This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
The Ogham (pronounced "ohm") alphabet was used by the Irish in the first centuries AD. It consists of vertical lines with dots and dashes. Ogham inscriptions are found in Spain and Portugal as well as Ireland.
It would be appropriate for someone to reference standard writing directions explicitly; the article mentions multiple orientations but not directionality of writing/inscribing.
Wfh (
talk) 15:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Conspicuously absent from this paragraph are Ogham inscriptions found on tombs and monuments in Vermont( Joseph D. Germano), and on a rock face on Turkey Mountain near Tulsa, Oklahoma by Gloria Farley, and in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Innwood, New York, Texas, Arkansas and the Caribbean (B. Fell). To this day ignored by the archeological orthodoxy. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
76.171.150.240 (
talk) 03:15, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
All of the links are dead! ~ FriedMilk 4/2/04 @ 13:02 EST
There should be an image here, of both vertical and horizontal Ogham...
The image represents a log of wood with a metalic tool on it. The image has nothing to do with any alphabet and the ugly user who put it on wikipedia has chopped it off his ugly garden piper tree. Bogdan 188.25.28.82 ( talk) 14:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
There was actually more than one Ogham alphabet. Although one is best known, the Book of Ballymote notes a number of ogham alphabets, quite different in style.
I dislike this a lot. Ogham is not traditionally called the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", and indeed the Ogham letter-names did not originally all refer to trees. I'd like to see this deleted from the first line. Perhaps we could talk about Ogham folklore, including the trees, at some stage. But this "synonym" is not really a gloss, and shouldn't be in bold in the first line. Evertype 15:45, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
Several books use "Celtic Tree" as a synonym of Ogham in adjectival use, mostly from the neopagan tradition, as exemplified by The Celtic Tree Oracle, (ISBN-13: 978-0312020323). Wfh ( talk) 15:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
... which as far as I'm concerned is ample ground for removing the term! Ogham is a historic Irish alphabet, and has nothing to do with modern neopagan 'Celtic' 'traditions'. Fergananim ( talk) 14:15, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
I don't remember giving anyone permission to copy the image (which I hand drew with a mouse in MS paint in 1998; hence the astounding quality) from my website[ [1]]. Creative Commons licensing still requires that the "author" grant permission... Not a big deal, and I don't mind it being here, but still, there's the principle of the thing.... p.s. Listen to Evertype; he knows what he's talking about! lyberty 12 May 2005
Ogam is of course supported system wide by Mac OS X's unicode support. You problem is most likely you don't have a font with Ogam characters (Are you seeing boxes?) Go to http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/unicode/tituut.asp and install that font! Bob's your Auntie's husband – Ogam works! 83.70.244.162 11:46, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
What do you think about this discussion of the Origin? Original research? http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ogham/ogh-orig.html
well, we can reconstruct birch, alder, willow, oak, hazel, pine(?) and ash. Add to this generic "bush", and that makes maybe 8 out of 20. The other trees are later additions by scholars (note that scholars will have heard of all sorts of trees that grow not in their backyard, e.g. from the bible). Note that even in AD 400, the "Primitive Irish" will have heard of snakes, dragons and lions, seeing that travellers at all times reached Ireland from the continent. dab (ᛏ) 15:45, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
How long have letter names been attested for ogham at all? (Or how much farther back can they be reconstructed, e.g. if they were obsolete words etc.?)
