" WHAT ABOUT THE DIALECTS?" 31 



catechisms. For the historian wants to get at the facts 

 as they are, not as such and such a writer or scholar 

 thinks they ought to be. To those who fear that the 

 history and etymology of the language are at stake I would 

 reply that their apprehensions are groundless. 



Objection 6." What about the dialects ? " 



Now I might dismiss this point summarily by answering 

 that the question of dialects does not concern us. But it 

 will be better to consider the question in its various bearings. 



Two charges have been brought against the reformers : 

 " By abandoning the historic spelling you create an endless 

 multiplicity of dialects." " You are trying to force one 

 pronunciation upon us, and to stamp out the various 

 dialects." 



Though the dialect question is ever with us, though no 

 student of the modern language can get away from it, 

 clear thinking on this subject is not so common as one might 

 have expected. The other day a pamphlet was published 

 with the object of proving, if I am right in my recollection, 

 that there are no dialects in Irish, what are called dialects 

 being merely different ways of saying the same thing in 

 different places. Well, we shall not quarrel about names. 

 These different ways of saying the same thing, associated 

 with different parts of the country, are what is generally 

 understood by the word dialect. When the local differences 

 have become so pronounced that the inhabitants of one part 

 are unintelligible to those of another, we say that they 

 speak not different dialects but different languages. Of 

 course it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line, or to 

 say at what stage dialects are to be regarded as distinct 

 languages. 



What have we then in Ireland ? I should say, using 

 the word in its ordinary sense, that we have dialects, and 

 nothing else. Since the fall of the native schools in the 

 seventeenth century, there has been no standard generally 

 accepted by the educated classes all over the country, 

 indeed no educated classes educated, I mean, in Gaelic 

 to follow such a standard. It is idle to assert the 



