IRISH AND THE QUESTION OF DIALECT.

N Ireland linguistic phenomena are receiving an attention far beyond that which they excite in most other countries. That this is so is owing in great part to the question of bilingualism, which is exercising, and is likely more and more to exercise, the minds of those entrusted with the direction of Ireland's educational systems. The resuscitation of interest in Irish as a spoken language has turned men's minds upon the peculiarities of our native tongue, and has induced a comparison between its condition at present and that of English.

Now one of the commonest questions asked by those anxious to learn Irish is some such as the following:-Are there not a number of dialects in Irish? Which of them would you say is the best? Which of them would you advise a beginner to study first? We have seen many different answers to questions such as these, but few of them showing any thorough grasp of the scientific principles which should guide us in answering them. Some answers are the result of the merest bias, the bias of persons who speak a particular dialect, and think that everyone else should speak that dialect because they do so. Other answers are those of doctrinaires who, possessing a limited acquaintance with one, or mayhap two, grammatical systems, generalise from a restricted area of fact, or from a wrong apprehension of facts. Such is a working division of two classes of authorities, who have but scant claim to this latter dignified title. Those anxious, however, to carry the classification further might successfully do so by adopting as a basis the "idols” of Bacon.

What, then, are the true answers to these questions, if answers there be at all? The treatment of such a question is dependent upon another-What is a dialect? The etymological meaning of the word dialect is "difference," and in this sense it is applied to observed variations in a language. We speak of the Munster dialect of Irish, the Connaught dialect, and the Ulster dialect. These broad divisions answer to distinct differences in

grammatical forms, in vocabulary, and in pronunciation. But not alone are there three broad divisions such as these, but an acute observer will not fail to discover numerous sub-divisions in these divisions themselves. He will find diversities in the language of different counties, and not only of different counties, but of different parishes, and if endowed with a highly gifted faculty for observation he will discover differences in the Now to what is this language of individuals themselves! phenomenon due, and is it a peculiarity of the Irish language alone? An examination of the linguistic conditions of other countries will afford a negative answer to the latter portion of this question, whilst it will go far towards solving the difficulties contained in the first. The following remarks are not so much intended for students of Comparative Grammar, to whom they are more or less familiar, as for that larger class of readers who are desirous of acquiring a knowledge of those leading principles which may help to an intelligent comprehension of the kind of questions to which we have referred.

Owing to the preponderating influence of Greek in the educational systems of the world, the dialectic differences of the Greek language were early subjected to close examination. Textual criticism of Homer and other Greek classics necessitated a thorough investigation of the language, and brought to light word-forms which differed from the general matrix in Had scholars fastened their attenwhich they lay embedded. tion on one of the Greek dialects alone-on the Doric, the Aeolic, or the Ionic-no tolerable reason could be given for the occurrence of Aeolic or Doric forms in an Ionic text. a comprehensive study of the variations of Greek through the extent of country over which it spread enabled scholars to restore what at first appeared sporadic forms to their original dialect, whilst a further investigation led to more or less. probable reasons for their passing from their natural environWe must, howment to one apparently less suited to them.

But

ever, pass from the interesting question of the occurrence of forms in one dialect which really belong to another to that of the more fundamental one as to the origin of dialectic forms themselves.

Nothing in modern science has been more fruitful of results than the emphasis it has laid upon the necessity for the examination of the whole environment of any phenomenon to

explain its cause. In Biological and Ethnological investiga-, tion this has been especially the case, and it is perhaps becoming increasingly so in regard to Grammar and Phonology. Let us take a familiar example from Ethnological science—the cause of the diversity of colour in races. The most superficial reader or observer is familiar with human types belonging to white, copper-coloured, or black races, and though the division is by no means exhaustive, it is sufficient for our present purpose. The original essential unity of the human type in Adam is one of the prime facts in Biblical History. This points to an original unity not only in regard to the general physical, but the linguistic character of man. That original unity is now represented by an almost confusing diversity. What has been the cause of this diversity? Different schools will return different answers according to their various points of view. The theologian or student of philosophy will seek to penetrate to the First Cause of all. More restricted scientific observers will seek the immediate cause in a combination of secondary causes, and it is with this latter class that, for the moment, we propose to deal. Asked as to the cause of the phenomenon of colour in races, the ordinary man would answer, and answer to a large extent correctly, that it was due to the variations in solar heat over the habitable globe. Yet, to an ethnologist the answer would not seem altogether satisfactory, for he would, from experience, be on his guard against ascribing as sole cause of a phenomenon some other single phenomenon, however closely associated with it. His range of observation would have taught him that diversities in the pigmentation of the skin occur within such restricted areas that differences in solar heat would not account for differences in colour; and if asked what was the whole cause, he would be likely to answer that it was to be found in the environment and in the history of the race or individual. Yet, before we accept this explanation of the phenomenon we ought to make sure of the meaning he attaches to the term he uses. The word environment may be used in a comprehensive or a non-comprehensive sense, according to the powers or bias of the person who uses it. It is all the more necessary to come to a clear understanding as to its meaning since the word history as used above is only a convenient term for referring to the past environment or environments of a race, or of a phenomenon of any kind.