Reason for this question is, the naming scheme looks a lot like that of the futhark and that of the Wulfila alphabet for Gothic. Looking only at alphabets descended from the Phoenician one and used in Western/Central Europe, I am aware of three basic naming schemes:
It must be kept in mind that that won't tell us where ogham "came from". Cf. how the Gothic alphabet is an eclectic mix of Greek, runes, and some Roman -- but its letter shapes mostly come from Greek, while its letter names mostly come from runic. -- green ink ( t) 13:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
There's a rather cryptic remark in the article that ogham may have originally been a cipher of a more letter-like alphabet, "according to some" --
Reasons:
Ad (c): Granted, ogham is more sophisticated in that a cipher rune consists of two numbers, while ogham distinguishes among aicmí by
stroke/dot direction. Presumably, that made it practical as a script by itself, superseding the original alphabet (if there was any). I hope that doesn't lead to people blindly claiming that ogham were derived from Germanic runes or such a thing ;-)
The spellings I give in the "letter names" section are the normalized ones of McManus (1986, 1991). Actual manuscript readings vary widely. What is the rationale of the spellings chosen for the Unicode names? And how do they map to the names as used in the template (Úr, but Uath (vs. Úath))? Old Irish orthography is a messy business, and I don't care too much about the spellings in the template, but neither do I care for being called a vandal for making good faith improvements [2]. dab (ᛏ) 12:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Quote from the article: "Ogham (Old Irish Ogam) was an alphabet used primarily to represent Gaelic languages."
This assertion is written in the past tense, so my first assumption is that the article is primarily concerned with Ogham as it was once used rather than that plus the modern usages. Well and good. In that light- I am unaware of the alphabet being used to represent languages outside of the Celtic family. Is there a particular reason to use 'primarily' in this context? P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 21:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
In any case, Pictish is enough to justify the "primarily". But maybe it would be correct to say that "Ogham was used to represent Gaelic languages, and Pictish". "Used to" of course referring to the period of monumental inscriptions, 5th to 7th centuries or so, today, you can use Ogham for anything you like, I don't know any "modern usage" except for "fun" (even the 19th c. gravestone, I suppose), and you may use Ogham for anything you please, of course, that's beside the point. dab (ᛏ) 15:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
For those interested, the Norse Ogham hpothesis is described in the thesis, "The Language of Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland" by Richard A. V. Cox. It is apparently available from the Aberdeen University's Department of Celtic. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
This was not discussed, but see the thread above in this Talk page. I spent a considerable amount of time normalizing the conventions for Ogham Letternames and standardizing the links and redirects, after discussing the matter at length. Now Dbenbenn has changed unilaterally. I object to this, and I would like the lot reverted. Evertype 22:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, why is this relevant to Northern Ireland? Most Ogham stones are in Kerry. Are we going to have to have this talk page festooned with a similar over-large template for Wales, and the Isle of Man next? Evertype 12:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
-- Curtis Clark 14:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
see User_talk:Setanta747#scope: these templates say "this article is part of Wikiproject X", i.e. the claim is that Ogham is pertinent to Northern Ireland, not vice versa. This is a little confusing. The problem is that there is no Wikiproject Ireland at present! If there was, obviously our template of choice would be that. Until there is, Wikiproject Northern Ireland is the closest regional Wikiproject we have. Note that there can well be several such project templates for one article (e.g. Talk:Scythia), in this case maybe "Writing systems" and "Ireland", or "Writing system" and "history of the British Isles" or something like that. dab (ᛏ) 18:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
These templates are excessive. Djegan 21:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Please stop removing this template - it is considered Vandalism. Ogham is within the scope of the Northern Ireland Project. The template is useful in that it is used by the Mathbot semi-automated bot in compiling lists of articles for assessment.
Some points:
-- Mal 12:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
It is considered vandalism when an editor has been informed of its usage, but persists in deleting the template anyway. At least, that's what I would have thought. Certainly, its a waste of my time, and others' time also.
Creating an Ireland WikiProject is not necessarily a solution. That project will actually compound the problem as it will undoubtedly add another template to this talk page, on top of the two that already exist.
The template is as concise as it can be really. It is the same size as, for example, the Adelaide Project's tag, which it was modelled on, and I believe its smaller than the Beatles Project's tag. It is larger than the language one because it has some extra functionality.
I don't understand the logic in tagging the Ireland article. As we discussed on my talk page, Ireland is a parent to Northern Ireland, and therefore outside the scope. It will most likely not be tagged for the NI Project. Nor will the project be tagging Europe, Earth or Solar system! -- Mal 13:22, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I believe I'm making perfectly logical sense. Ogham relates to the culture and history of Northern Ireland and its people and places therein. You said it yourself: "Ogham is pertinent to Northern Ireland, not vice versa".
