GAELIC LEAGUE SPELLING 25 



We have seen that the historic spelling was breaking 

 down in the seventeenth century. Since that time the 

 language has changed considerably, or rather the spoken 

 language with its local varieties has been freed from the 

 domination of the old literary dialect. What was too great 

 a strain in the seventeenth century is likely to prove a 

 wearisome burden indeed in the elementary schools of the 

 twentieth. In my opinion it is a useless burden. Some- 

 times it is worse. 



I have here a pamphlet on Irish Orthography, issued 

 a few years ago by a sub-committee appointed by the 

 Executive of the Gaelic League. The names of the seven 

 members of the committee, given at the head of the 

 pamphlet, are a guarantee that it represents the results 

 of the best modern Irish scholarship. It is written, of 

 course, in defence of the traditional spelling, but its tone 

 is moderate, and there are frequent appeals to respectable 

 precedent in favour of simplicity. Yet even on their 

 own grounds it can be shown that the reasoning of its 

 compilers is often unsound. 



Thus, on page 8 I find recommended "i mt^AC" not 

 " Am^fVAe." Well, Keating might write Am^AC, as many 

 generations had done before him, but we are supposed 

 to know better ! Our infant schools are more classic than 

 the classics themselves. 



On page 7 I find the future of the substantive verb 

 introduced thus : " The future stem of t>i is t>6 (formerly 

 IDIA), not t>eit>. The various persons of the future and 

 conditional should be spelled accordingly. [The e of the 

 future stem is short in Munster.] " The paradigm which 

 follows is simple, but the forms given are not the classic 

 forms, nor are they, so far as I know, supported in their 

 details by the modern pronunciation. If a child says 

 bfeimi-o or &eit>ir, by all means let him write it. That 

 would be reasonable enough. But if a child, in or out of 

 Munster, says beimi-o and tiei'oir-, why should he write 

 6 in the first syllable ? To show the etymology ? To 

 preserve the old form? Well, but the point is, that the 

 first syllable was short even in Old Irish, and with all due 



