Re: Irish vs. Scot Gaelic

John P. Mullen wrote:
> This is what happens when you let monks invent your spelling rules. 
> Even little Irish children can work out the initial mutations, but the
> monks needed the extra letters to keep matters straight.
> 
As I understand it Old and Middle Irish did not write the 
transformations - it was assumed that the reader knew what they were. 
The letters used to write Irish until the introduction of the Roamn 
alphabet in the 1960s was invented by Elizabethan scholars who were 
trying to convert the irish to Protestantism - although it was based on 
the scripts used in monastic manuscripts (but variations of these 
scripts were used in many Western European countries).

Slán, Einde O'Callaghan