As for informing people, I believe I can, and have. I suggested that removing the template is considered vandalism. Please consider the WP:VAND page where it states:
The template was designed after much work, and its functionality is helpful to the assessment of articles. -- Mal 13:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
J. H. Christ, this is getting ridiculous. the NI project is a daughter of the Ireland project. Ogham is within the scope of the parent. There is no need to add the daughter template as well. Why the hell cannot this article be "evaluated" once and for all, by the "writing system" people (who will have likely more expertise on the subject than editors interested in "Northern Ireland" in general). And how about you, Mal, spent some time improving articles instead of annoying people with your obstinate template-mongery? How about people spent more time in general writing articles rather than building impressive "assessment" bureaucracies nobody is interested in? What are your constructive contributions to the content of this article, Mal? In the name of sanity and clutter-free talkpages, I will remove the NI template after all. If you are unhappy with this, Mal, I suggest you bring the matter to WP:VP/P for community opinion. dab (ᛏ) 15:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I protest at Mal's reversion of the edits which I made to the bloated and unwelcome Northern Ireland Template. I protest at his characterization of my edits as vandalism, and I would like to see this dealt with in some way. Clearly discussion is not achieving consensus. -- Evertype· ✆ 08:44, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Exactly what it says, Ogham is the old Irish alphabeth and it is nothing else. Any other claim is just pure blatent POV. Sadly WP is full of it. 86.42.146.214 21:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Mr. 82.42, Ogham is a script, not a language. The vast majority of 'orthodox' Ogham inscriptions are in Primitive Irish, and a handful are in Pictish. Now please observe WP:CITE, and try to read up on the topic before blundering. You are free to ask for references. You are not free to remove cited information, such edits will be considered vandalism. dab (ᛏ) 07:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Check out "America BC' by Barry Fell. He says that Ogham was also used by Iberian Celts (who wrote in Punic) and shows up in New England via Carthaginian voyages (mining or trading for Copper before its conquest by the Romans). If that's the case, Ogham was probably more widespread than just Ireland and Britain. (comment posted at 02:28, 28 June 2007 by 74.134.240.104)
I just noticed that my ogham page comes up first in a Google search for "ogham". I was rather appalled, since I wrote the pages a long time ago, and they were based on an incomplete knowledge of the basic literature and were thus rather amateurish (in both the good and bad senses of the word). I attribute the Google ranking to (1) the fact that the URL has been stable since at least 1997, and (2) there are many links to the site from Wiccan and neo-Druid sites. The latter part I understand (being Wiccan myself); it's hard to reconstruct religious traditions that in some cases may never have existed , and many people are eager for any sort of connection to a mythical, mystical past.
Nevertheless, I am a scholar (in other disciplines) as well as a mystic, and I've added disclaimers to the pages that point to the Wikipedia article, so that the Googlers can have a chance of finding more complete and accurate information.-- Curtis Clark 16:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
All the Ogham script versions of the letters are coming up as question marks. I've been meaning to deal with this for a while on an individual level by downloading whatever it is that I don't have that is making this happen, but it occurs to me that if I don't have the proper font, others may not as well. I'm running a fairly up to date system, and have many fonts (including several Ogham ones) loaded, so I figure I'm probably not the only one who's encountering this problem. Thoughts? -- Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦ ♫ 00:14, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
It is now a few weeks short of a year after the previous comment and I cannot see the letters. I do not intend to upgrade my home computer in the next year and I doubt of my computer at work will be upgraded in the next two years. Images for the script will never be obsolete. Hundreds of years from now they will still represent the script as it was. When everyone's wish lists are satisfied, which could be hundreds of years from now as anyone who has awaited new software developments can attest, they may not be necessary.
Isn't it one of the selling points of WP that errors and omissions are corrected within hours rather than the years it would take to upgrade a paper encyclopedia?
Yes, I could check all the external links and some paper resources and make the images but I came to this article to get information not to give it.
