Irish language alphabet change

mediaeval · 09-12-2014 7:30pm #1

Does anyone know when An Roinn Oideachais (Dept of Education) changed from using the old style Irish alphabet to using the English alphabetic characters? I'm guessing it was in the 1950s.

Manach · 09-12-2014 7:53pm

The late 1940s.

I've decided to re-learn some basic Irish using Duolingo App and Teach Yourself Irish book. From the latter it mentions hat the "standard form of the language" was adopted in the late 1940s under government direction.

Boulevardier · 09-12-2014 8:31pm

I think the change was a tragedy. The language (in old writing) looks better than it sounds. The old alphabet lent tremendous distinctiveness to it.

I can see why it was thought necessary to do this in the mid-20th century, but the technology now exists to make it possible for anyone who wishes to use the old alphabet.

What surprises me most is the total lack of interest in the old alphabet by many Irish language enthusiasts. Many of them simply do not seem to care.

Sunhill · 09-12-2014 9:10pm

The adoption of 'Cló Romhánach' (Roman Print), as the English alphabet was called, didn't take place until about 1964 or 1965. I finished National School in 1966 and it was the Cló Gaelach we were using exclusively for most of my time there, but I remember it had definitely changed by the time I left school. I even remember the 'master' introducing it to us and saying it was so that books could be printed in Irish by any printer without having to posses an Irish typeface. This was a Gaeltacht school, so there is a small chance that the old form was held on to for longer there than in other areas, but I seriously doubt it.

'Teach Yourself' must be referring to some official change or standardization of the language itself because the change in the alphabet wouldn't have been dreamed of in the 1940s.

Peregrinus · 10-12-2014 2:42am

There were two separate reforms - the spelling standardisation which happened in the 1940s is distinct from the adoption of Roman font/script in preference to Gaelic font/script. The latter is less easily dated, since for much of the twentieth century both Roman and Gaelic scripts were in use. While you could get a Gaelic font typewriter, for example, they were rare and comparatively expensive, and most official correspondence in Irish was typed on standard typewriters using Roman font.

There is some link between the spelling reform of the 1940s and the change of font. The Irish language was traditionally written using an alphabet of only 18 letters; j, k, q, v, w, x, y and z did not occur (and h was used only in very specific contexts). This is why Irish spellings can seem complex to users of English - lots of letter combinations have to be pressed into service to represent sounds which don't have their own letters. Loan-words from other languages were "restated" in the Irish alphabet - so vest became bheist, for example, and howitzer became habhatsar. Part of the spelling reform involved a greater willingness to use letters drawn from the alphabet of the language from which a word is borrowed. But of course most Gaelic fonts did not include these borrowed letters, and a mix of Gaelic font with Roman font to supply "borrowed" letters was practically unreadable. Hence the spelling reform gave some impetus to the shift from Gaelic font to Roman font.

CeannRua · 10-12-2014 8:11am

I have some of my mother's old copybooks. She would have started school in the early 1950s and the Irish is in the old alphabet. I think the copybooks probably date from the end of the 1950s-early 1960s.

I could be wrong here but I would have thought that the changeover between alphabets in schools would have been dictated by curriculum set down by the Dept of Education and should be easily dated with reference to the right documentation.

Peregrinus · 10-12-2014 8:36am

True. But the practices of the Department of Education don't determine every aspect of the use of the language. Right from the beginning of the Gaelic revival in the 1890s there was a faction that favoured the use of Roman font, both on pragmatic grounds (it made the production of Irish-language texts easier and cheaper) and on the grounds that it would be easier for anglophones to switch to Irish if it used fonts that they were already familiar with. It was probably a minority faction until the mid-twentieth century, but thereafter Roman font became more and more widely used. The Dept of Education may have been a holdout until the 1960s, but I would say by the mid-50s the bulk of new published material in Irish used Roman font.

