#1 | The Letter V
The People Vs. The Letter V
The traditional Irish alphabet had 18 letters, but in the 20th century, there was a gradual thawing of attitudes to the other eight, such as V.
However, a very vocal vanguard view V as a villainous visitor to the vernacular vocabulary.
In this episode, Darach is joined by Gearóidín, Peadar and Siún and they discuss the controversial letter. It’s a tale of political intrigue (and quacking ducks).
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Fantastic show. It was great to hear that at least everyone agreed the language doesn’t need a K!
Interesting discussion, but the idea the “Gaelic script” was something different from the Latin script 1000 years ago is just wrong. The Gaelic script is the uncial manuscript hand, which would have been used then for all languages. It was used for English too. Also the people who attended Gaelscoils in the discussion and ideally ought to know a thing or two didn’t know the pronunciation of flannbhuí. Why would they assume it was flanabhuí? The pronunciation in 3 dialects can be heard here: http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/flannbhuí You could transcribe it as /flaun-vi:/ Words like “an várdal”, (drake), can’t really be written bh- because in eclipsing environments they are “leis an várdal”, not “leis an mbárdal”.