Would you say, Bríd, that if more of this kind of literature was taught in the schools (i.e. literature from the Gaeltacht written as spoken) in place of whatever is used now, that speakers would have a much stronger ability in speaking the language?

I actually do some transcription on there myself (dúchas.ie). Let me know if you want a hand transcribing Éamon a' Búrc's stuff.

If you want to feel free and I'll find a way to set up a guest post on the blog for it. Or I can credit you with the translation and add the dialectal notes myself (that's my main reason for doing it -- to showcase the dialect). You can see the ones I've already done on there. Sadly, dúchas doesn't offer anywhere to write the transcriptions in on the site for the stuff in the Main Manuscript Collection, but at least I can host it on the blog as long as I add attribution. I've been considering getting it published once I get enough of them transcribed to make a decently long book about it.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if someone has edited and compiled the stuff from Connemara that has been transcribed in the Schools' Collection. I know Mayo and Arann have had selections of it published, but don't think there's anything from Connemara.

It would be great if you added the dialectical notes. They're really useful. Getting them published is a great idea as well. I think it would be really helpful to adopt a phrase that would tell us straight away when a book uses dialectical spelling. If I saw the phrase "Litriú Canúnach", for example, on the cover of a book I would know straight away that it uses non-standard spelling. It would help the idea to catch on and hopefully more writers would adopt the concept.

Another idea I though I'd throw your way was to create a guide for people looking to switch from using standard spelling to dialectical spellings, in the form of a list with standard spellings on the left, and then the dialectical spelling(s) on the right. Even say to start with the most common words first, or have a list that you can keep adding to over time.

That would be nice. My goal with the Éamonn a' Búrc stuff is to not 'modernize' anything. I'm going to keep everything exactly as Mac Coisdealbha transcribed it, as that gives the best dialectal representation into it, and just is more authentic to me. This means things such as thóirt instead of 'tabhairt' and 'feicfe' instead of 'feicfidh', etc. Sadly, Ó Ceannabháin standardized everything, even metathesis where it appeared. It was quite disappointing to learn that, honestly.

If you look on my blog, my method now is to do a bullet point with it and show what it is in the standard, or to explain how it's a dialectal pronunciation and give a little detail about it. Nothing too in-depth historically on why, but enough that the reader can hopefully see the pattern. I do wonder if a "Litriú Canúnach" could catch on. It'd be really neat if it could.

Does that mean that what the children who were living in Conamara noted down in their schoolbooks in 1937 was written in Official Standard as well ?

Yes. It's also disappointing how many excellent books are gone out of print since they did away with the gaelic font and brought in standardisation. I'd love to republish some of the older books, especially the teaching resources, some of which are really invaluable. I'm going to make it a project of mine in the future to transcribe some of the ones I own, or ones available on the internet archive.

On a practical note, which stories should I start transcribing? I don't want to overlap on ones you've already done.

You can find quite a few on Internet Archive. If you live in Ireland you can go along to the library, if you live anywhere near Dublin, there's the National Library. There are also various second-hand bookshops around Ireland such as Charlie Byrne's, John's Bookshop, Dublin Bookbrowsers (though he tends to be a bit expensive). I've also mentioned Béaloideas before - it's on JSTOR and there are the short videos in Irish with subtitles in seanchló on YouTube on John Farrell's channel. I hope this can be of help to you.

I doubt that, as the Caighdeán wasn't around at that time. However, they did use a sort of pre-Caighdeán spelling convention most likely, though there definitely are hints of Connemara Irish comeing through (sa + eclipse, for instance)



I would absolutely love to republish some of the older books I've acquired, especially the folklore collections. Though I have noticed many were republished, but often updated. I'd love to just put the modern script on them (only because it seems people, sadly, struggle with the seanchló) and republish them exactly as they were spelled then. Maybe if I ever get around to doing some OCR training with the seanchló that'd be a possible idea, and make my life much easier.

With regards to the stories, here's the ones I've done so far:

An Triúr Searrachán, An Inghean Chrosta Dhrochmhúinte Leisgiúil, Saile agus an Sagart, Domhnach na bhFear, Seán Lord a’ tSléibhe, Clann na Mrá Mairbhe, An Gabhainn Rua, Coirnéal Máirtín, An bhean a tháinic ag iarraidh iasacht an phota, Sagart Pobuil a chuir bréag ar shagart óg. Murchadh Mac Bhriain agus an Scológ as Tír na hÓige, is the one I'm currently working on.

Yes, the seanchló unfortunately is a turn-off for some people, but I think people need to get familiar with it if they want to access some of the best material published in Irish. It would be nice even to have a couple of modern editions published in the seanchló, to help familiarise people with it.

The idea occurred to me recently of publishing "special editions" of some classics in the seanchló, as a sort of collector's item.

Thanks for that list. I actually bashed out "Urchar an Duill faoi Abhall" a couple of days back. I'm going to get back to it again this week and hopefully have a decent-sized stash to send on to you.