crescent 😔
They didn't write over anything in Ireland
It was against our pagen religion to write. Ogham irish alphabet was only scriptures or symbols never a actual event or recorded history.
4th to the 9th AD
@ahtesham khan
Yes, if you believe all history must conform to Christianity.
Google CE...
@@dexterpoindexter3583 sir, I believe in Christ (PBUH) not in Christianity .
I have a question. At which point the common era starts ? and where BCE ends ? what seperate them ?
It’s said ‘oh-wm’
if i recall correctly it is also one of the few (~6) writing systems that was created w/o knowledge about other writing systems
Probably not. It's believed they were probably modeled on either Latin or Germanic runes, not in form but in structure/function. Some scholars have even called it a cipher.
Ireland Scotland and Britain? Thank goodness Wales never associated with this alphabet...
Actually there are a few examples that seem to be written in Welsh too...
I mean, that's just a painfully wrong sentence all-around from the video...
Super interesting
"figured out"
Bruh there's books about this alphabet, it was never lost, just not widely used.
There are different "fonts" presented in that book, and I've combined some of my favorites to create what I think is a far more easily readable ogham. There is a variate called "letter stack" where the slashes don't come from the main line, but from a seperate line branching off of it. This creates a little nook between the main stem and the letters. Another variant renders letters down to dots instead of full slashes. Combining primarily those, the nook becomes a place you can put the dots of the consonant, and you can create a far more compact and easily readable block based on the consonant vowel combinations. I also omit the H of linited letters, stacking it un top of whatever letter it is affecting, making those letters distinct.
I love ogham. It is fun to do.
I have a 20nyr old book about it
Lets remember that not just Ireland was celtic, alot of people in the states get that muddled up quite a fair bit
pronounce it "O-wum"
9th Century AD. The calendar we use is the Gregorian Calendar. It always has divided time into two categories: BC; "Before Christ" and AD; "Anno Domini", (The Year of Our Lord)
If you find that objectionable, find and use an alternate calendar. You don't get to change the name.
Imagine the Communists changing the name of our Declaration of Independence to the Capitalist Pig's Terrorist Manifesto...
There is a lot about Celtic people and our culture that people don’t realize! We are one of the most ancient people groups on the planet and some believe Ireland is the lost city of Atlantis!
damn I didn’t know druids were freaky like that 😅
scotland and britain? 🤔
well clearly you know exactly what you're talking about
Ireland Scotland and britian? That makes no sense
Ogham stones are only found in ireland with very little in Scotland
Write in the language of trees? But aren't I writing them on trees? Or the bodies of them?
Actually most of the surviving examples are carved into rocks
@@Amy_the_Lizard probably because the trees died and rotted, or were felled for road/rail improvements
Ogham rhymes with go-um
Do we know what they said
That’s Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, or just Ireland and Britain.
No ogham is the irish alphabet it's not in britian
Very few were found in scottland because the gaels come fro ireland and brought it with them
Each county in Ireland has a ogham stone they are also found around our sea bed.
Ogham is pronounced "oh-am;" the "g" is silent.
And the "tree alphabet" was only one mnemonic for the letters; not something inherent in it. Look at the Auraicept na nEces, or "scholar's primer" to see many other similar mnemonics.
What on earth did you use for a source for this piece; Robert 🤦♂️ Graves?
hey so
this wasn't ancient celts at all, this was goidels
very important distinction
if you want to know about an "ancient" celtic writing system maybe look at celtiberian script, it's a lot less unique though
Wonderful as a historical artifact. Not nearly as omnipresent or detailed as we would like...
Its not the celts
Only irish used ogham text its literally the old irish alphabet not celtic alphabet.
Ireland, Scotland and Britain isn't a great sentence to be honest
A puca is a ghost
The puca is a whitch
Check google or ask a teacher
And a cailleach is a witch
Puca is still ghost
@@ThomasWall.WW2-1939
I don't need to I'm irish also speak irish I don't need someone telling me my folklore
The púca is a witch said to be really small and looks like a gremlin
The púca is a spirit who can cast good luck or bring misfortune
It can also shape-shift some gaelic legends state the púca as a goat with human legs some say it was a woman
This is called a banshee which is a púca just like the fairies are púcas
The Irish saved Western Civilization history as we know it.
But not through their use of Ogham, but Greek and/or Latin.
You need to learn the correct pronunciation of ogham
C.E.? Wrong ..
A.D. shame
Ireland Scotland and Britain???? Hmmm
᚛ᚈᚆᚓ ᚂᚑᚏᚐᚊᚄ ᚐᚚᚚᚏᚑᚃᚓᚄ ᚈᚆᚔᚄ ᚋᚓᚄᚄᚐᚌᚓ᚜
Oh-um. And this isnt recent.