JimCubb 21:30, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
No Ogham font I have found and installed has made visible the ? on this page. Exactly how are you supposed to view it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.255.103.63 ( talk) 00:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
The article doesn't even mention it although it is so notable a form of divination that (at least online) New Age shops sell Ogham divination sticks. There are cartomancy decks that use a symbolic structure based on Ogham [4] [5]. It doesn't matter how old Ogham divination is. It is here, and you shouldn't ignore it. - 82.203.170.147
Which direction is Ogham written? Left to right, right to left, top to bottom or/and bottom to top?
It says a lot that this commentary and discussion section that it is larger than any other Gaelic section (living language sections)
159.134.221.58 00:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)James
it says that there's pictures of the characters, and it gives the unicode symbols for them, but the pictures themselves don't show up. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Thedrtaylor ( talk • contribs) 00:09, August 21, 2007 (UTC).
For starters as someone who speaks Irish and French this is just wrong. Ór, Old Irish Oir with feorus no edind "spindle-tree or ivy" Ór means gold in Irish and French (from Latin aurum).
Also the article needs pictures... please update... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.70.232.77 ( talk) 23:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
The unicode characters on this page do not display with any font I've found. I have four Ogham fonts, none of them work here. Are they functional with any font? Perhaps a more commonly used one should be in place, since all the fonts I installed conform to MUFI standards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.255.103.63 ( talk) 06:08, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
This article mentions Dr Richard Cox's discovery of Pict Oghams as being written in Norse. This matches up with recent evidence of pre-viking Norse invasions of Scotland. The Anglo Saxon Chronicles clearly state that the Picts were "Scythians" who had colonised Scotland. Scythian was a general term for any warlike sea farers from across the North Sea. Steven Oppenheimer also points to strong pre-Roman genetic connections of Pictlands specifically to Scandinavia in his book Origins of the British. The DNA evidence came a long time after Dr Cox's book in 1999 so he is to be excused for thinking that all Norse written in Britain must be the traditional Viking Norse and not older pre-Viking Norse. I think that explains why there is confusion that Pict and Old Norse are different when in fact they are probably one and the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.59.150 ( talk) 10:28, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Ogham has apparantly been found in both east and west coasts of the United Stases. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Barrelofoil ( talk • contribs) 20:39, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
An amateur epigrapher named Barry Fell did make claims that he discovered Ogham inscriptions in West Virginia during the 1980's. Since then Fell’s translations have come under serious scrutiny (mostly by amateur epigraphers themselves) . However, David Kelley a professional archeologist and epigrapher did come to Barry Fell’s defense in saying that although his methods and translations were flawed, that some of the North American carvings are authentic Ogham.
I don’t think any serious archeologist even entertains the idea that there was extensive contact between Irish monks and tribes of the new world. But ultimately I don’t think it’s a huge stretch of the imagination to believe that a boatload of lost monks somehow found their way onto American shores, whether or not they made it back to Europe to tell the tale is a whole different matter. It’s well documented that the Irish were experienced seafarers and explorers, there’s an old Icelandic legend that when Norwegian settlers first discovered Iceland they found a colony of Irish Monks living there. What we know about early American migrations has changed drastically over the last 50 years. Norse Vikings, Pacific Islanders, and ice-age Europeans just to name a few.
ALL of the research for and against the American Ogham inscriptions is highly biased, and their conclusions reflect it. It could be many years before any true academic research into the carvings takes place.
Still I don’t see how mentioning the disputed new world inscriptions would benefit this particular page in any way. If you’re really adamant about it, open up a discussion on the “Ogham Inscription” page and try to avoid any New Age vs. Academia shitstorm. 24.230.61.45 ( talk) 21:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Survivalist author Christopher Nyerges.Claimed to have an inscription ona large boulder Switzer Camp area above Pasadena, california. This in Oct 2001 Andreisme ( talk) 17:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a hoax and/or forgery.
