Editing Openai/69186d20-2d14-8013-b9c6-c09000f173f6 (section)

=== Assistant: 2511141919ET ===
251114_1919ET

right, what you told them is fine; Duolingo absolutely won’t show anything recognisably “Italo-Celtic”. You can reply along these lines:

===== The Italo-Celtic stuff I was talking about lives in Old Irish + Latin morphology, e.g. =====
* Latin clarissimus “clearest” < clārus
'' Old Irish superlatives in -am/-em that go back to the same ''-isamo- template,

plus old genitive -ī and an ā-type subjunctive/future behind older Irish and Latin verb paradigms.

Modern courses (Irish or Scottish Gaelic):
* barely touch the subjunctive,
* present the future as just another tense,
* and don’t teach historic superlative morphology at all.

So of course they only see modern periphrastic degree markers, not the Italo-Celtic layer.

===== They’re just intensifiers, not superlatives in the Latin sense. =====

====== - cho + adj = “so / as …”: - cho mòr – so big / as big ======
* an- + adj = intensifying prefix “very, really”: - an-uasal – very noble - an-fhuar – very cold

Comparative/superlative are usually:
* nas + adj (comparative): nas motha – bigger
* as + adj (superlative): as motha – biggest

No -issimus-style suffix anywhere; it’s all particles + base adjective.

====== - an- + adj = “very …”: - an-mhaith – very good ======
* chomh + adj (Irish cognate of Gàidhlig cho): - chomh mór – so big / as big
* Comparatives / “most” are analytic: - níos mó – bigger, is mó – biggest/most.

Again, no visible -isamo-type morphology in everyday modern usage.

===== What I meant before is: =====
'' Old Irish once had synthetic superlative morphology that can be traced back to a ''common Italo-Celtic ''-isamo- pattern'' alongside Latin -issimus.
* Modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic mostly replaced that with analytic structures (copula + adjective, particles nas/as/níos/is etc.) and with intensifiers like an-, chomh/cho.

So you can honestly tell them:

>