Irish Alphabet

Irish orthography is very etymological which allows the same written form to represent all dialects of Irish and remain regular. For example, ("head") may be read in Mayo and Ulster, in Galway, or in Munster.

A spelling reform in the mid-20th century eliminated inter-dialectal silent letters and lead to , the modern standard written form used by the Government of Ireland, which regulates both spelling and grammar.

Some words may have dialectal pronunciations not reflected by their standard spelling, some may have dialectal spellings to reflect this. The IPA transcriptions of examples on this page are in Connacht Irish. Grapheme to Phoneme correspondance tables on this page follow the layout shown below, on this layout stands for Mayo and Ulster Irish, for southern Connacht Irish and for Munster Irish.

Alphabet

Latin script has been the writing system used to write Irish since the 8th century, when it replaced Ogham which was used to write Primitive Irish and Old Irish. Gaelic type () was the main typeface used to write Irish until it was replaced by Roman type () in the mid-20th century. The use of Ogham and Gaelic type today is restricted to decorative or self-consciously traditional contexts. The dot above a lenited letter in Gaelic type is usually replaced by a following in Roman type (e.g. → ).

Letters and letter names

The traditional Irish alphabet (Irish: , formerly from the first three letters of the Ogham alphabet) consists of 18 letters: . It does not contain , although they are used in scientific terminology and modern loanwords/words of foreign origin. occurs in a small number of native (mainly onomatopoeic words (e.g. "to quack" and "caw") and in a number of colloquial forms (e.g. for "chirp" and for "screw"). , when not prefixed to an word initial vowel to show aspiration or after a consonant to show lenition, primarily occurs word initially in loanwords, e.g. "hat". is the only letter not listed by Ó Dónaill.

Vowels may be accented with an acute accent (; see below). Accented letters are considered variants of their unaccented equivalent so they are ignored for purposes of alphabetisation, they follow their unaccented equivalents in dictionaries (i.e. , , , ...).

Tree names were historically used to name the letters. Tradition taught that they all derived from the names of Ogham letters, though it is now known that only some of the earliest were named after trees. The modern letter names follow a similar pattern (based on the original Latin names) to other languages that use a Latin script alphabet. English letter names are generally used in colloquial and formal speech.

Consonants

The consonant letters generally correspond to the consonant phonemes as shown in this table. See Irish phonology for an explanation of the symbols used and Irish initial mutations for an explanation of eclipsis. In most cases, consonants are "broad" ( velarised) when beside and "slender" ( palatalised) when beside .

Vowels

Sequences of vowels are common in Irish spelling due to the "" ("slender with slender and broad with broad") rule. This rule states that the vowels on either side of any consonant must be both slender () or both broad (), to unambiguously determine if the consonant(s) are broad or slender.
An apparent exception is , which is followed by a broad consonant despite the .

Pronunciation of vowels in Irish is mostly predictable from a few simple rules:

* Accented vowels () are always long vowels and in digraphs and trigraphs containing them, surrounding unaccented vowels tend to be silent, but there are several exceptions, e.g. when preceded by two unaccented vowels.
* Accented vowels in succession are both pronounced, e.g. "sixth", "royal, kingly, majestic", "sympathy", etc.
* is silent before and after a broad vowel (except sometimes in ).
* is silent before a broad vowel.
* have multiple pronunciations that depend on adjacent consonants.
* A following lengthens some vowels and in Munster and Connacht a following syllable-final or word-final may lengthen or diphthongise some vowels depending on dialect.

Followed by

When followed by , a stressed vowel usually forms a diphthong or lengthens.

For , see also Special pronunciations in verb forms.

Epenthesis

In the sequence of short vowel + + labial, palatal, or velar consonant (except for voiceless stops) within the same morpheme, an unwritten gets inserted between the and the following consonant:

* "blue"
* "red"
* "dark"
* "name"
* "prickly, thorny"
* "child"
* "silver, money"

But:
* "body"
* "bad"

There is additionally no epenthesis after long vowels and diphthongs:
* "term"
* "duty"

The rules of epenthesis do not apply across morpheme boundaries (e.g. after prefixes and in compound words):
* "grandson" (from ("close, near") + ("son"))
* "very quiet" (from ("very") + ("quiet"))
* "carriageway, roadway" (from ("car") + ("way, road"))

Special pronunciations in verb forms

In verb endings, some letters and letter combinations are pronounced differently from elsewhere.

Diacritics

currently uses one diacritic, the acute accent, though traditionally a second was used, the overdot. If diacritics are unavailable, e.g. on a computer using ASCII, the overdot is replaced by a following , e.g. → "He/It was" and there is no standard for replacing an acute accent. Though, in anglicised names an acute accent is generally substituted by an apostrophe, e.g. Dara Ó Briain → Dara O'Briain.

The acute accent (; Irish: or "long (sign)") is used to indicate a long vowel, as in "boat". However, there are other conventions to indicate a long vowel, such as:
*A following , e.g. "high", "destruction", "fist", and, in Connacht, a word-final , e.g. g. "time".
*The digraphs , e.g. "gay", "bare", "music".
*The tri/tetragraphs , e.g. "neighbour", "Munster".
* and before or , e.g. "wild", "twine".

