However, most fonts that people typically have on their computers only have glyphs for some of these, or even none of these. The combining character 'dot above' also has a code point in Unicode. The tall s can also have a dot above it.Īll of these characters do have code points assigned in the Unicode standard. It also incorporated the so-called 'tall r' and a 'tall s'. Traditionally, Irish used to use the dotted consonants c, d, g, t, m, b, f, p and s. My feeling is that a) it wouldn't take much to switch back b) no moreso than seancló materials are today, and perhaps much less since the letterforms would be teh same c) perhaps, but it would make the phonetics easier for those that do learn (no false relationships between english ch, sh, th or impossible combinations like mh, bh, etc) and d) get the word out. Now that it can be easily done with the unicode setup, the argument against abandoning the 'h' is that a) too many people already know how to read with the 'h' b) already printed materials would become obsolete c) another accent mark would scare off english speakers and d) many people have no idea unicode exists. So throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries if one was to print in the old style font, it required a special typeset - or even a special font on computers up until very recently.

So, if printing was to be done, they had to do it on english's terms: no dot. while there are some languages that use a dot (lithuanian comes to mind) none use the combinations that Irish does. if we had a full range of diacritical marks one could tell how a word was prononunced by looking at it.īut I digress, the reason for adoption of the 'h' was that printing presses and typewriters available in Ireland were geared toward english - although the acute accent (the fada) is extremely common in european languages and was available even though it wasn't used in english.

Celtic fonts on word