Okay im back after time chilling out after my brain explosion at NapoleanXIV.
In the US you spell it Potato in the UK and Australia we spell it Potatoe.
I will leave it at that.
And again i Apologise to NapoleanXIV for over-reacting quite badly
Coming to this thread as of late, sorry if this is considered a slow response
But that anger was really uncalled for. I'm an Aussie myself, educated here my whole life and I've never used the spelling "potatoe". As someone said before, to my knowledge, it's potato for singular use and potatoes for plural use. I know a few of the modified spellings used in Aussie English such as Gaol instead Jail, Metre/Litre/Centre/Tonne instead of Miter/Liter/Center/Ton. But I have honestly never come across the spelling "Potatoe" and I've never been corrected for spelling it "Potato" This is a civil board (usually) and its quite out of line to lose your temper over something so trivial. (It's the type of behaviour that gets one kicked.
)
More importantly, though, onto the actual question of the original post, to my knowledge, the Potato Famine was catastrophic for Irish demographics. So many people died or fled, that the population has not returned to pre-Famine numbers since. That is an unprecedented population change, IIRC, it has rarely or never (?) happened to any population of any diaspora, be it the Jews, Africans, Indians, Chinese etc.
I doubt a famine could have never occurred, the fungus/virus that attacked the potato crops was a nasty little bugger and the knowledge available for treating or eradicating such was scarce or non-existent. However if the virus had less of an effect of the crops and the general Irish population, perhaps as Ibn Warraq said, The Gaelic language and Celtic culture would be stronger. I would have thought the Famine also caused a devastating brain drain which took a toll on writers, scientists, artists, politicians etc. Perhaps with no Famine, Ireland would be a much more influential part of the world stage.
Without the Famine, the Irish diaspora would have also been much smaller, and this would have a huge cultural and demographic effects on nations such as the US and Australia.