Environment itself is generally restricted, unless otherwise stated, to the meaning of present environment. What then is the environment of a race? All those factors which immediately condition its existence-climate, soil, air, altitude, character of food, social conditions, and so on. These constitute the environment, and these, you will be told, go, when united to the influences of past history, to form an exhaustive account of the causes which, summed up as environment, have made the race what it is, and by inference have all contributed to the differentiation in colouring. It is not necessary to point out that causation so understood, cannot stop at the immediate environment, nor even the terrestrial environment, but will be forced to the simple and seemingly bald, but logical admission, that the cause of one particular phenomenon is the whole extraneous existing universe. Such is the Ultima Thule of many modern scientists. Yet, from the recesses of a philosophy, by some held to be grown old, we may cull an account of causation which passes well beyond this, a philosophy which, whilst it admits to the full, the part which the objective environment plays in the field of secondary causation, has not failed, as is so strangely frequent nowadays, to emphasise the part which the subjective and psychic environment (we should rather speak of them as the subjective nature) play in the field of secondary causation. To leave this great factor out is, as if in the play of Hamlet, Hamlet were to be left out; and its omission has led to a rampant epidemic of materialistic determinism amongst some self-styled scientists. Omit the psychic subject, fix your attention upon the objective environment alone, upon a supposed non-reacting subject, and that subject seems the mere plaything, the ironbound result of a chain of extraneous phenomena.

The cause of the differentiation in colour, then, in races and individuals (without entering into the optical question underlying it) is to be found not alone in objective environment in its most elastic sense, but in the subjective psychic state and its associated physical one. Father Tom Burke, we have heard, was wont to say that he would know the eye of a Protestant if he met him, and in Ireland, religion and race being more or less identified, a person's religion may be guessed at from racial appearance. In this question of colour, however, we should not be far wrong if, with the ordinary man, we were

to say that the immediate cause of colour in races springs from differences of solar heat, just as an astronomer may fairly state that tides are due to the influence of the moon and sun, though the other stars scattered through planetary space exercise influences of varying magnitude upon our terrestrial ocean. Keeping clearly before our minds the meaning of the term environment, we may return to our question of dialect, and say that the variations in language which we call dialects spring from differences in both the objective and subjective environment.

Owing, perhaps, to the necessarily diagrammatic character of popular manuals on the History of Language, it has been found necessary to postulate for the pre-historic antecedents of Indo-European tongues a simplicity and homogeneity which actually they never possessed. It would be hard, indeed, to logically admit that dialect was the natural result of different environments, and that, at the same time, time existed when environment was inoperative to produce dialect. Simplicity and homogeneity in language could only be assumed in regard to the initial language of the first man, Adam, and it could not be ascribed to his speech over any length of time. And why? For the very simple reason that the environment, subjective and objective, of the individual is in a continued state of flux. The initial simple structure of the first primitive language was broken into by the changing environment of the first man himself, and thus in a sense dialect began. The growth of distinct families made the rift wider, whilst with the development of tribal conditions, and their diversity of environment, on geographical grounds alone, differences became so marked that interchange of ides between separate tribes must have been practically impossible. Such is the theory of the growth of dialect, and by inference of languages (which are nothing else than groups of closely-related dialects) which is most in harmony with modern linguistic and scientific investigation.

It is necessary here to restrict remarks which, to be exhaustive, should cover a large tract of ground. One word of warning, however, we must be permitted to give. In speaking of the differentiation which language has undergone, it is difficult to avoid conveying a false idea of a permanent relationship between language and race. Up to a few years ago this fallacious opinion permeated works on Historical Grammar,