The Caighdean Oifigiuil was published 40 years ago this summer. The French franc was also devalued in the summer of 1958. And 100 francs became one franc. Many had difficulty adjusting to the new currency. Some still cannot adjust. Not that there was any possibility of confusion. The exigencies of trade ensured that big talk and small change were not incompatible.
Many Gaeilgeoiri at the time regarded the Caighdean as tantamount to a devaluation. So do some who weren't even born in 1958. Unfortunately there were no practical commercial imperatives to ensure conformity. Not only was it not a matter of discussion, it was largely ignored. That kind of prescriptive stuff might be good for the children but hardly for grown men speaking an ancient tongue. This unwillingness to acknowledge the need for a higher authority has been the undoing of the language. Everyone is an authority, vicariously at least. It is not hard to find an explanation for this. Irish has not operated within acknowledged linguistic parameters for a very long time. It was inevitable that, when efforts were made in the last century to reinvent Irish as a written language, the old established written forms should be used as a model. There was nothing else.
Even though caint na ndaoine (the spoken language) was in fact adopted early in the 20th century as the standard language, it was an unwritten standard; the spelling and grammar adopted for the language were those used by Robert Atkinson in his edition (1890) of Keatings's 17th-century text, Tri Bior-Ghaoithe an Bhais. This edition was described later as "more rigid and more reactionary than even that of the antiquarian scribes of Keating's day". Thus began the first major spat. Peadar O Laghaire, who was the chief advocate of caint na ndaoine had nothing but contempt for Atkinson. He found some of his comments "amazingly faulty for an Irish scholar" and his knowledge of "modern" Irish "abominable"; "he had not got the grasp of it that a gossoon in a Connemara bog has". He thus became the first notional scapegoat.
Atkinson in turn attacked the modern language for its alleged lack of standard forms in spelling and grammar which he pronounced "a dismal swamp".
From these improbable and irreconcilable opposites the unified language we know today mysteriously evolved. It basically meant that everything was allowed.
When the Dail translation service was established in 1922 it agreed on a standard which was appropriate to the work it had to do. They were snootily dismissed, however, as purveyors of an "official Irish", which was just as unacceptable as Atkinson's model. Most Irish practitioners, even today, would distance themselves disdainfully from "official Irish".
When the Caighdean Oifigiuil was published in 1958, it was an attempt to harmonize the three strands: the Atkinson strand, the administrative or "official" strand and the living language of native speakers. It was a brave attempt to introduce some consistency into the language. But it was tentative - it was dropped almost furtively into the public domain like an unwanted child - and unauthoritative - so many chimerae to be shattered. It merely offered guidance. Its main relevance would be in education and administration. Yet it must have hoped it was fairly definitive, because no provision was made for any other body to review its findings, ever. There were two main interdependent flaws in the Caighdean: it came far too late, and thus, by definition, was seeking to rationalize prescriptive rules that should never have been given the time of day in the first place.
Once introduced, however, a prescriptive rule is very hard to eradicate, no matter how ridiculous or useless it is. This was all the more true in the case of Irish because after 70 years of anarchy, it was impossible to discern all the layers of dross, much less remove them. If the Irish language was a mummified carcase wrapped in innumerable excrescences, all the Caighdean succeeded in doing was to strip away the outer layers. The unwholesome centre was left untouched.
It is important to remember that impurities had been accumulating for many centuries. But the uneasy amalgam of the Atkinson model and "caint na ndaoine" was itself built on shifting sands. There are four reasons for this.
First, the antiquated spelling was already under fire in the 17th century.
Second, practically none of the native Irish speakers at the end of the 19th century was capable of writing the language. This had two unfortunate consequences: the written standards were set by those who were themselves learners, and the inherent quality of the spoken language itself was deteriorating. This meant there was no real cross-linkage between the two strands, oral and written.
Third, Irish was regarded by many as a token language, a cultural resource. It was enough for it to be there. This was particularly so when it was written in the old "clo Gaelach" (specific Irish type) which by definition was evidence that the language was different. The "clo Gaelach" also conveyed, mysteriously, the purity of the Irish sounds.
And, fourth - the factor to which least attention was given - the language being proposed for use was intended almost exclusively for learners. Instead of making the language as simple as possible, however, what was proposed was so complex that only a very determined hewer of water could be expected to persevere long enough to master it.
The single most significant fault-line running through all the endeavours to revive Irish as a living language in the 20th century and a fortiori in the efforts made in the Caighdean to rationalize the language, is that there has been no internal dynamic operating in Irish for quite some time. The Caighdean did not address this aspect of the problem. Indeed, it assumed that the opposite was the case. Instead of devising rules which would cope with future problems, it assumed that all problems had been resolved in the past. Simplifying the spelling would make this clear.
A lesson could have been learned from English. While "no language on earth was more anarchical in the relationship between sound and spelling" and while it clung and still clings to the "most awesome mess" which is English spelling, English had the good fortune to shed grammatical gender, the Latin case system as well as most inflections and agreements. These were all once regarded as an integral part of every language but have disappeared painlessly from English and the language has flourished. While the relationship between sound and spelling has its importance, the real importance lies in the consistency of spelling. Words must always look the same.
To a certain extent, then, while the Caighdean helped to simplify the spelling, it made no attempt to address the more radical revision which was really needed. And the paradox is that it now appears that the best standard of Irish in the educational system was achieved around 1950 before spelling was rationalized or modern teaching methods introduced.
Like it or loathe it, the future of Irish now depends on those seeking to learn the language as a second language. Is there any point in making it so difficult, by retaining obsolete grammatical features which are both unnecessary and irrelevant, that no one succeeds in learning it properly, or even wants to learn it at all?
To give one example. Instead of learning one noun with two forms, singular and plural, the learner has to master a myriad of forms, in some cases as many as eight. He ends up not knowing what is the basic form of the word. It's almost a recipe for illiteracy. The only justification for the continuing muddle is the "I had to learn the rules, why shouldn't they?" philosophy.
At the beginning of the 20th century Irish was a strange phenomenon. It was spoken naturally if reluctantly by those who were brought up through Irish but almost nobody could write it. It had the same intellectual vigour as a child's language. Yet from this rudimentary entity was derived a labyrinth of recondite forms which reduced the child to silence. Little more than gurgling has been heard since. What was proposed to the learner of Irish was tantamount to asking a man who has had both his legs broken in an avalanche and been severely traumatized by his experience to take up mountaineering as therapy.
After 100 years of such insensitivity the learner of Irish is as battered as his ancestor was a century ago. The biggest problem is sheer unintelligibility. Operating in Irish is like being a fly in a spider's web. There is always another screen of filament blocking the vision. Irish simply must devise ways, as a matter of urgency, to ensure that total clarity and a complete absence of ambiguity are the hallmarks of the language from now on.
A radical overhaul of the Caighdean Oifigiuil, now long overdue, would be a good place to start. The problem is that there may be a "cognitive closure" in the Irish mind as regards the suggestion that the language in itself is anything short of perfect.
Malachy O'Rourke is a translator at the Euro- pean Council of Ministers