On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 16:54, Bill Haneman wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 16:31, Paul Duffy wrote:
> >
> > what's your definiton of the "original orthography" for irish.
[...]
> for those who haven't a clue what I'm on about, sometime in recent
> memory the aspirated consonants, which were represented by a letter with
> a "spot" above it, were replaced by the same consonant followed by the
> latin character "h" (which was mostly unused in Irish). Thus
>
> ċ -> ch
> ṁ -> mh
> ḋ -> dh
>
> etc. thus making the language much less compact (and less beautiful,
> typographically).
I agree about the compactness and typographical beauty of the aspirated
consonants. However, as I understand it, the language reforms
counteracted this lengthtening in the spelling of Irish by removing many
silent consonants. For example Gaeilge ("Irish" in Irish) used to be
spelled Gaeḋilge, which would have expanded to Gaedhilge (all pronounced
Gwaylguh, more or less). Now, if only I could get a font to display that
'ḋ' character...
As for your original point, the Irish translation is intended for modern
Irish users, who don't use the old orthography (although I'm sure most
of them could understand it). To be practical, if GNOME was ever to be
used through Irish in Irish schools or government offices it would need
to use the current orthography.
Regards,
David O'Callaghan
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