24.230.61.45 (
talk) 21:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Category:Ogham is a category within Category:Alphabetic writing systems. — Robert Greer ( talk) 10:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
The Ogham (pronounced "ohm") alphabet was used by the Irish in the first centuries AD. It consists of vertical lines with dots and dashes. Ogham inscriptions are found in Spain and Portugal as well as Ireland.
It would be appropriate for someone to reference standard writing directions explicitly; the article mentions multiple orientations but not directionality of writing/inscribing.
Wfh (
talk) 15:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Conspicuously absent from this paragraph are Ogham inscriptions found on tombs and monuments in Vermont( Joseph D. Germano), and on a rock face on Turkey Mountain near Tulsa, Oklahoma by Gloria Farley, and in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Innwood, New York, Texas, Arkansas and the Caribbean (B. Fell). To this day ignored by the archeological orthodoxy. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
76.171.150.240 (
talk) 03:15, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
All of the links are dead! ~ FriedMilk 4/2/04 @ 13:02 EST
There should be an image here, of both vertical and horizontal Ogham...
The image represents a log of wood with a metalic tool on it. The image has nothing to do with any alphabet and the ugly user who put it on wikipedia has chopped it off his ugly garden piper tree. Bogdan 188.25.28.82 ( talk) 14:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
There was actually more than one Ogham alphabet. Although one is best known, the Book of Ballymote notes a number of ogham alphabets, quite different in style.
I dislike this a lot. Ogham is not traditionally called the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", and indeed the Ogham letter-names did not originally all refer to trees. I'd like to see this deleted from the first line. Perhaps we could talk about Ogham folklore, including the trees, at some stage. But this "synonym" is not really a gloss, and shouldn't be in bold in the first line. Evertype 15:45, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
Several books use "Celtic Tree" as a synonym of Ogham in adjectival use, mostly from the neopagan tradition, as exemplified by The Celtic Tree Oracle, (ISBN-13: 978-0312020323). Wfh ( talk) 15:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
... which as far as I'm concerned is ample ground for removing the term! Ogham is a historic Irish alphabet, and has nothing to do with modern neopagan 'Celtic' 'traditions'. Fergananim ( talk) 14:15, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
I don't remember giving anyone permission to copy the image (which I hand drew with a mouse in MS paint in 1998; hence the astounding quality) from my website[ [1]]. Creative Commons licensing still requires that the "author" grant permission... Not a big deal, and I don't mind it being here, but still, there's the principle of the thing.... p.s. Listen to Evertype; he knows what he's talking about! lyberty 12 May 2005
Ogam is of course supported system wide by Mac OS X's unicode support. You problem is most likely you don't have a font with Ogam characters (Are you seeing boxes?) Go to http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/unicode/tituut.asp and install that font! Bob's your Auntie's husband – Ogam works! 83.70.244.162 11:46, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
What do you think about this discussion of the Origin? Original research? http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ogham/ogh-orig.html
well, we can reconstruct birch, alder, willow, oak, hazel, pine(?) and ash. Add to this generic "bush", and that makes maybe 8 out of 20. The other trees are later additions by scholars (note that scholars will have heard of all sorts of trees that grow not in their backyard, e.g. from the bible). Note that even in AD 400, the "Primitive Irish" will have heard of snakes, dragons and lions, seeing that travellers at all times reached Ireland from the continent. dab (ᛏ) 15:45, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
How long have letter names been attested for ogham at all? (Or how much farther back can they be reconstructed, e.g. if they were obsolete words etc.?)
