mouths. The Irish of our Ossianic books is of course not essentially different from the Irish which I speak. But if I were to meet my neighbours who do not read Irish; and if I were to speak to them in the Ossianic style, matters would soon come to a dead lock.
Why not give the people their own speech! That is what is wrong. What would be the result if a person who can speak English and who wishes to learn to read it, were to have an unmodernised copy of Bacon placed in his hand? He would learn his book-lesson, but he would find that it would set his neighbours laughing at him. It would effectually prevent that man from learning to read. Suppose him a person who knows no English at all, what is his position? It is exactly that of the Irish learner who knows no Irish at all, and who is floundering through an Ossianic book.
The position of those two classes of Irish learners has been a trouble to me for a long time. In order to try and do something to remedy the evil I have written the following phrase-book.
In constructing it I have made it a point not only to give in the phrases the living language of the people as far as syntax and style of speech is concerned, but also to strip the individual words, as far as possible, of the encumbrances with which centuries of neglect must have naturally incrusted their written forms. It is these incrustations that paralyse the efforts of the book-learner. It is the total absence of them that makes the spoken language so smooth.
For example; everybody has heard of the rule called caol le caol. Now as a matter of fact this is
