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Bringing back Gaelic Script

[Deleted User]

I used a language learning app (Duolingo) last year to learn Russian. I picked up the alphabet after a month and I learned basic Russian in about six months. I noticed that the app also teaches the Arabic alphabet so it got me thinking how easy it would be to teach Gaelic script. A programme could also be developed to read scanned Gaelic script texts.

Does anyone know why Gaelic script was changed to modern Irish?

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Mick Tator

The script was changed for simplicity’s sake and to bring it into the typewriter technology of the 20th century. It was done gradually from the 1950’s (!) finishing in the late 60’s, disposing of the seimhu/bualite. Spelling also was simplified, many phonetically redundant letters being dropped. All of it was yet another (failed) attempt to get people to use the language. FWIW in handwritten text the letters R and S were indistinguishable and one had to know the word to make sense of it.

Every badly placed fada/buailte/comma/markwould be a nightmare for for machine reading. Additionally, iIt would be an absolute waste of time, effort and money to attempt to reintroduce the old script for reasons that are outside this forum.

Esel

Not true about R and S being indistinguishable though?

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119978402#Comment_119978402

It is though, in lowercase

Esel

Not in the script I'm thinking of:

https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/clogaelach.gif

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119978404#Comment_119978404

With hand writing? Pretty much non-distinguishable.

Esel

Only if the handwriting is bad.

I was referring to the printed format.

Bricriu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119978148#Comment_119978148

Mick Tator: 'All of it was yet another (failed) attempt to get people to use the language'.

No it wasn't; it was done on behalf of a sizeable, varied community in Ireland, and outside of it, that read and write in Irish.

Why is everything always about non-Irish speakers - most of whom know nothing about Irish or native Irish culture?

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058275198/bringing-back-gaelic-script

So do you have the 15 to 20 million Euros needed to develop those programs? Do you think the potential customers have the money and are willingness to fork out the money needed to use it?

Script be it Irish, German or any other one was dropped because it was not economically practical to support it. I remember about 45 years ago being asked if I could get “Irish Keyboards” for an Irish school in Dublin and I could. The tooling would have costed about £500k, each keyboard would cost £700 and the software to drive the keyboards added about another £300k. You could have built two new schools for that money in those days!

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119978415#Comment_119978415

However, the OP specifically referred to handwriting.

Mick Tator

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119978485#Comment_119978485

Bricriu,

Both of those comments are ill-informed.

Your first comment - The community of Irish speakers was not sizable at that time, it was fully recognized by all to be dwindling. Outside of Gaeltacht areas Irish mostly was known (and only infrequently spoken) by civil servants and teachers. That was why the changes were made. Irish is nearly dead and maintained in ICU by scattered communities of Gaelgeoiri. Most of the families I know who have kids at gaelscoileanna do so not because of a love of the language but because (when compared to other schools) of better parental involvement, good teaching, smaller class size and the unspoken ‘a better class of pupil’. Census data – much-loved by the rampant - is nonsense as there is no test for knowledge of the language and, I suggest, is largely composed of La Brea’s. Ask any recruiter about the abysmal level of knowledge of those who assert they ‘speak’ French, German, etc. The case for Irish is no different. Put the census question in Irish and see what happens!

You know nothing of me or my knowledge of Irish, or Irish culture, so your second comment is as ignorant as incorrect.

Mick.

(Not a Bricriu but a bric-liath.)

blackbox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119978489#Comment_119978489

I'm not in favour of pushing Irish onto people who aren't looking for it.

I guess these quotations are from commercial software developers.

I'd have thought an enthusiast could develop something using a French keyboard and using a driver modification to get a seibhu when a grave accent was selected. It might not be perfect but it should be workable until something better came long. The Irish font is really nice.

[Deleted User]

It seems as though any argument which is put forward for promoting the Irish language is shot down for being "a waste of money". Statistics show that there is an interest in Gaelic culture outside of Ireland. Only lately a million people have signed up to learn Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo. This is a huge increase from where it was. So I don't see why any efforts to promote it is "a waste of money".

