Page:Irish Made Easy - Shán Ó Cuív.pdf/20

, written, spoken, and read, they must simplify the spelling of the words, so that the learners would see before their eyes what they heard with their ears and what they must say with their mouths. Mr. Carnegie was giving £3,000 annually for the association for the re-spelling of the English language in America, and he wished they had another £3,000 for the re-spelling of Irish. Irish spelling was so complicated that their only chance of learning to read Irish at present was with the book shut. Irish was spoken on an exactly opposite principle to that on which it was written. Unless this was remedied, his personal conviction was that their task of spreading Irish–real Irish–as practically impossible. But if they gave to their learners an Irish alphabet such as the ancient writers had, they could put into their hands an instrument which, of itself, would spread Irish like wildfire through the schools of this country.

Since that speech was delivered Dr. O’Daly has been working out an alphabet specially designed for the teaching of Irish sounds and not necessarily to be employed in writing Irish under ordinary circumstances. The advent of Dr. Osborn J. Bergin to Dublin, however, has changed his plans. Long before Dr. Bergin went to Germany to pursue his studies in philology (which, of course, included a study of phonetics) he was convinced that Irish spelling would have to be reformed and that, like the rest of Western Europe and America we should have to adopt the modern