You say I bear the burden of proof. So I gave the proof. Dinneen's dictionary was the standard Irish of the pre 1950s - and used the hyphen. That's what dictionaries are for. I don't know why Ó Cadhain is the best author of the modern period - but I haven't studied Conemara Irish. Obviously, those who have will make a bee-line for his work.

Or, you can just assume both were perceived as equally correct by the authors, and it's not 'wrong' as you claimed it to be. I've also found an even older example, in An Béal Beo. Ó Máílle should fit anyone's description of a 'well-educated native', so he certainly perceived it as correct, even while sticking to the seanlitriú and cló Ghaelacht.

So perhaps it was an orthographic difference between Munster and Connacht (I, unfortunately, don't have any copies of Ó Grianna's work to hand though I do have a copy of Caint an Chláir that does not use the hypen, written in the Gaelic script pre-Standard), but either way I think it's entirely incorrect to say that 'a haon' is 'wrong' in the Gaelic script.

John O'Donovan writes in his grammar book of 1845:

"Modern grammarians, however, think that it would add much to the clearness of the written language if these combinations were separated by hyphens and apostrophes, and they recommend iona, cona, fona, lena, ona, tréna, to be written i n-a, co n-a, fo n-a, le n-a, ó n-a, tré n-a ; and dá, dár, &c., to be written d'á, d'ár, &c., and an apostrophe to be used where a vowel is omitted at the end, as om', dod', lem', trém', &c. "

See p149 at https://archive.org/details/grammariris ... ew=theater

Irish grammarians in the first half of the 19th century most definitely did state these things should be hyphenated.

And in the same breath he implies that they often aren't. So what's more correct -- what grammarians say should be done, or what people actually use? I'm going with the latter. So even if the grammarians said it should be hyphenated, people often didn't and so both are equally acceptable.

You're shifting your ground here. Now you're saying that it was acknowledged as incorrect not to hyphenate, but that people didn't always adhere to the rules - but then that is what I said all along.

18th century, the grammar by Aodh Buidhe Mac Cruitín (The Elements of the Irish Language) – an educated native speaker, familiar with the bardic tradition:




then in the manuscript containing the Irish Grammatical Tracts I (the “general”, “first” bardic grammatical tract, MS 24 P 8, page 4) – 17th century copy of an older (15th–16th century?) text, written and then copied by very highly educated native speakers – long before Irish speakers thought about writing Irish using the Roman script:




Peadar Ua Laoghaire didn’t exclusively own Irish language, there were native speakers before him and after him, there was a literary tradition long before him. And there even are editions of his own books, authorized by him, using this convention.

So saying that “authentically” it should be “a h-aon ....go h-Éirinn in the Gaelic script. Before the Roman script was imposed, hyphens were used in such phrases” is plainly wrong. As I wrote, both conventions coexisted for a long time, and writing h together with the following word is very authentic for Irish seanachló (as authentic as using the hyphen, and perhaps, historically, even more).

Silmeth, you're caught in a trap of your own making. Of course Irish was written for centuries in manuscripts before the 19th century, but the first attempts at codifying the language were made in the 1845 grammar by O'Donovan and in Dinneen's dictionary. Before then, it was an uncodified language, like Middle English, with a confusion of forms and usages.

You're the one who said it wasn't authentic. All I did was give examples of 'well-educated native authors' who didn't use it in the Gaelic script. Then you quoted one grammarian who said it should be used, while at the same time recognising authors of his period didn't use it! To me that shows it's 'authentic' in the Gaelic script, even if grammarians don't think it should be. That's not moving the goalposts.

So only what grammarians say is true? Then I guess it's time to drop all PUL's works given that the synthetic forms are not acceptable and are thus not 'authentic'. Do you see how dumb that argument is now? It was used by authors from all time periods, it's clearly authentic regardless of whether your precious grammarians or PUL used it.

Where have I written anything about codification? You made a claim about authenticity and suggested that writing h-prefix without the hyphen is a new, post-Roman script trend (“Before the Roman script was immposed, hyphens were used in such phrases”). I gave you examples from 17th, 18th, early 19th, late 19th, and early 20th century writing the h-prefix without a hyphen. Am I supposed to understand all of those are post-Roman script and unauthentic? Or are you just moving the goalposts?

(Also, if you actually read the grammatical tracts, you’d be very surprised how much was actually codified, including the spelling, by late 16th century!)