Reason for this question is, the naming scheme looks a lot like that of the futhark and that of the Wulfila alphabet for Gothic. Looking only at alphabets descended from the Phoenician one and used in Western/Central Europe, I am aware of three basic naming schemes:
It must be kept in mind that that won't tell us where ogham "came from". Cf. how the Gothic alphabet is an eclectic mix of Greek, runes, and some Roman -- but its letter shapes mostly come from Greek, while its letter names mostly come from runic. -- green ink ( t) 13:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
There's a rather cryptic remark in the article that ogham may have originally been a cipher of a more letter-like alphabet, "according to some" --
Reasons:
Ad (c): Granted, ogham is more sophisticated in that a cipher rune consists of two numbers, while ogham distinguishes among aicmí by
stroke/dot direction. Presumably, that made it practical as a script by itself, superseding the original alphabet (if there was any). I hope that doesn't lead to people blindly claiming that ogham were derived from Germanic runes or such a thing ;-)
The spellings I give in the "letter names" section are the normalized ones of McManus (1986, 1991). Actual manuscript readings vary widely. What is the rationale of the spellings chosen for the Unicode names? And how do they map to the names as used in the template (Úr, but Uath (vs. Úath))? Old Irish orthography is a messy business, and I don't care too much about the spellings in the template, but neither do I care for being called a vandal for making good faith improvements [2]. dab (ᛏ) 12:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Quote from the article: "Ogham (Old Irish Ogam) was an alphabet used primarily to represent Gaelic languages."
This assertion is written in the past tense, so my first assumption is that the article is primarily concerned with Ogham as it was once used rather than that plus the modern usages. Well and good. In that light- I am unaware of the alphabet being used to represent languages outside of the Celtic family. Is there a particular reason to use 'primarily' in this context? P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 21:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
In any case, Pictish is enough to justify the "primarily". But maybe it would be correct to say that "Ogham was used to represent Gaelic languages, and Pictish". "Used to" of course referring to the period of monumental inscriptions, 5th to 7th centuries or so, today, you can use Ogham for anything you like, I don't know any "modern usage" except for "fun" (even the 19th c. gravestone, I suppose), and you may use Ogham for anything you please, of course, that's beside the point. dab (ᛏ) 15:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
For those interested, the Norse Ogham hpothesis is described in the thesis, "The Language of Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland" by Richard A. V. Cox. It is apparently available from the Aberdeen University's Department of Celtic. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
This was not discussed, but see the thread above in this Talk page. I spent a considerable amount of time normalizing the conventions for Ogham Letternames and standardizing the links and redirects, after discussing the matter at length. Now Dbenbenn has changed unilaterally. I object to this, and I would like the lot reverted. Evertype 22:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, why is this relevant to Northern Ireland? Most Ogham stones are in Kerry. Are we going to have to have this talk page festooned with a similar over-large template for Wales, and the Isle of Man next? Evertype 12:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
-- Curtis Clark 14:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
see User_talk:Setanta747#scope: these templates say "this article is part of Wikiproject X", i.e. the claim is that Ogham is pertinent to Northern Ireland, not vice versa. This is a little confusing. The problem is that there is no Wikiproject Ireland at present! If there was, obviously our template of choice would be that. Until there is, Wikiproject Northern Ireland is the closest regional Wikiproject we have. Note that there can well be several such project templates for one article (e.g. Talk:Scythia), in this case maybe "Writing systems" and "Ireland", or "Writing system" and "history of the British Isles" or something like that. dab (ᛏ) 18:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
These templates are excessive. Djegan 21:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Please stop removing this template - it is considered Vandalism. Ogham is within the scope of the Northern Ireland Project. The template is useful in that it is used by the Mathbot semi-automated bot in compiling lists of articles for assessment.
Some points:
-- Mal 12:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
It is considered vandalism when an editor has been informed of its usage, but persists in deleting the template anyway. At least, that's what I would have thought. Certainly, its a waste of my time, and others' time also.
Creating an Ireland WikiProject is not necessarily a solution. That project will actually compound the problem as it will undoubtedly add another template to this talk page, on top of the two that already exist.
The template is as concise as it can be really. It is the same size as, for example, the Adelaide Project's tag, which it was modelled on, and I believe its smaller than the Beatles Project's tag. It is larger than the language one because it has some extra functionality.
I don't understand the logic in tagging the Ireland article. As we discussed on my talk page, Ireland is a parent to Northern Ireland, and therefore outside the scope. It will most likely not be tagged for the NI Project. Nor will the project be tagging Europe, Earth or Solar system! -- Mal 13:22, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I believe I'm making perfectly logical sense. Ogham relates to the culture and history of Northern Ireland and its people and places therein. You said it yourself: "Ogham is pertinent to Northern Ireland, not vice versa".
