THE IRISH LANGUAGE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 76, 9 March 1922, Page 7

T HE IRISH LANGUAGE.

ORIGIN IN PHOENICIA. ANTIQUITY AND EXPRESSIVENESS. (By H. E. Kelly, in Sydney “Sun.”) Of Ireland,Australians have lately heard, and are still destined to hear, much. Of Ireland’s ancient and beautiful tongue Australians, even IrishAustralians, know nothing. I learned, in my infancy, to speak the Gaelic tongue at the knee of a mother who spoke no language but it. It was in Erris, a district in Western Mayo, whose rugged shores are lashed by the wild waves of the Atlantic—a district remote from English culture and civilisation as it was forlorn and impoverished. And yet that tongue is the oldest and the most beautify! vehicle of human speech to-day, or ever, spoken or written by man< That may seem a rash statement to Greek scholars; but I know my subject. The Irish tongue was not the barbaric tongue of the Kelts, but the polished tongue of the Phoenicians, who in the arts, manufacture, comemrce, and architecture, were the most advanced of all ancient races or peoples. It was the ancient Phoenicians who settled in Ireland centuries before the nomadic Kelts reached the shores of Western Europe, who settled in Ireland 15 centuries before Caesar crossed the English Channel, who brought with them the religion and refinement, the knowledge. and education of their parent country. It was the alphabet of the Phoenicians that Cadmus brought to Greece, the same alphabet still used in the Irish tongue, on which the Greek tongue was moulded, while fashioned on the inflections, moods and tenses of the’ eastern parent, though certainly much improved during later centuries, even to the time of Pericles. The Irish tongue is centuries older than the Hebrew, the Aramac, the Greek .and a thousand years older than the Latin. Yet the Irish is a living tongue, while the others are known only to “those who love the past.”

SIGNIFICANT DISTINCTION. The Irish alphabet (aibcitir we call it in Irish) has in it only seventeen letters.—A, b. c, d, e, f, g, i, 1, m. n. o, p, r. s, t, u. The letter h was never a letter of the Irish alphabet, though used now before some words beginning with a vowel. Neither was p an original Irish letter. It is an inverted b introdued by the poets for a sharper note than b could give. Five of these letters are vowels—a, o. p. e. i—the first three being denominated broad vowels, the last two slender vowels, a significant distinction in the Irish tongue. The a lias the sound of a in fall, e that of the first e in fete, and i that of i in machine. But each of these has also a short sound in composition. The q and u have an opener sound than in the English or French, more like those of the Italian. Ail vowels have long sounds when a long accent like the dash ( —) is placed before them, and a short sound when unaccented. Vowels are not doubled, although two, and sometimes three, vowels are found in the same word, as bean-caoine, a crying woman. The c has always the hard sound of c in call, never that of c in cell. The g has the sound of g in got, never that of g in germ. The t has the sound of th in that, and the d when broad has a sound nearly similar. When slender, both have a different sound. Consonants were never doubled in classical Irish, except when eclipsod. Even in modern Irish they are seldom doubled. The only consonant Archbishop McHale doubled in his inimitable translation of the Old Testament was the 1, and it seldom, while he drew a dash over the n instead of doubling it as is done now.

There are 12 consonants, nine of which may be aspirated—placing a dot over the letter as is done in the English i. These are b, c. d, f, g, m, p„ s, t; 1. n, r are never aspirated. The aspiration imparts to the consonant quite a different sound from that which it had when unaspirated. Eclipsing (uirdiobadh) is another peculiarity which prefixes an \ consonant to a word already beginning with a consonant. Example: ar an mbohar. This phrase means on the road. Ar is the English preposition on, and an the English definite article. A combination of the article with a preposition eclipses the first consonant of the following noun. Other expressions than this eclipse, too; and the expression that eclipses a word beginning with a consonant would prefix n to a word beginning with a vowel. The effect produced 4>y aspiration, eclipsing and accenting is remarkable by giving an an extraordinary variety to the play of sounds and tones and meanings oyer the spoken language, while strikingly enriching the harmony in poetry and oratory. a . feature quite unknown in the English and French tongues. THE FIVE DECLENSIONS. There are five declensions in Irish, as follows:— The genitive plural in the first, second, and third declensions, is the same as the nominative singular, with a few exceptions. In the fourth it is

the same as the nominative plural, an M in the fifth, as the genitive singlar. The plural of nouns in the nominative case has different endings. In the first declension the nominative plural is the same as the genitive singular. In the second and third declensions the nominative plural is formed by (1) adding e to the singular when it ends in a slender consonant, and (2) by adding a when the singular ends in a broad consonant. The fourth declension forms the plural in i or ide, and the fifth in a variety of endings. There are many exceptions in their plural endings to the above rules, a detailed explanation of which would be quite unpracticable here. The active singular and plural have each endings peculiar to themselves. a knowledge, of which is not easy to acquire. Adjectives agree in form with their nouns in number and case. Those ending in a broad consonant form the. plural by adding a to the singular; those in a slender consonant add e in the plural; and adjectives ending in. a vowel do not change when qualifying a noun in the singular or plural. There is a very remarkable rule in Irish grammar called “broad with broad and slender with slender,” and one that imparts a gaceful sense of tone and harmony to nouns and adjectives. It was not an original rule, but one introduced by the poets long before the Christian era, to secure melodv and cadence. It insists on a broad vowel following a. broad consonant, and a slender vowel a slender consonant. It is this rule that insists on Eireann being spelt with an e following the r instead of the spelling Eirann, which would bo quite wrong, AMPLE BY ITSELF. The Irish is not indebted to any other language for borrowed words or forms. A few words came into it from the Latin after the introduction of Christianity to Ireland, specifically words relating to religion, as trinity, spirit. Pope. The vocabulary is very ample. There is no thought conceivable by man but which can find an expression or word in the Irish to convey its full meaning. Many words contain up to eighteen letters, while the inflective character of the language covers an endless scope of expressions. It is seriously injured by the intrusion of a great number of English words, brought in by illiterate people during the last hundred years, and most writers and speakers use these words now. while it should be the desire of scholars to eliminate them and restore the language to its original purity. Instead of this, a new school of learners is barbarising it beyond recognition, ip spelling, bat grammar, foreign words, and an English accent. These enthusiasts are now the language’s greatest danger.