CeannRua · 10-12-2014 8:55am

Peregrinus wrote: »

True. But the practices of the Department of Education don't determine every aspect of the use of the language. Right from the beginning of the Gaelic revival in the 1890s there was a faction that favoured the use of Roman font, both on pragmatic grounds (it made the production of Irish-language texts easier and cheaper) and on the grounds that it would be easier for anglophones to switch to Irish if it used fonts that they were already familiar with. It was probably a minority faction until the mid-twentieth century, but thereafter Roman font became more and more widely used. The Dept of Education may have been a holdout until the 1960s, but I would say by the mid-50s the bulk of new published material in Irish used Roman font.

I was answering the OP, which seems to me to be about alphabet use in schools, and not about the language in general.

kildarejohn · 10-12-2014 10:25am

Sunhill wrote: »

The adoption of 'Cló Romhánach' (Roman Print), as the English alphabet was called, didn't take place until about 1964 or 1965. I finished National School in 1966 and it was the Cló Gaelach we were using exclusively for most of my time there,

My experience in the "short grass" county was the same as Sunhill in the "rebel" county. The teachers often used the term "clo romhanach", but did not write it down or explain it. I thought that "cloravaun" was a word, and only later in secondary school did I discover what it meant. I never remember the change from one typeface to the other causing any difficulty, I could read either equally easily. Books in gaelic typeface were common into the 1970's.

dubhthach · 10-12-2014 11:36am

Technically speaking it's not a Alphabet change but a script/type change. Irish has used the Roman alphabet since the Old-Irish period. It was however written in a distinct script/type. Just as for example German was generally written in Fraktur (Blackletter) or Sütterlinschrift (for cursive), a practise that like "Insular script" in Irish has basically ended. The script though obviously having alot of history attached to it, is in the end of day just a fancy font.

What's important though when we shifted to "Roman type" was we reduced the number of diacritics, there's no reason for example why the overdot couldn't have been kept, thankfully it exists in unicode today so in most modern computer fonts you can use it for example:

Dubhthach = Duḃṫaċ
Likewise for Trionian "et" eg: ⁊

Personally I think the overdot actually makes it more obvious that something like "ch" (/x/ when broad or /ç/ when slender) is a distinct sound as oppose to "c" (/k/ broad or /c/ when slender)

The spelling reform is considerably more contentious issue particularly among native speakers. Though I would say alot of it was needed (eg. loss of word internal -dh-/-gh- that were no longer prononunced), from a historical point of view you do of course loose the etymology of words.

For example:
Ó Flatharta (sometimes Ó Flaithearta even rarer Ó Flaitheartaigh) was Ó Flaithbheartaigh under old spelling system, this literally means "grandson of Flaithbheartach"

Flaith = prince/ruler etc.
Beartach = cunning, active, resourceful

With loss of word internal -bh- you lose the meaning of the name.

dubhthach · 10-12-2014 11:40am

Ironic given the popularity of "baby name books" we see alot of the pre-reform spelling showing up so for example:

Ruaidhrí (pre) vs. Ruairí (post)
Odhran (pre) vs. Oran (post)
Cliodhna (pre) vs. Clíona (post)

To be honest for lot of these names you'd be better off giving your child the post-reform version.

Dún Laoghaire is another remnant it should really have become Dún Laoire (Ó Laoghaire = Ó Laoire) but I assume it's due to fact that the name is enshrined in legislation that it wasn't changed.

pedroeibar1 · 10-12-2014 11:52am

My recollection is that the changes were phased in from the late 1950’s - I learned the seimhu /buailte and the old lettering but not the old way of writing the R and S. Then in the early – mid 1960’s the spelling changed with the dropping of redundant dh’s etc. and the introduction of the h instead of the seimhu.
Below are two examples – one is the old script, handwritten, the other is the Gaelic typeface.

mediaeval · 10-12-2014 11:59am

CeannRua wrote: »

I have some of my mother's old copybooks. She would have started school in the early 1950s and the Irish is in the old alphabet. I think the copybooks probably date from the end of the 1950s-early 1960s.

I could be wrong here but I would have thought that the changeover between alphabets in schools would have been dictated by curriculum set down by the Dept of Education and should be easily dated with reference to the right documentation.

Yes, this answers my question, which is when did schools stop teaching the old script, and this must presumably have been done based on a directive from the Department.

A recent news item on RTE talked about thousands of copybooks from the 30s that were saved for posterity and which are on display in Dublin. The clips on TV showed clearly that the script written by the students (who looked to be 10-11 years old?) was the old font.