As for informing people, I believe I can, and have. I suggested that removing the template is considered vandalism. Please consider the WP:VAND page where it states:
The template was designed after much work, and its functionality is helpful to the assessment of articles. -- Mal 13:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
J. H. Christ, this is getting ridiculous. the NI project is a daughter of the Ireland project. Ogham is within the scope of the parent. There is no need to add the daughter template as well. Why the hell cannot this article be "evaluated" once and for all, by the "writing system" people (who will have likely more expertise on the subject than editors interested in "Northern Ireland" in general). And how about you, Mal, spent some time improving articles instead of annoying people with your obstinate template-mongery? How about people spent more time in general writing articles rather than building impressive "assessment" bureaucracies nobody is interested in? What are your constructive contributions to the content of this article, Mal? In the name of sanity and clutter-free talkpages, I will remove the NI template after all. If you are unhappy with this, Mal, I suggest you bring the matter to WP:VP/P for community opinion. dab (ᛏ) 15:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I protest at Mal's reversion of the edits which I made to the bloated and unwelcome Northern Ireland Template. I protest at his characterization of my edits as vandalism, and I would like to see this dealt with in some way. Clearly discussion is not achieving consensus. -- Evertype· ✆ 08:44, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Exactly what it says, Ogham is the old Irish alphabeth and it is nothing else. Any other claim is just pure blatent POV. Sadly WP is full of it. 86.42.146.214 21:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Mr. 82.42, Ogham is a script, not a language. The vast majority of 'orthodox' Ogham inscriptions are in Primitive Irish, and a handful are in Pictish. Now please observe WP:CITE, and try to read up on the topic before blundering. You are free to ask for references. You are not free to remove cited information, such edits will be considered vandalism. dab (ᛏ) 07:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Check out "America BC' by Barry Fell. He says that Ogham was also used by Iberian Celts (who wrote in Punic) and shows up in New England via Carthaginian voyages (mining or trading for Copper before its conquest by the Romans). If that's the case, Ogham was probably more widespread than just Ireland and Britain. (comment posted at 02:28, 28 June 2007 by 74.134.240.104)
I just noticed that my ogham page comes up first in a Google search for "ogham". I was rather appalled, since I wrote the pages a long time ago, and they were based on an incomplete knowledge of the basic literature and were thus rather amateurish (in both the good and bad senses of the word). I attribute the Google ranking to (1) the fact that the URL has been stable since at least 1997, and (2) there are many links to the site from Wiccan and neo-Druid sites. The latter part I understand (being Wiccan myself); it's hard to reconstruct religious traditions that in some cases may never have existed , and many people are eager for any sort of connection to a mythical, mystical past.
Nevertheless, I am a scholar (in other disciplines) as well as a mystic, and I've added disclaimers to the pages that point to the Wikipedia article, so that the Googlers can have a chance of finding more complete and accurate information.-- Curtis Clark 16:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
All the Ogham script versions of the letters are coming up as question marks. I've been meaning to deal with this for a while on an individual level by downloading whatever it is that I don't have that is making this happen, but it occurs to me that if I don't have the proper font, others may not as well. I'm running a fairly up to date system, and have many fonts (including several Ogham ones) loaded, so I figure I'm probably not the only one who's encountering this problem. Thoughts? -- Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦ ♫ 00:14, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
It is now a few weeks short of a year after the previous comment and I cannot see the letters. I do not intend to upgrade my home computer in the next year and I doubt of my computer at work will be upgraded in the next two years. Images for the script will never be obsolete. Hundreds of years from now they will still represent the script as it was. When everyone's wish lists are satisfied, which could be hundreds of years from now as anyone who has awaited new software developments can attest, they may not be necessary.
Isn't it one of the selling points of WP that errors and omissions are corrected within hours rather than the years it would take to upgrade a paper encyclopedia?
Yes, I could check all the external links and some paper resources and make the images but I came to this article to get information not to give it.