Furze99

From a historical perspective, I can see the case to be made. For hobby purposes etc. Really though with the rapidly rising level of immigration into the country, the language will increasingly become the preserve of those seeking PS jobs.

Bricriu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119979083#Comment_119979083

It depends on your interpretation of 'sizeable' but I suppose we will have to accept your interpretation as you are the self-appointed expert in the Irish language area.

Your description of Irish speakers outside the Gaeltacht is ignorantly stereotypical. I was brought up in a All-Irish household in Dublin, and had Irish-speaking friends as well as local ones. Our family knew four other Irish-speaking families within 15 minutes' walk of our house.

When I began socialising in town, I used to go to an Irish-language pub/club and two other pubs, and the Irish speakers I met there were from every background: fishermen from the Aran Islands working in Howth; subsistence farmers from the Kerry and Connemara Gaeltachtaí who wanted a change of employment, builders, electricians and plumbers from Dublin and all over, as well as other professions.

I actually attended a Gaelscoil at second level, and while some parents sent their children to that school for reasons besides facilitating some fluency in Irish, there was a sizeable number with a loyal commitment to the language.

Re your comment about me knowing nothing about your knowledge of Irish, I can glean some clear info from your incorrect and corrupt spelling of 'Lá bréa', where your mix the grammatical structure of Irish with English, and don't recognize the essential accents in Irish (probably because English doesn't have them!). Dála an scéil, 'Laethanta Breátha' an uimhir iolra, a mhic ó! (translation: By the way, 'Laethanta Breátha' is the plural, son).

I wont' be replying further to your comments as you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about Irish and seem to be deeply ill-informed about it. Possibly a negative experience at school.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058275198/bringing-back-gaelic-script

"Gaelic script" isn't analogous to Arabic or Russian.

Arabic and Russian are each written with a whole different alphabet; Irish is written with the same Latin alphabet that is used for English, French, Italian, etc. "Gaelic script" is just a typeface, like Times New Roman, or Arial, or Bembo, or Gill Sans.

The use of a distinctive Gaelic typeface decline and largely disappeared in the mid-twentieth century.

At the same time, and for similar reasons, spelling standardisations and reforms were adopted. The two things happened for the same reason — to make Irish more accessible — but they are separate things.

Bit of background: All spoken languages are made up of phonemes — distinct sound that can be combined to make meaningful and distinct words.

Because we are taught to read phonetically — buh, ah, tuh spells "bat" — we assume that phonemes correspond to letters, but they do not. Most languages have far more phonemes that letters; many phonemes are indicated by combinations of letters — s + h, for example, makes the phoneme that starts the word "she". (Spelling can also encode information that has nothing to do with phonemes — it may tell us about the derivation of the word ("Psychology") or it may tell us something about how the word used to be pronounced (at one time the -l- in "should" was pronounced). Phoneme-signally is not consisting in English - "sugar" has the same phoneme as "she", but doesn't start with s + h. So spelling, especially English spelling, is a bit of a mess.

Right. Depending on the dialect of English that you speak, English has about 36 distinct phonemes, and 26 letters to represent them. But Irish is unusually rich in phonemes - it has 44 or 45 - and employs only 18 letters to represent them - Irish does not use j, k, q, v, w, x, y, z, (but they are used nowadays in loan-words borrowed from other languages).

Why does Irish employ so few letters? Irish became a written language long before English did, and adopted the Latin alphabet early in the seventh century. At that time the Latin alphabet was not fully developed. Some letters were yet to emerge, and some were regarded as variants of existing letters.

So, Irish ended up with 44 phonemes and only 18 letters, meaning a lot of phonemes had to be represented by complex letter combinations (supplemented by the the fada and the séimhiú). It is this feature of Irish spelling which causes English-speakers such bafflement and/or amusement. Irish spelling is in fact highly regular — much more so, certainly, than English spelling — but the rules it follows are completely foreign to English speakers, which is why they find it difficult.

