42
AN GAOḊAL.
PRESCOTT, ARIZ.,
Dear Mr. Logan,
I fully agree with what you say
in the last number of the GAODHAL
(which, by the way, is full of ex¬
cellent and idiomatic Gaelic) that
Gaelic spelling is as settled as that
of any other language. Half-taught
scribes of this and last century are
responsible for all the vagaries of
spelling of the manuscripts and
printed books of their time, but
now that people are studying the
language in earnest, we have al¬
ready got rid of nearly all these
disfigurements. There are still a
few things in which there is a
choice, such as the use of éa or eu
in words like feur, féar, grass; the
terminations -ar, ur, as in doras,
dorus; and the terminations -aiḋe,
-aiġe, -uiḋe, -uiġe, and a few separate
words, such as ag, aig; ar, air etc.
Students of the older language,
whose business it is to tell what the
proper philological spelling is, say
that -aiḋe is the only proper form
of the termination. We know that
-as and -ur are old nominative and
dative (prepositional) forms; tá an
doras dúnta, deoċ an doruis, ins an
dorus; but I think we have not yet
advanced far enough to insist on
this usage, and that everyone can
write -as or -ur for both nom. and
dative. In old Irish fer, a man, and
fér, grass, were written; then a
was added to show that the follow¬
ing consonant was broad, hence
féar feur; for a time there was a
tendency to write eu (from the lau¬
dable notive of decreasing the num¬
ber of accented vowels) but Mr.
MacNeill, in a recent number of
the Journal, has given good reas¬
ons for adhering to the éa spelling.
Of course, as in every language,
there will be always cases in which
the written word will differ from
the spoken word, owing to the
changes of the latter on the lips of
successive generations of people;
but to my mind, considering the
varied fortunes of our national lan¬
guage during the last four centu¬
ries, centuries during which the
old tongue was proscribed, banish¬
ed from all the schools, and despi¬
sed even by most of those who
spoke it, it is marvelous to see how
few changes the language has un¬
dergone. No language in Europe
has lived on with such grammati¬
cal correctness, and richness of vo¬
cabulary. When we come to record
the spoken word, we must deviate
a little in some cases from the
forms laid down in books, and Fr.
Murphy rightly does so in the Gao¬
dhal, in the Donegal song he sends.
We shall all be eagerly looking out
for more. Indeed, in the last three
years, Donegal has contributed
largely to Gaelic folk lore, and af¬
ter the recent marvellous success
of the Columcille celebration in
Gartan, with Gaelic sermons, spee¬
ches and addresses, and with the
warm sympathy of the Bishop and
the Cardinal, we may expect that
in a short time a good deal of work
will be done in the immense oral
Gaelic literature of Tirconnell.
I would add that the spelling te
hot, nua new, adopted recently, is
but a restoration of the old spell¬
ing. The spelling of some few o¬
ther words will probably be sim¬
plified gradually.
E. O'G.
At the dedication of a new church
in West Galway recently, the ser¬
mon was preached in Irish.
If the editors of the Irish Ameri¬
can press kept the proceedings of
the Gaelic Movement prominently
before their readers, residents of
American cities bearing Irish nom
de plumes need not write to inquire
"Has the Irish Language an alpha¬
bet"? We had such inquiry last
week from Frankfort, Ky.
