Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!festival!kthier
From: kthier@festival.ed.ac.uk (K Thier)
Subject: Re: Irish/Gaelic in Munich?
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References: <ads93.849.000C8175@aber.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <D52zq2.FCs@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 17:39:37 GMT
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: >Irish and Scottish Gaelic both have internally consistent orthographies.

: Irish has, but Scottish hasn't. Irish had a spelling reform more recently (I 
: can't remember when, but I remember hearing about it). Scottish hasn't. I have 
: certainly found Scottish Gaelic inconsistent, and David Crystal (Cambridge 
: Encyclopedia of Language) agrees with me (at least, that's where I think I 
: read it recently).

I haven't read D.Crystal, but i find the Scottish Gaelic spelling system
consistent enough. It is more omplex than the recently reformed Irish
system, and maybe there even are more exceptions, but on the other side,
it takes much more grammar and history into account. i have no unusually
great problems pronouncing a word I do not know just from the spelling.
And I am by no means a fluent speaker!

Catriona

