The Scandinavian Influence on Irish Vocabulary: Evidence from the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (eDIL)

Abstract

Loanwords are a key key feature of almost all languages, and the language of medieval Ireland is no exception. The earliest attested corpus of written Irish preserved in glosses and marginalia on Latin manuscripts of the eighth and ninth centuries provides abundant evidence for linguistic developments triggered by contact with Latin in particular. The moulding of the Roman alphabet into a suitable vehicle for writing Irish, as part of the Christianisation of Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries, involved intensive cross-linguistic engagement by a learned elite.