Phonetic Irish language newspaper shone briefly

This November 1912 newspaper may have been the final edition of Glór na Ly, a short-lived publication which promoted attempts to write the Irish language in a phonetic-looking manner.

In ways appearing more like Welsh than Irish, the ‘letiriú shímplí’ spelling system was the brainchild of the newspaper’s editor Shán Ó Cuív. The Cork-born journalist had devised the ‘simplified spelling’ in association with Osborn Bergin, Fr Richard O’Daly and others, a few years earlier.

At a time when there was a renewed interest in the language, particularly through the classes and other work of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge), he believed the traditional rules for writing Irish may not have been helping those efforts.