Gaelic type (sometimes called Irish character, Irish type, or Gaelic script) is a family of

Insular script Insular script was a medieval script system originating from Ireland that spread to Anglo-Saxon England and continental Europe under the influence of Irish Christianity. Irish missionaries took the script to continental Europe, where they found ...

typefaces devised for printing Classical Gaelic. It was widely used from the 16th until the mid-18th century (Scotland) or the mid-20th century (Ireland) but is now rarely used. Sometimes, all Gaelic typefaces are called ''Celtic'' or '' uncial'' although most Gaelic types are not uncials. The "Anglo-Saxon" types of the 17th century are included in this category because both the Anglo-Saxon types and the Gaelic/Irish types derive from the insular manuscript hand. The terms ''Gaelic type'', ''Gaelic script'' and ''Irish character'' translate the Irish phrase (). In Ireland, the term is used in opposition to the term ,

Roman type In Latin script typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic. Roman type was modelled from a European scribal manuscript style of the 15th century, based on the pairing of inscriptional c ...

. The

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...

term is (). (–1770) was one of the last Scottish writers with the ability to write in this script, but his main work, , was published in the Roman script.

Characteristics

Besides the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, Gaelic typefaces must include all vowels with

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...

s as well as a set of consonants with

dot above When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the '' interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of th ...

, and the Tironian sign et , used for 'and' in Irish. Gaelic typefaces also often include insular forms: of the letters and , and some of the typefaces contain a number of ligatures used in earlier Gaelic typography and deriving from the manuscript tradition. Lower-case is drawn without a dot (though it is not the Turkish dotless ), and the letters have insular shapes . Many modern Gaelic typefaces include Gaelic letterforms for the letters , and typically provide support for at least the vowels of the other

Celtic language The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...

s. They also distinguish between and (as did traditional typography), though some modern fonts replace the ampersand with the Tironian note ostensibly because both mean 'and'.

Origin

The Irish uncial alphabet originated in medieval manuscripts as an "insular" variant of the Latin alphabet. The first Gaelic typeface was designed in 1571 for a

catechism A catechism (; from grc, κατηχέω, "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adul ...

commissioned by

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". Eli ...

to help attempt to convert the Irish Catholic population to Anglicanism.

Use

Typesetting in Gaelic script remained common in Ireland until the mid-20th century. Gaelic script is today used merely for decorative typesetting; for example, a number of traditional Irish newspapers still print their name in Gaelic script on the first page, and it is also popular for pub signs, greeting cards, and display advertising. Edward Lhuyd's grammar of the

Cornish language Cornish (Standard Written Form: or ) , is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is a revived language, having become extinct as a living community language in Cornwall at the end of the 18th century. However, ...

used Gaelic-script consonants to indicate sounds like and . In 1996 created a new corporate logo. The logo consists of a modern take on the Gaelic type face. The R's counter is large with a short tail, the T is roman script while the E is curved but does not have a counter like a lower case E, and the letters also have slight serifs to them. TG4's original logo, under the brand , also used a modernization of the font, the use of the curved T and a sans-serif A in the word . Other Irish companies that have used Gaelic script in their logos including the GAA, and . The uses Gaelic Script on its official seal. The GAA logo uses the script to incorporate both the English language GAA acronym and the Irish language acronym ( ga, Cumann Lúthchleas Gael). The logo more strongly shows the more widely used acronym GAA but taking a closer look a C joins with an L and then to a G lying down.

In Unicode

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

treats the Gaelic script as a font variant of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

. A lowercase insular g (ᵹ) was added in version 4.1 as part of the Phonetic Extensions block because of its use in Irish linguistics as a phonetic character for . According to Michael Everson, in the 2006 Unicode proposal for these characters: Unicode 5.1 (2008) added a capital G (Ᵹ) and both capital and lowercase letters D, F, R, S, T, besides "turned insular G", on the basis that Edward Lhuyd used these letters in his 1707 work as a scientific orthography for Cornish. * Ꝺ ꝺ Insular D (U+A779, U+A77A) * ◌ᷘ Combining Small Insular D (U+1DD8) (Used for

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

) * Ꝼ ꝼ Insular F (U+A77B, U+A77C) * Ᵹ ᵹ Insular G (U+A77D, U+1D79) * Ꝿ ꝿ Turned insular G (U+A77E, U+A77F) * Ꞃ ꞃ Insular R (U+A782, U+A783) * Ꞅ ꞅ

Insular S The letter Ꞅ (minuscule: ꞅ) is an Insular script form of the letter S. The uppercase is encoded in Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent en ...

(U+A784, U+A785) * Ꞇ ꞇ Insular T (U+A786, U+A787) Unicode 14.0 (2021) added characters, including Insular letters, for the Ormulum: * Ꟑ ꟑ Closed Insular G (U+A7D0, U+A7D1) * ◌ᫌ Combining Insular G (U+1ACC) * ◌ᫍ Combining Insular R (U+1ACD) * ◌ᫎ Combining Insular T (U+1ACE)

Samples

Gallery

Image:Dublin City Hall information.JPG, Gaelic script used on an information plaque outside

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

, near

Dublin Castle Dublin Castle ( ga, Caisleán Bhaile Átha Cliath) is a former Motte-and-bailey castle and current Irish government complex and conference centre. It was chosen for its position at the highest point of central Dublin. Until 1922 it was the s ...

. Image:Gates of Irish College.JPG, Gaelic script on the gates of the

Pontifical Irish College The Pontifical Irish College is a Roman Catholic seminary for the training and education of priests, in Rome. The College is located at #1, Via dei Santi Quattro, and serves as a residence for clerical students from all over the world. Designated ...

in Rome. File:Mac grait grave.jpg, Gaelic script on a gravestone in

County Kerry County Kerry ( gle, Contae Chiarraí) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and forms part of the province of Munster. It is named after the Ciarraige who lived in part of the present county. The population of the co ...

. File:Sign-Irish-English-PS01.jpg, Gaelic script on an Irish national monument. File:Annagassan_fingerpost.jpg, Old road sign, reading ''Áth na gCasán'' File:Irish_Coast_Guard_sign.jpg, Stencilled Gaelic type

References

Sources

* Lynam, E. W. 1969. ''The Irish character in print: 1571–1923''. New York: Barnes & Noble. First printed as Oxford University Press offprint 1924 in ''Transactions of the Bibliographical Society'', 4th Series, Vol. IV, No. 4, March 1924.) * McGuinne, Dermot. ''Irish type design: A history of printing types in the Irish character''. Blackrock: Irish Academic Press.

External links

* Brendan Leen'
Four centuries of printing in the Irish character
Cregan Library, St Patrick's College, Drumcondra * Vincent Morley'
An Cló Gaelach
(in Irish) * Mícheál Ó Searcóid'
The Irish Alphabet
an article on the origin, history and present-day usage of the Irish typeface, 1990 * Mathew D. Staunton'
Trojan Horses and Friendly Faces: Irish Gaelic Typography as Propaganda

La revue LISA
'. . Vol. III; n°1. 2005.

(in Irish), a Gaelic modern minuscule font in Unicode for non-commercial use.

(in Irish), a Gaelic type font in Unicode for non-commercial use.
Gadelica
a Gaelic traditional minuscule font in Unicode.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaelic Type Irish language Latin-script typefaces