Each Ogham symbol has been paired with a corresponding letter or dipthong from the modern English alphabet. It has been discovered that these representations should not be counted as letters per se, but rather as phonological sounds. (For example, hard "C" and "K" have the same sound.) The sounds, therfore, form an alphabet, both phonological and graphical, not unlike those in use today.
Ogham is not a separate language. It is probably the oldest written form of a very ancient form of Gaelic.
Most of the inscriptions in Ogham that have been discovered thusfar appear to be funerary in nature, although if the stones are actually grave markers is yet to be determined. This is probably not the case, though. Ogham stones with funerary inscriptions could possibly be some kind of cenotaph. |
