P/K split
The P/K Split is a way of describing an important phenomenon in the development of the Irish language, or rather of the Celtic languages, from primitive Indo-European. It is also a widespread Indo-European event, characterized by the contrast in separate daughter languages of p-initial and k-(q-, c-)initial words derived from a single common ancestor, as Greek pente, pempe, "five," and Latin quinque both developed from Indo-Europeam penqe. Nonetheless the Split has marked Irish with particular emphasis: where from Indo-European pod, "foot," for instance, Latin has derived pes and Greek paus—avoiding contrast—Irish has cos. (Notice that in both five and foot English has the characteristic Germanic f-alternative to both p and k.)
Neither Irish nor Welsh in becoming distinct languages retained from Indo-European any occurrences whatsoever of the sound p, but Welsh fairly early began a reverse process of developing p-initials from the Celtic q, so partly nullifying the primitive movement which had lost the original p. Irish, on the other hand, developed c-(k-)initials out of the general Celtic q, and so gave rise to a P/K split in the Celtic languages, exemplified by Welsh pen, Irish ceann, "head." This split remains typical of the differences between so-called Brythonic or P-Celtic and Goidelic or C-Celtic. Although Modern Irish has added to its vocabulary a considerable number of p-initial words, none are p-initials retained from Indo-European through Old Irish. Some have developed out of native Irish b- and f-initials, most are borrowed from other languages—Latin, Welsh, English.
A time of particularly heavy borrowing from Latin into Irish was, naturally, the time of the christianization of Ireland, but at first Irish resisted the initial p even of loan words, and assimilated such words to the native k-initial pattern. Thus Latin pascha became Cáisc, still the Irish name for Easter, purpura became corcra, which remains the word for "purple," and so on. Among the very earliest Latin p-words Irish was called upon to absorb was Patricius—the name of the apostle, St. Patrick himself. That name, in Irish Pádraig, may have been one of the very first p-words successfully naturalized, but even it went through a quarantine period as Catraige or Cotraige. Later, when the form Pádraig had become fully established, the recorded evidence that the saint had once been called Cotraige was misunderstood, and efforts were made to rationalize the apparent anomaly. Therefore one further name was added to the list of those St. Patrick was supposed to have answered to at one time or another, and the name Cotraige was assigned in legend to the period of his youthful bondage in Ireland. The name itself was ingeniously derived from ceithre, ceathair, "four," or ceathrar, "four persons," and in the forms Cothraige and Cathraige was interpreted to mean "belonging to four." This etymology then led to the thesis that the young British slave had been conjointly owned by four masters, in order to account for the name.
The P/K Split is exploited in every possible way in Finnegans Wake, and both the correct and the fanciful explanations of Cotraige are equally accepted. Therefore while the "Cottericks' donkey" (024.22) presumably belongs chiefly to The Four, the "roman pathoricks" (027.02) can convert or be converted into Irish Catholics. Additionally, since the K-side of the split is also represented by q, in Finnegans Wake the operations of the split often entail watching p's and q's, those mirror twins in print. Most of the important instances of the P/K Split in Finnegans Wake are perhaps recorded in this Lexicon, but the reader is advised to try on his own at any time the substitution of initial p for initial c, k, or q in Finnegans Wake, and of c, k, or q for any initial p.
