hi, i´m a german student and i´m going to write a paper about the latinisation of cló gáelach and for that i need opinions from native irish speakers. What do you think about that? i also have two reasearch questions: The latinisation of the script on people´s minds? and the second is: Problems of identity as opposed to socio-economic progress?

it would be really nice if you could answer me!
thank you Juliane

Der Wechsel fand vor so vielen Jahren (vor 1960) statt, dass es nur wenige Leute gibt die mit dem Alten schrift grossgeworden sind.


Ausserdem ist der unterschied zwischen dem Cló Gaelach und "Lateinische" schrift so ähnlich wie zwischen Fraktur und Lateinische Schrift. d.h. Sehr klein.

Hi Juliane
Hope your paper goes well for you. I'm in the middle of writing one too so I know how it feels!
For me (as someone who studied Irish at school from age 4 to 17), I have always just accepted the "latinised" Irsih script I was taught. I don't have any problem with it. I would have to wonder though, WHY they decided to change it to latinised. Surely if you know one way of writing a language it's going to be no mean feat to learn a new sound-script (phoneme-grapheme)conversion system /orthographic representation of your language.
Anyway, I think it would be NICE if we still used the sean chló, making the written form of the language more unique but no, it's not a major issue for me.

Hope that helps you

it's a font difference, like germany, not an alphabet difference like russia or greece.

it's my understanding that it was changed for ease of printing (movable type, typewriters, etc)

i see no reason why the antiquated letter forms need to be used

***BUT***

now that it can be done easily with computer fonts and unicode (as it becomes more and more standard) I do firmly believe they should bring back the dot accent and do away with this crazy 'h' business.

my own experimentation over the years on fifty students (with a control of 30) has led me to believe undeniably that english speakers (and who in ireland are they trying to get to pick up the language, after all), with all their th, sh, ch, etc combinations find it much easier to pick up pronunciation when they're not looking at an H, but a dot accent. the H combinations in english are so ingrained they have to work very hard to "unlearn" them which few ever really do...

this leads to the belief that irish pronunciation is an "impossible mess" - the best combination in my opinion is the standard roman typeface with the dot accent for the consonants.

I know people who are from Northern Ireland, they're older than 60 years old and they've learnt Irish at school with the old script.
I'm not Irish but i can read both Latin and Irish script without any problem (I've learnt them).

Using dots again as Antaine said, would be expensive in printing and maybe not that easy, because the dots aren't as visible as the h's. And it would make problems when typing. I don't think that these h's make much problems to english-speaking learners, most learners don't pronounce as ENglish but as english k (the English sound that's the most similar to the Irish ).

One should notice that the abandon of the old script has been made together with the Caighdeán Oifigiúil, especially as a simplification of Irish spelling.

The Irish script is nice but i think we shouldn't shift back to it, it would isolate the Irish language from the other languages of Europe (at least, the EU) - all of them use the Latin script except Greek.

A Antaine, i think it's more than a font difference, because of the dots and some abbreviations (ar, air, agus...). Greek and Russian can be transliterated in Latin script as well, and it's more than a font difference too.

they use a different alphabet. abbreviations are different but we have them in english too & (and) % (per cent) @ (at) etc...

the ones that give my students the biggest problems are
Fh (especially)
Bh
Th
Dh
Mh

the rest are fairly similar sounding in both languages, but very few of those who tried to learn using the current method never really did get those...they knew what they were in isolation, but when trying to read at speed they instinctively referred back to the english they've known most of their lives

with old printing methods and typewriters, you would be right, but with modern computers, printers and printing methods (eg post-lin-o-type) it would be no harder to use a séimhiú than a fada.

The Irish script (as opposed to fonts for printing) developed from roman script, as the first writings in Ireland were in Latin and greek. (Leabing aside ogham, which was only used for short inscriptions, as far as we know).

Monks were sparing of parchment, so a habit developed of writing the "h" which commonly follows a consonant in Irish, over the consonant - eventually it became a dot.
This is similar to the way the umlaut developed in German from an E after the letter to two dots above.


The monks had a range of other abbreviations - see http://www.fainne.org/noda/ (In Irish). These were called
nodanna - hence "Is leor nod don eolach"


When printing started in Ireland in the 17th century, the fonts used were based on handwriting, just as they were for other languages.

