io IRISH SPELLING 



long as those who ought to know best insist that Irish is 

 a quaint and beautiful survival of the Middle Ages, which 

 must be carefully guarded against the rough usage to which 

 all modern languages are exposed, they should not complain 

 if the bilingual speaker draws the logical conclusion that 

 Irish is a rather expensive luxury, while English is the 

 real language of practical work and business. 



" Quicken the pace /" is our motto. Whether at this 

 eleventh hour we can ever make up for lost time is more 

 than I can promise, but at least we can do something to 

 lighten the burden of the Gaelic host, and to smoothe the 

 road before them. This can be done by making the language 

 easier to learn, easier to read, easier to write, easier to 

 print, easier to adapt to modern requirements. I say 

 easier not easy. Some of you have heard the phrase, 

 " Irish made easy," applied in the initial stages to our 

 attempt to simplify Irish orthography. The phrase was 

 an unfortunate one, but it must be remembered that the 

 spelling reformers were not responsible for it. Irish is 

 indeed a very difficult language. We can never make it 

 easy, in the sense in which Italian and Spanish and 

 English are easy. But we can at least make it easier. 

 If you won't make it easier, or allow others to make it 

 easier, at least you would do well to consider the magni- 

 tude of the task before you, and count the cost of your 

 undertaking. You are seeking those of you who con- 

 scientiously object to any form of simplification you are 

 seeking to pit a weak and terribly complicated language 

 against the strongest language in the world, and one of 

 the simplest, with a hundred million speakers and most 

 of the printing presses in the world behind it, and you 

 insist on fighting with old-fashioned out-of-date weapons. 

 You are using bows and arrows against machine guns. 

 Such a display of reckless courage in these prosaic days 

 has something about it that is inspiring. It is admirable. 

 It is magnificent but it is not war ! 



What I mean by strangling the language is this. Up 

 to our own time it was dying peacefully of neglect in a 

 corner. The Gaelic League came forward and strove with 



