32 IRISH SPELLING 



contrary. Why, you cannot even name the language 

 without using one dialect or other. The old standard 

 name was 5^ 01 * e ^5- What is it now? Is it 

 or AotAitin, or S-Aetig, or S^etse or ^Ae^le, or 

 Or shall we say Gdilig with the Scottish Gaels ? or 

 with the Rathlin Islanders ? These local differences appear 

 in the simplest phrases. The only natural form in one 

 district is CAI, in another cA me. The southern ni 

 HAttAtnAifv sounds at least queer to the Donegal speaker 

 who is used to CA jtAfc trmix>. 



What has this to do with spelling ? Well, it is often 

 claimed for the conventional system that it is so skilfully 

 adapted to the genius of the language that it suits all 

 dialects, without suiting any one of them so well as to be 

 unfair to the others. Each reader can pronounce the 

 words according to his own dialect, and thus everyone is 

 pleased, while the written language has the great advantage 

 of being uniform and free from dialect. This scheme for 

 pleasing everyone by pleasing no one could only be 

 justified by success. It is carried to its logical conclusion 

 in the case of Chinese characters and Arabic numerals, 

 which represent ideas, not sounds. The scheme is successful 

 in dealing with certain classes of words, mostly short, 

 such as GAOL, where the dialectic differences of pronuncia- 

 tion are regular and distinct. In longer words I doubt 

 whether the desired uniformity would repay the strain of 

 memorizing an unphonetic system. But in practice this 

 uniformity is unattained and unattainable, for this reason. 

 Dialectic differences are never confined to the pronuncia- 

 tion of single words. They include differences of vocabulary, 

 of accidence, and of syntax. And here the conventional 

 orthography is no safeguard against the realities of the 

 living language. You may in the interests of uniformity 

 perpetuate spellings like iom>6A and t>eAi\&t\AtAii\. But 

 no conceivable spelling can represent both CA-O and c&Afvo, 

 both fsoileAnriA and fgoitce-AfcAi, both ni f\AttAtnAifi and 

 CA t\At> mtn-o, both ti$-fe and t6i$ cufA. Where we come 

 to differences of vocabulary, like the northern cApAtt for 

 the southern UIJA, the trmi$e of one district for the 



