User:Brianlacey

How To Save The Irish Language...

(...by making it appeal more to English-speakers)

2. No more initial mutations!

For some very interesting historic reasons, the first letter of many Irish words are altered by the word preceding it. For example...

a) bean (woman) but an bhean (the woman)

b) im (butter) but an t-im (the butter)

c) cat (cat) but a gcat (their cat)

Let's get rid of them! Let's have:

a) an bean (the woman) [an ban]

b) an im (the butter) [an im]

c) a cat (their cat (or his/her cat)) [a cat]

3. No more grammatical gender for nouns!

Like many languages, Irish has grammatical gender for its nouns which sometimes match biological gender but which sometimes don't. For example...

a) fear (man) is biologically and grammatically masculine)

b) bean (woman) is biologically and grammatically feminine)

c) cailín (girl) is biologically feminine but grammatically masculine)

English used to have grammatical gender, but it thankfully died out. Let