The overdot (; ga, ponc séimhithe "dot of lenition", "struck", or "lenition") was traditionally used to indicate lenition, though uses a following for this purpose. Thus are equivalent to . In Old Irish, it was only used for , while the following was used for and the lenition of other letters was not indicated. Later the two methods were used in parallel to represent the lenition of any consonant and competed with each other until the standard practice became to use the overdot in Gaelic type and the following in Roman type.

Lowercase has no tittle in Gaelic type, and road signs in the Republic of Ireland. However, as printed and electronic material like books, newspapers and web pages use Roman type almost invariably, the tittle is generally shown. Irish does not graphemically distinguish dotted i and dotless ı, i.e. they are not different letters as they are in, e.g. Turkish and Azeri.

Punctuation

Generally, the use of punctuation marks is similar to English. An apparent exception is the Tironian ''et'' (; Irish: ) which generally abbreviates the word "and", like the ampersand () abbreviates "and" in English.

A hyphen ( ga, fleiscín) is used in Irish after when prefixed to a masculine vowel-initial word as an initial mutation, e.g. "the bread", "their daughter". However, it is omitted when the vowel is capitalised, e.g. "the Scotsman", "Our Father". No hyphen is used when is prefixed to a vowel-initial word: "her daughter".

The hyphen is also used in compound words under certain circumstances:
*between two vowels, e.g. "misfortune"
*between two similar consonants, e.g. "bad language", "prompt payment"
*in a three-part compound, e.g. "permanent joint committee"
*after the prefixes , , before a word beginning with , e.g. "bad tasting", "subsume", "mortality"
*in capitalised titles, e.g. "the Chief Justice"
*after "very" and "good", e.g. "very big", "goodwill"

The apostrophe ( ga, uaschama) is used to indicate an omitted vowel in the following cases:
*the prepositions "from" and "to" both become before a vowel or + vowel, as in "She fell from a horse" and "Give it to the landlord"
*the possessive pronouns "my" and "your (singular)" become and before a vowel or + vowel, as in "my youth", "your tooth"
*the preverbal particle becomes before a vowel or + vowel, as in "I raised", "he would wait"
*the copular particle becomes before a vowel or + vowel, as in "I found that odd" and "maybe". However, is used before the pronouns , , , as in "It was the generals who kept the power"

Capitalisation

Capitalisation rules are similar to English. However, a prefixed letter remains in lowercase when the base initial is capitalised ( "China"). For text written in all caps, the prefixed letter is kept in lowercase, or small caps ( "THE HISTORY OF IRELAND").
An initial capital is used for:
*Start of sentence
*Names of people, places (except the words , , ), languages ,and adjectives of people and places ( "Michael Murphy"; "Mary McEntee"; "Burke"; " Slievenamon"; "French"; "Italian food")
*Names of months, weeks and feast-days ( "September"; "Monday"; "Christmas Eve")
* "day" ( "on Monday")
*Definite titles

Abbreviations

Most Irish abbreviations in are straightforward, e.g. → ("page → p.") and → (" (for example) → e.g."), but two that require explanation are: → ("that is → i.e.") and → ("et cetera (and so forth) → &c./etc.").

Spelling reform

The literary Classical Irish which survived till the 17th century was already archaic and its spelling reflected that; Theobald Stapleton's 1639 catechism was a first attempt at simplification. The classical spelling represented a dialect continuum including distinctions lost in all surviving dialects by the Gaelic revival of the late 19th century. The issue of simplifying spelling, linked to the use of Roman or Gaelic type, was controversial in the early decades of the 20th century. The Irish Texts Society's 1904 Irish–English bilingual dictionary by Patrick S. Dinneen used traditional spellings. After the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, all Acts of the Oireachtas were translated into Irish, initially using Dinneen's spellings, with a list of simplifications accruing over the years. When Éamon de Valera became President of the Executive Council after the 1932 election, policy reverted to older spellings, which were used in the enrolled text of the 1937 Constitution. In 1941, de Valera decided to publish a "popular edition" of the Constitution with simplified spelling and established a committee of experts, which failed to agree on recommendations.Dáil debates Vol.99 No.17 p.3
7 March 1946 Instead, the Oireachtas' own translation service prepared a booklet, ''Litriú na Gaeilge: Lámhleabhar an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil'', published in 1945. The following are some old spellings criticised by T. F. O'Rahilly and their simplifications:

The booklet was expanded in 1947, and republished as '' An Caighdeán Oifigiúil'' ("The Official Standard") in 1958, combined with the standard grammar of 1953. It attracted initial criticism as unhistorical and artificial; some spellings fail to represent the pronunciation of some dialects, while others preserve letters unpronounced in any dialect. Its status was reinforced by use in the civil service and as a guide for Tomás de Bhaldraithe's 1959 English–Irish dictionary and Niall Ó Dónaill's 1977 Irish–English dictionary. A review of the written standard, including spelling, was announced in 2010, aiming to improve "simplicity, internal consistency, and logic". The result was the 2017 update of ''An Caighdeán Oifigiúil''.

See also

* Irish Braille
* Irish manual alphabet
* Gaelic type
* Roman type
* Scottish Gaelic orthography

Notes

* Vowels with an acute accent are read as �/é/í/ó/ú "long �/é/í/ó/ú.
* -- is after ( are deleted before it is added). It is after which are deleted before it is added.

References

Bibliography

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Irish Orthography
Orthography
Indo-European Latin-script orthographies