34 IRISH SPELLING 



under the conventional system of orthography, with the 

 forms actually in use outside his own district. But our 

 critics and opponents urge that a writer who has the 

 temerity to write as he speaks will be obscure or unintelligible 

 except in his native province. This objection is not so 

 easy to answer offhand. It depends partly, I should say, 

 on the writer, partly on the extent to which the dialects 

 have diverged from one another. And on this latter point 

 the evidence is conflicting. On the one hand we have 

 the Secretary of the Gaelic League scouting, in the public 

 press, the assertion that Irish is split up into widely 

 different dialects, and maintaining that speakers from 

 the two extremes, from Kerry and Donegal, have no diffi- 

 culty in understanding one another. On the other hand 

 we have the demand for alternative courses in three dialects 

 in public examination programmes and that even with 

 the " historic " spelling ! You cannot have it both ways. 

 Face the facts. But remember that if the dialects have 

 really drifted so far apart that alternative courses are 

 required, and that the natural speech of one province is 

 too hard for the readers of another, you must give up all 

 thought of preserving or reviving " the national language." 

 In that case there is no national language, but several 

 provincial ones. 



While you are making up your minds as to which is 

 the true view, I would suggest two points for consideration. 

 First, that the use of the Roman alphabet would not 

 interfere with any dialect ; and, secondly, that there are 

 many simplifications, such as that of the hundreds of 

 words ending in -ugAt), which would relieve all dialects 

 impartially. 



I think I have shown that the old system is not without 

 serious defects. I now come to that part of my subject 

 of which I had originally intended to treat in detail, the 

 historical justification for endeavouring to remove those 

 defects. It is always a comfort to timid folk like us to 

 be able to point to respectable precedent in favour of our 

 methods. Unfortunately I have left myself little time 

 to deal with the work of the most important of our pre- 