But most western european languages converged on a Latin type - Irish took longer, because there was not a lot of printing going on.

After 1922 and independence materials started to be printed in Latin fonts to save money. It would be rare to find a book printed after 1960 which used the old fonts.

There is something of a renaissance now, because of computers making fonts in general more flexible.

But I don't understand how any of this is going to help answer Julianne's questions!

quote:

The latinisation of the script on people´s minds? and the second is: Problems of identity as opposed to socio-economic progress?

I don't think I understand the questions!

There is more information (in Irish) on the fonts here:
http://www.spd.dcu.ie/library/LIBire/Special%20Collections/spcoll4centG.htm

It has images of various early printed works.

The essay I mentioned last, in English:
http://www.spd.dcu.ie/library/LIBeng/Special%20Collections/spcoll4cent.htm

Another source for information on the fonts (in English)

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/mearchlar/fonts.htm

Yes, it's been a Latin script ab initio, based on the Roman alphabet which we got when Christianity arrived in 432.

Before that, the only form of writing was Ogham script.

Hi,
thank you for your help.
but i have one last question:
do you speak irish the whole day? if not, in what situations do you use irish? and when do you use english and especially why?

Context: I live in Ireland, in Dublin

do you speak irish the whole day?
No.

if not, in what situations do you use irish?
With my children. (I speak German with my wife) With family members. With friends.
I listen to about 3 hours of radio in Irish every day when commuting. I buy an Irish language newspaper.
I frequently read books in Irish. I use discussion boards in Irish.


when do you use english and especially why?
All the rest of the time! The people I interact with do not speak Irish. (My colleagues include a French and Spanish person. The only one in my office who is any way fluent in Irish is an american!).

---

You should have a look at the statistics for Irish language use: http://www.cso.ie/newsevents/pr_prelcen_02vol11.htm

Please note that these figures are self reported.

I would be surprised to hear of anybody, even in the Gaeltacht (Irish language speaking area) who can exclusively do their business through Irish. But people working directly with the language will get close. (Irish language media, arts, education).

---

I don't see the relevance of this to your original question about the Irish script!

You might also consider contacting:

Conradh na Gaeilge: http://www.cnag.ie (Voluntary movement for revival)

Foras na Gaeilge: http://www.gaeilge.ie (State Agency to promote the Irish language)

Údarás na Gaeltachta: http://www.udaras.ie/ (State Agency for Gaeltacht Development - used to have a purely industrial/employment focus, this is changing)

The Department of Rural, Community and Gaeltacht Affairs http://www.pobail.ie (The governemnt ministry with responsibility for Irish language and Gaeltacht policy).

Comhdháil Naisúnta na Gaeilge: http://www.gaelport.com (An umbrella organisation for all Irish language voluntary organisations)

Hi again,
Just reread your original post properly-want to clarify that I'm not a "native speaker" of Irish. I learnt it at school like I said and I love working at it in my own time but this is in an ATTEMPT to become fluent (eventually)!

"When printing started in Ireland in the 17th century..."

was this the tudor bible?


Does anyone on the list know where to find a history of irish printing?

was there any irish language printing done in ireland, 15th-19th century? I know the gaelic league begins to produce some printed material in irish in the 1890s.

i assume there must have been some. in brooklyn an gaodhal (sp?) is printed 1882-1903. actually predates gaelic league. hyde met with the editors and derided their efforts. perhaps reflection of class bias, as most of the an gaodhal folks were working class.

but what texts were produced in ireland in centuries after the statutes of kilkenny through the penal laws to 19th century?

thanks for any help. i have drawn a blank and have not had time to do any research on this topic.

Dancasl, you could try following the links I gave above.

Trinity College, Dublin is currently running an exhibition of Irish Books; http://www.tcd.ie/Library/heritage/events.php

If you want to use the old cló easily, get easyreader -- www.irishforlife.com -- you can select any text - from the internet, or anything in your computer and with one click it converts the h-ed text into punc-ed text -- well, it doesn't work on this box -- I just tried to write a mar ¿ampla and got a ¿ for the sh, but it works beautifully everywhere else I've tried it.
It's an amazing program and well worth every penny it costs. It also comes with a program that perpetually updates, allowing for technological improvements and new words as they are added to the system. If you have a copy and haven't updated it recently,do, because some great new features have been added just since January.