|
Exhibit 1 below is a copy of the first eight lines of the 1912 edition of An Chúirt edited by Riseárd Ó Foghlú and published by Hodges, Figgis and Co. (and my source for the text). Exhibit 2 is a screen shot of my version of the same text using a Gaelic font. As far as I can tell, the typefaces are the same. The one I used is Bunchló Ársa Trom (literally, Heavy Old Foundation Font).
|
It was designed by Vincent Morley in 1996 patterned after the so-called Newman typeface. It is available at http://www.gaelchlo.com/bunarsgc.html. To my untrained eye, the effect is very pleasing, with the typeface much more suitable to Irish than any available in the Roman system introduced by the Irish government in the 1950s.
|
Exhibit 1: Photo of the Beginning of the 1912 Edition of An Chúirt
|
Exhibit 2: Screenshot of the Beginning of the Current On-Line Edition of An Chúirt in the Version Using a Gaelic Font
|
|
Irish Typography
Typography in Irish is a whole interesting subject onto itself. In 1858, the Newman typeface was designed for the Catholic University of Ireland (later UCD), of which John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman was rector. This was forced by the fact that Protestant Trinity College wouldn't share its proprietary Petrie font with the Papists and the Anglican apostate Newman (an attitude that Archbishop John Charles McQuaid repaid in spades in the 20th century when he put Trinity off limits for Catholics). Designer Vincent Morley's opinion of the typeface: "Is ar Chló Newman a bunaíodh formhór na gclónna Gaelacha a dearadh ó shin i leith, ní nach ionadh mar tá sé níos soléite agus níos rialta ná aon chló a chuaigh roimhe. " (i.e., "Most Irish types have been based on the Newman which is no wonder since it is more readable and regular than any type that preceded it.") It is the common Newman paternity that presumably can be seen in the two examples in Exhibits 1 and 2 above. In a 1990 article, Mícheál Ó Searcóid of UCD's Mathematics Department explained why the Gaelic typefaces are better suited to Irish than the Roman fonts that are now used almost exclusively: "[Font designer] Yannis Haralambous made the statement that the Irish language has its own, most beautiful alphabet. The Irish language, in both spoken and written forms, is highly inflected. Approximately one in six vowels takes a length mark, and around one in five consonants a softening mark. For many of us whose homes are Gaelic-speaking, there is little doubt that Gaelic fonts are more suitable for the printing of our language than are the Roman. One reason for this is the profusion of aitches with their ugly ascenders which take the place of the séimhiú [the dot over certain consonants] in the roman fonts. Around twenty per cent of all other consonants are followed by the letter aitch; this percentage would have been even greater had not simplified spelling accompanied the change to roman fonts. Historically, there is justification for the introduction of the aitch … but that should hardly be used to support the widespread adoption of ugliness: the dot is less conspicuous than the ascending h, and it also helps to provide a sense of balance in a typeface with upper-case ascenders. |
Another reason for preferring the Gaelic typeface arises from the difficulty of placing diacritical marks over upper-case roman letters whose height already extends more or less to the extremities dictated by the typeface; this difficulty Irish has in common with many languages.
In Gaelic typefaces it has never been a problem, since they have upper-case ascenders which determine that the natural height of fonts is to accommodate all such marks without any squeezing. The Gaelic typeface has tradition, beauty and practicality on its side, and it will give many of us great joy to see it being used more frequently in the future." Ó Searcóid's wish is fine – from his lips to God's ear. But he better not be holding his breath because, outside of a few feeble efforts on the Internet like my own, the use of Gaelic fonts is dead. And I found that it takes a considerable amount of effort to code any sizable amount of text to use the Gaelic typeface. Exhibits 3 and 4 above compare the original 1912 text with the same text in a Roman font. Ó Searcóid's point about h's sticking up all over the place in the Roman font version can be seen here. This is an egregious invasion given that these h's are not, in fact, real letters but instead modifiers of the letters immediately preceding them. They're servants rather than principals. Sometimes, the old way, polished by centuries of use, is just better. It reminds one of the abomination of the new Guinness pint glasses. The old tulip glasses were light, elegant, beautifully shaped, enhancing their contents and generally all-round fit for purpose. Diageo took over the company and some marketing genius decided that a re-do of the glasses would appeal to the young or some such. The result was molded glasses that are heavy and clunky. The experience is like drinking a fine wine from a mug. Is there a special school somewhere that trains marketing screw-ups for beverage companies – with New Coke it was the product; so far Diageo has only done it with the glass, even though that is sacrilege enough to be going on with? |
Exhibit 3: Photo of the Beginning of the 1912 Edition of An Chúirt (Repeat of Exhibit 1)
|
Exhibit 4: Beginning of An Chúirt using the Times Typeface
|
|
The Irish Alphabet
For those interested, Exhibit 5 gives the five vowels and 13 consonants of the traditional Irish alphabet in a Bunchló font with their Roman equivalents. It gives the letters in their basic and modified forms. The vowels are modified with an acute accent (síne fada in Irish) which lengthens them. Thus, regular a is short like the a in man or what we think of as an o-ish English sound in words such as fond; á (a fada) is pronounced as the a sound in paw. Note that the letters h, l, n and r are not open to lenition (softening). The i's are not dotted (dots having a more weighty role than superfluous decorative headgear atop the i) and t's are topped rather than crossed (thereby being more receptive to a dot on top than with the crossed lower-case t of the Roman face). The letter h is not used much in Irish; it's sort of the domestic servant of the alphabet. In the standard 1,300 page Ó Dónaill Irish-English Dictionary, h only has a starring role in a meager five pages and most of those are borrowings. Only only a few of the borrowings are venerable enough to have wide currency (halla for hall and hata for hat perhaps being the two most prominent). Otherwise, h's main role is like that of a grownup separating bickering children – it's used to separate clashing vowels like n is in English (a pear; an apple) – but n has a separate existence as a fully fledged letter in its own right in English in contrast to the mono-line servility of h in Irish. It is to this helper role that families such as the Hanrahans, Hickeys, Hynes and O'Haras owe their surnames (Ó hAnnracháin, Ó hIcí, Ó hEidhin and Ó hEaghra). |
Exhibit 5: The Irish Alphabet using a Bunchló Font
Irish distinguishes between male and female family names and, confusingly, the use of h differs by gender – thus, we get, male, Ó hAnnracháin and Ó hEidhin but, female, Ní Annracháin and Ní Eidhin. Evidently Irish female vowels don't bicker and can live peacefully cheek-by-jowl. But if the practice had carried over with Anglicization of the names we'd have a bunch of families of Anrahans, Ynes, Ickeys and Aras. They look strange but we'd have gotten used to them by now.
Anyway, that long digression shows that the servile role for h in the Roman typeface has a long pedigree; it just wasn't anywhere near as prominent in the old days as in the new system and the typeface was the better for it. |
|
|