Right. We skip forward to the middle of the twentieth century, where this is one of the barriers to Anglophone Irish people learning to speak Irish. The unfamiliar typeface is another. Both are tackled at the same time — the Gaelic typeface is exchange for a conventional roman typeface, spelling is standardised and reformed, the séimhiú is dropped, and the letters j, k, q, v, w, z, y, z are adopted for use in loan-words.

Nothing to stop you retaining modern spellings, but employing the Gaelic typeface. It's not one of the standard fonts offered by Windows, but it is available if you want it. And I'm pretty sure that optical character recognition software already exists, if only because there would be a market for it in academia.

[Deleted User]

Apparently I was off topic -

post deleted.

Mick Tator

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119980441#Comment_119980441

Well, that response is a clear indication of how and why Irish is being killed by the Gaelgoir fanatics. It also proves why there would be huge public pushback on funding a writing recognition system for early modern Irish script.

Mick Tator

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985879#Comment_119985879

Yes, but that is modern script and not the topic of discussion. There were typewriters that had the old script - we had one when I was a kid, a 'high nelly' one. I'll have to dig out a bit of typescript & writing I've tucked away and post images.

[Deleted User]

Sorry for going off topic then. I’ll just delete my post.

Manach

Mod Note: This is an interesting topic and so just a friendly reminder to all posters to concentrate on the discussion and not go ad hominem: le do thoil.

Mick Tator

These images are from a copybook used by my grandfather – no date but pre-1920 I’d guess, and also a carbon copy from an ‘Irish’ key typewriter from his papers. Perhaps the handwritten might at a cost be machine read, but the variations in letters would make it complicated (despite the small number of letters in the alphabet.

I would love to see ogham revived too, with schoolkids bringing a hammer and chilel into school along with their iPads!

Jellybaby_1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119988185#Comment_119988185

Mick, the typewritten Gaelic is what I learned in national school in the 50's, and I loved writing it. But darned if I can speak it now! I barely have a few short sentences. By the time I was leaving national school it was changing and we found it harder to learn without the fada and buailte! This is another of those 'what ifs' in my life!

Mick Tator

We are of an age. When learning the writing weren’t they called ‘manuscript copies’? With the printed letters above and where the height of the letters to be copied below was determined by green and red lines? Not just for Irish, but for English too. A bit of immersion and the talk comes back quickly.

I’m no expert on machine learning for hand-writing, but from my experience of bulk data processing / machine readability there has to be a reasonable clarity and format standardisation for it to work. That is absent today, when most young people have no idea of syntax, grammar or god help us penmanship.

It’s fun to write old Irish script from a calligraphy perspective, but the notion of reintroducing it generally is for the fairies! When nonsense like that is floated, Flann /Myles immediately comes to mind and him taking the p out of the Gaeilgeoirí (and for the those pedants please note my trouble to use the fada and the genitive plural!)

Peregrinus

Worth noting that there's a similar story with regard to German, which until well into the twentieth century was commonly written/printed with a hand/typeface called "Fraktur" - an angular, Gothic affair. In the nineteenth century there was heated cultural and at least semi-political debate over whether Fraktur should be preserved and promoted, or whether the "antiqua" hand/typeface used for most European languages should be more widely adopted. It was in fact the Nazi government that, after humming and hawing for a bit, decided against using Fraktur for official purposes, or in the education system. Nowadays you only find it on beer bottles, pub signs and the like, to give an antiquarian flavour.

1200px-Goethe_Faust_Opening_Fraktur_20052706_crop[1].jpg

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119978489#Comment_119978489

Duolingo isn't the only language learning app but it has in the region of 500 million registered users. It relies on advertising and it's free. If something like this was put online who knows what the potential could be. Old books and dictionaries could be reprinted and an accreditation system could be set up to accredit Gaelic script experts etc.

