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Re: I'd the oddest dream last night.

From:Mike Ellis <nihilsum@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 23, 2003, 21:11
Keith Gaughan wrote:

>Some of you might remember the abortive Gaelic-in-Cyrillic project from a >while back. Well, I'd an odd dream that's somewhat related to it. > >In the dream, I'm reading some Irish written using the Latin alphabet, but >there's on thing odd about it: palatalisation is marked with the letter
`j'!
>For example, one of the words as `Seaclaid' (Chocolate), but was written >`Sjacladj'. > >Anyway, just thought I'd share it with you all!
One of the first things I thought when I picked up the decades-old Teach Yourself Irish at the local library a few years ago is that Irish could really use a "soft sign" like the letter j. The book used an apostrophe in its pronunciation guides to show the narrow consonants, and I thought that spelling would be much simpler if the Irish just spelled the language that way. Gaelic in Cyrillic would also make a lot of sense. The other thing I have to say is that you are very lucky to have such sensible dreams. Written text almost never appears in my dreams, and when it does it is completely disassociated from its real-world meaning. The last dream I remember was a few nights ago, in which I was being chased through a seemingly endless building by a floating manatee-looking thing that had no face. The manatee flew very slowly, but getting away was hindered by a tangle of invisible rubber bands that seemed to stretch across each doorway, and made getting through each one take a few precious seconds longer. I would never think to turn back and ask the floating faceless manatee about Irish orthography! M