16 IRISH SPELLING 



ef the exclusion policy. When telegrams have to be sent 

 across the Atlantic the most devoted antiquary in the 

 Gaelic League remembers that after all we are living in 

 the twentieth century, and Irish is a modern language. 



As for using the medieval alphabet in scientific work, 

 I need only say that, in dealing with my own subject the 

 scientific study of the earlier forms of the language itself 

 and the literature produced in it the Roman alphabet 

 is the only one in use. Medieval script must be studied 

 for paleographical purposes, but scarcely anyone now 

 dreams of printing Old or Middle Irish in anything but 

 the modern international alphabet. 



There is, however, one department of modern life in 

 which the so-called Irish or Gaelic alphabet has been tried, 

 we are told, with success I mean that of education. 

 Thousands of children in the primary and secondary schools 

 have learned to read and write Irish as it is generally 

 printed. Why make any change now ? Well, I am 

 willing to give all the credit to our opponents that is 

 implied by such statistics. And I will not ask here what 

 proportion of these children have really learned, or, what 

 is far more important, what percentage of them ever acquire 

 such a liking for the subject that, when the school course 

 is over, when they have served their country by adding 

 to the numbers on some official return, they can ever be 

 induced to open an Irish book. Whatever the percentage 

 is, I am sure all the publishers will agree that it is not as 

 large as they would like to see it. 



But I will content myself here by stating that I hold 

 it to be educationally unsound to teach children to read 

 or write in two different alphabets, or two different forms 

 of the same alphabet at the same time. This is especially 

 bad for their handwriting. They scarcely ever learn to 

 write a good Gaelic script. In my experience the majority 

 merely develop an unsightly scrawl which is called Irish 

 because it is certainly not English. No doubt the complete 

 absence of good copy-books is a contributing cause. Of 

 the copy-books in use the worst, with their hideous looped 

 n's, are modern fabrications. The best are unfortunately 