Its clear from some of the threads on boards.ie that Irish language learning is extremely unpopular with the Irish. However, judging by its popularity online, the Irish are no longer the only authority on the subject.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996200#Comment_119996200

As I already said, you still have to find someone to put up the cash to kick it off.... if you can find someone then off you go, there is nothing stopping anyone from doing it.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119989408#Comment_119989408

I don't think there's much call for OCR technology for contemporary texts; contemporary texts are all virtually produced digitally anyway. You need OCR for digitising historic texts that exist in hard copy only. If we were now to start creating new texts in Gaelic font, we wouldn't need OCR for them.

Bodies like universities, the Royal Irish Acadamy, etc have in their collections a corpus of texts written in Gaelic font that they may wish to digitise, but the size of that corpus and the cost of digitising it isn't altered at all by any decision we make about the contemporary use of Gaelic font. For all I know, Gaelic-capable OCR may already exist but, if it doesn't, its creation doesn't become any more imperative if we create new texts using Gaelic font. So far as the OP's suggestion that we should use Gaelic font today goes, I think the issue of Gaelic-capable OCR technology is a bit of a red herring.

Mick Tator

Well, yes, that’s agreed on OCR but it’s comment more appropriate to certain fields such as academia or law where a search by keyword or phrase will bring up the required text from a database. That info can even be ranked by relevance. But that is not about reintroducing Gaelic script.

What I’m getting at is different, it is the application of the proposed Gaelic script in the business world where, if Irish is to survive, it has to go far beyond OCR (viz. roles of Udaras na Gaeltachta, CSO and Irish in our Constitution). Irish script will not work for international business, it would need to be ‘translated’ back into roman script – more money - or a new translation programme designed to convert it to the main EU languages.

What would need to be done to make it work means using data in a way that is electronically efficient, i.e. machine readable for identification, selection, extraction, manipulation and processing without human intervention. Currently Ireland is not doing that even for records in English.

For example, take company Annual Return filings at Companies’ House, where data is stored in scanned PDF format. Even though certain segments of the file can be ‘extracted’ (using knowledge of which box/page to access) the data contained is PDF and cannot be processed without heavy manual intervention. Most other countries have gone down the route of direct input electronic filing. As a result, an external online request can access specific parts of a file, collect data, extract it, manipulate it to meet any specific needs, all at the touch of a button, with no human intervention after the initial request. The result is instantaneous. That is ‘proper’ data management.

For a country that has cutting-edge ICT companies with highly skilled people, reintroducing the old Gaelic script would not be an issue. It would be complex, and hugely costly with no indication of any payback.A total vanity project to appease a few gaelgeoiri. Also it might not even work, as our state institutions have a deplorable track record in developing, implementig and managing IT systems.

Peregrinus

To be clear, I'm not advocating the reintroduction of Gaelic script; just looking at what would be involved if it were to happen

I take your point about, e.g, the Companies Office storing data in the form of PDF scans. That problem goes away when they move on to direct input electronic filing, as presumably they will at some point. In the meantime, it would only be a problem for what I suspect is the very small number of CRO returns lodged in Irish. A bigger problem right now might be CRO forms filled out by hand.

I suspect, in fact, that reintroducing Gaelic script would be much easier now than it would have been, say, 30 years ago, since so many texts are already digital, character recognition and associated technologies are so much more advanced, and AI/machine learning is progressing in leaps and bounds. Getting machines to extract information from texts written in a Gaelic typeface would be a much, much easier challenge than getting them to extract information from texts written by hand, using Roman letters.

(Come to think of it, the use of Roman script when writing in Irish is a policy or convention, not a law. There's nothing to stop anyone, right now, from filling out a form in Irish, using Gaelic script.)

Sam Russell

I knew someone, sadly no longer with us, who was a native speaker for whom Irish was the first language, who could not read the 'new' Irish script so lost out on reading in Irish post 1950s. They also possessed a typewriter that could type both old Gaelic script as well as English script. It was a wonder of the age - using a IBM Golf Ball technique, but 50 years older.

It is confusing to have Irish printed using Times Roman fonts - it confuses Irish and English words - like teach - no wonder pupils get confused.