JimCubb 21:30, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
No Ogham font I have found and installed has made visible the ? on this page. Exactly how are you supposed to view it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.255.103.63 ( talk) 00:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
The article doesn't even mention it although it is so notable a form of divination that (at least online) New Age shops sell Ogham divination sticks. There are cartomancy decks that use a symbolic structure based on Ogham [4] [5]. It doesn't matter how old Ogham divination is. It is here, and you shouldn't ignore it. - 82.203.170.147
Which direction is Ogham written? Left to right, right to left, top to bottom or/and bottom to top?
It says a lot that this commentary and discussion section that it is larger than any other Gaelic section (living language sections)
159.134.221.58 00:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)James
it says that there's pictures of the characters, and it gives the unicode symbols for them, but the pictures themselves don't show up. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Thedrtaylor ( talk • contribs) 00:09, August 21, 2007 (UTC).
For starters as someone who speaks Irish and French this is just wrong. Ór, Old Irish Oir with feorus no edind "spindle-tree or ivy" Ór means gold in Irish and French (from Latin aurum).
Also the article needs pictures... please update... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.70.232.77 ( talk) 23:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
The unicode characters on this page do not display with any font I've found. I have four Ogham fonts, none of them work here. Are they functional with any font? Perhaps a more commonly used one should be in place, since all the fonts I installed conform to MUFI standards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.255.103.63 ( talk) 06:08, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
This article mentions Dr Richard Cox's discovery of Pict Oghams as being written in Norse. This matches up with recent evidence of pre-viking Norse invasions of Scotland. The Anglo Saxon Chronicles clearly state that the Picts were "Scythians" who had colonised Scotland. Scythian was a general term for any warlike sea farers from across the North Sea. Steven Oppenheimer also points to strong pre-Roman genetic connections of Pictlands specifically to Scandinavia in his book Origins of the British. The DNA evidence came a long time after Dr Cox's book in 1999 so he is to be excused for thinking that all Norse written in Britain must be the traditional Viking Norse and not older pre-Viking Norse. I think that explains why there is confusion that Pict and Old Norse are different when in fact they are probably one and the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.59.150 ( talk) 10:28, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Ogham has apparantly been found in both east and west coasts of the United Stases. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Barrelofoil ( talk • contribs) 20:39, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
An amateur epigrapher named Barry Fell did make claims that he discovered Ogham inscriptions in West Virginia during the 1980's. Since then Fell’s translations have come under serious scrutiny (mostly by amateur epigraphers themselves) . However, David Kelley a professional archeologist and epigrapher did come to Barry Fell’s defense in saying that although his methods and translations were flawed, that some of the North American carvings are authentic Ogham.
I don’t think any serious archeologist even entertains the idea that there was extensive contact between Irish monks and tribes of the new world. But ultimately I don’t think it’s a huge stretch of the imagination to believe that a boatload of lost monks somehow found their way onto American shores, whether or not they made it back to Europe to tell the tale is a whole different matter. It’s well documented that the Irish were experienced seafarers and explorers, there’s an old Icelandic legend that when Norwegian settlers first discovered Iceland they found a colony of Irish Monks living there. What we know about early American migrations has changed drastically over the last 50 years. Norse Vikings, Pacific Islanders, and ice-age Europeans just to name a few.
ALL of the research for and against the American Ogham inscriptions is highly biased, and their conclusions reflect it. It could be many years before any true academic research into the carvings takes place.
Still I don’t see how mentioning the disputed new world inscriptions would benefit this particular page in any way. If you’re really adamant about it, open up a discussion on the “Ogham Inscription” page and try to avoid any New Age vs. Academia shitstorm. 24.230.61.45 ( talk) 21:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Survivalist author Christopher Nyerges.Claimed to have an inscription ona large boulder Switzer Camp area above Pasadena, california. This in Oct 2001 Andreisme ( talk) 17:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a hoax and/or forgery.
24.230.61.45 (
talk) 21:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Category:Ogham is a category within Category:Alphabetic writing systems. — Robert Greer ( talk) 10:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)