October 05, 2004

Diario íntimo

Esta noche apenas he descansado. A pesar de ello me he levantado por la mañana para no romper el mínimo orden que me impongo en las cosas diarias.
Mientras espero la llegada del invierno, he leído una carta que aparecía en el Irish Independent y que hace referencia a una cuestión de gran importancia y que pocos nos habíamos planteado. Yo soy del parecer de que a las cosas importantes deberíamos prestarles atención, ya que de no hacerlo acabaríamos no prestando atención a las cosas más insignificantes, como las guerras en Asia o cosas así. Transcribo la carta:

Sir - So the panda eats shoots, and leaves us looking more critically at grammar and more especially at punctuation. Would this not be a good time to ask questions about the totally meaningless apostrophe in such surnames as O'Neill, O'Hara, O'Brien etc?
This error was made originally by some scribe who knew little about the Irish language and we have unthinkingly continued using it to the present day.
It makes as much sense, or as little, to write O'Neill in that particular way as it would to write Mac'Carthy or Fitz'Gerald.

John Ryan, Piltown, Co Kilkenny

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The correct spelling of any Gaelic name with an O is without the apostrophe. O is a complete word in itself, signifying 'descendant of'.

Juanjo

05 October 2004 13:45  

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