It sounds, though, from the various replies, that the change was not implemented universally throughout the country, and (presumably?) Leaving Cert and Inter Cert papers would have been accepted in both the old script and the new for a time after the directive was issued (assuming a directive was issued, which I assume must have been the case).

Peregrinus · 10-12-2014 12:13pm

I'm pretty confident that leaving cert. papers would still be accepted today if written using the old font. It's not something they would encourage, but I don't see that they could forbid it.

CrabRevolution · 10-12-2014 7:36pm

dubhthach wrote: »

Technically speaking it's not a Alphabet change but a script/type change. Irish has used the Roman alphabet since the Old-Irish period. It was however written in a distinct script/type. Just as for example German was generally written in Fraktur (Blackletter) or Sütterlinschrift (for cursive), a practise that like "Insular script" in Irish has basically ended. The script though obviously having alot of history attached to it, is in the end of day just a fancy font.

What's important though when we shifted to "Roman type" was we reduced the number of diacritics, there's no reason for example why the overdot couldn't have been kept, thankfully it exists in unicode today so in most modern computer fonts you can use it for example:

Dubhthach = Duḃṫaċ
Likewise for Trionian "et" eg: ⁊

Personally I think the overdot actually makes it more obvious that something like "ch" (/x/ when broad or /ç/ when slender) is a distinct sound as oppose to "c" (/k/ broad or /c/ when slender)

The spelling reform is considerably more contentious issue particularly among native speakers. Though I would say alot of it was needed (eg. loss of word internal -dh-/-gh- that were no longer prononunced), from a historical point of view you do of course loose the etymology of words.

For example:
Ó Flatharta (sometimes Ó Flaithearta even rarer Ó Flaitheartaigh) was Ó Flaithbheartaigh under old spelling system, this literally means "grandson of Flaithbheartach"

Flaith = prince/ruler etc.
Beartach = cunning, active, resourceful

With loss of word internal -bh- you lose the meaning of the name.

I remember seeing an old match programme from the 50's where Louth was spelt "Luġḃaiḋ". In the new writing it would be "Lughbhaidh" and then "Lú" after the spelling reforms. It struck me as strange how they could lop 8 letters off a 10 letter word and still only really remove one syllable.

dubhthach · 10-12-2014 9:46pm

CrabRevolution wrote: »

I remember seeing an old match programme from the 50's where Louth was spelt "Luġḃaiḋ". In the new writing it would be "Lughbhaidh" and then "Lú" after the spelling reforms. It struck me as strange how they could lop 8 letters off a 10 letter word and still only really remove one syllable.

Well technically speaking under the reformed spelling the god Lugh should now be Lú, what's interesting is when you hear a native Ulster Irish speaker prononunce the name. For example Áine Ní Bhreisleain on TG4 will say "Lughaidh" (Lewy eg. Lú+í) what this points to me is that in Ulster Irish (which the Irish of Louth fell under until it's extinction in the 1930's) you saw the loss of word internal ghbh consonant cluster, but the retention of terminal -aidh (which in modern Irish is prononunced as í eg ee in english)

The cut down to Lú is thus reflective of one of examples of spelling that native speakers wouldn't agree with (well native Ulster speakers), another one would be Nuacht (which doesn't really reflect how any native speakers say the word)

10-12-2014 10:20pm

mediaeval wrote: »

Does anyone know when An Roinn Oideachais (Dept of Education) changed from using the old style Irish alphabet to using the English alphabetic characters? I'm guessing it was in the 1950s.

Here is a blog, written in Irish by a person from the Czech Republic, which can be viewed in either script, if interested.

http://www.cainteoir.com/

Peregrinus · 11-12-2014 3:16am

CrabRevolution wrote: »

I remember seeing an old match programme from the 50's where Louth was spelt "Luġḃaiḋ". In the new writing it would be "Lughbhaidh" and then "Lú" after the spelling reforms. It struck me as strange how they could lop 8 letters off a 10 letter word and still only really remove one syllable.

Well, in American English they have managed to change "through" to "thru" without affecting pronunciation at all!

Irish language alphabet change

Comments