Search results
Irish orthography is the set of conventions used to write Irish. A spelling reform in the mid-20th century led to An Caighdeán Oifigiúil, the modern standard written form used by the Government of Ireland, which regulates both spelling and grammar.
Irish (Standard Irish: Gaeilge), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic (/ ˈ ɡ eɪ l ɪ k / GAY-lik), is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language group, which is a part of the Indo-European language family.
People also ask
What is Irish orthography?
How has Irish orthography evolved over time?
What is the morphology of Irish?
Does Irish orthography allow doubled consonants?
- History of The Discipline
- Consonants
- Vowels
- Phonotactics
- Phonological Processes
- Stress
- Samples
- Comparison with Other Languages
- Notes
- External Links
Until the end of the 19th century, linguistic discussions of Irish focused either on the traditional grammar (issues like the inflection of nouns, verbs and adjectives) or on the historical development of sounds from Proto-Indo-European through Proto-Celtic to Old Irish. The first descriptive analysis of the phonology of an Irish dialect was Finck ...
Most dialects of Irish contain at a minimum the consonant phonemes shown in the following chart (see International Phonetic Alphabet for an explanation of the symbols). The consonant /h/is neither broad nor slender.
The vowel sounds vary from dialect to dialect, but in general Connacht and Munster at least agree in having the monophthongs /iː/, /ɪ/, /uː/, /ʊ/, /eː/, /ɛ/, /oː/, /ɔ/, /aː/, /a/, and schwa (/ə/), which is found only in unstressed syllables; and the diphthongs /əi/, /əu/, /iə/, and /uə/. The vowels of Ulster Irishare more divergent and are not disc...
The most notable aspects of Irish phonotactics revolve around the behaviour of consonant clusters. Here it is important to distinguish between clusters that occur at the beginnings of words and those that occur after vowels, although there is overlap between the two groups.
Vowel-initial words
Vowel-initial words in Irish exhibit behaviour that has led linguists to suggest that the vowel sound they begin with on the surface is not actually the first sound in the word at a more abstract level. Specifically, when a clitic ending in a consonant precedes a word beginning with the vowel, the consonant of the clitic surfaces as either broad or slender, depending on the specific word in question. For example, the ⟨n⟩ of the definite article an ('the') is slender before the word iontais ('...
Lengthening before fortis sonorants
Where reflexes of the Old Irish fortis sonorants appear in syllable-final position (in some cases, only in word-final position), they trigger a lengthening or diphthongization of the preceding vowel in most dialects of Irish.The details vary from dialect to dialect. In Donegal and Mayo, lengthening is found only before ⟨rd, rl, rn⟩, before ⟨rr⟩ (except when a vowel follows), and in a few words also before word-final ⟨ll⟩, e.g. barr /bˠaːɾˠ/ ('top'), ard /aːɾˠd̪ˠ/ ('tall'), orlach /ˈoːɾˠl̪ˠax/...
Devoicing
Where a voiced obstruent or /w/ comes into contact with /h/, the /h/ is absorbed into the other sound, which then becomes voiceless (in the case of /w/, devoicing is to /fˠ/). Devoicing is found most prominently in the future of first conjugation verbs (where /h/ is spelled ⟨f⟩) and in the formation of verbal adjectives (where /h/ is spelled ⟨th⟩). For example, the verb scuab /sˠkuəbˠ/ ('sweep') ends in the voiced consonant /bˠ/, but its future tense scuabfaidh /ˈsˠkuəpˠəɟ/ ('will sweep') and...
General facts of stress placement
In Irish, words normally have only one stressed syllable (ˈ◌), namely the first syllable of the word, e.g. d'imigh /ˈdʲɪmʲiː/ ('left' [verb]) and easonóir /ˈasˠən̪ˠoːɾʲ/ ('dishonor'). However, certain words, especially adverbs and loanwords, have stress on a noninitial syllable, e.g. amháin /əˈwaːnʲ/ ('only'), tobac /təˈbak/('tobacco'). In most compound words, primary stress falls on the first member and a secondary stress (ˌ◌) falls on the second member, e.g. lagphortach /ˈl̪ˠaɡˌfˠɔɾˠt̪ˠəx/...
The nature of unstressed vowels
In general, short vowels are all reduced to schwa (/ə/) in unstressed syllables, but there are exceptions. In Munster, if the third syllable of a word is stressed and the preceding two syllables are short, the first of the two unstressed syllables is not reduced to /ə/; instead it receives a secondary stress, e.g. spealadóir /ˌsˠpʲal̪ˠəˈd̪ˠoːɾʲ/ ('scythe-man'). Also in Munster, an unstressed short vowel is not reduced to /ə/ if the following syllable contains a stressed /iː/ or /uː/, e.g. eal...
The following table shows some sample sentences from the Aran dialect. The first eight chapters of Peadar Ua Laoghaire's autobiography Mo Sgéal Féin at Wikisourceinclude recordings of the text being read by a native speaker of Muskerry (Munster) Irish.
Scottish Gaelic and Manx
Many of the phonological processes found in Irish are found also in its nearest relatives, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. For example, both languages contrast "broad" and "slender" consonants, but only at the coronal and dorsal places of articulation; both Scottish Gaelic and Manx have lost the distinction in labial consonants. The change of /kn̪ˠɡn̪ˠmn̪ˠ/ etc. to /kɾˠɡɾˠmɾˠ/ etc. is found in Manx and most dialects of Scottish Gaelic. Evidence from written manuscripts suggests it had begun in Scot...
Hiberno-English
Irish pronunciation has had a significant influence on the features of Hiberno-English. For example, most of the vowels of Hiberno-English (with the exception of /ɔɪ/) correspond to vowel phones of Irish. The Irish stops [t̪ˠd̪ˠ] are common realizations of the English phonemes /θð/. Hiberno-English also allows /h/ where it is permitted in Irish but excluded in other dialects of English, such as before an unstressed vowel (e.g. Haughey /ˈhɑhi/) and at the end of a word (e.g. McGrath /məˈɡɹæh/)...
^1 Scanradh is pronounced as if spelled *⟨scamhradh⟩; see Irish orthographyCaint Ros Muc, a collection of sound files of speakers from RosmuckIrish orthography has evolved over many centuries: since old Irish was first written down in the Latin alphabet circa the sixth century AD. Prior to that primitive Irish was written in Ogham .
Irish orthography has evolved over centuries. The Irish were responsible for the present written format with spaces or symbols in use in the known world as the original Greek & Latin letters were written with continuous words.
Irish is an inflected language, having four cases: ainmneach ( nominative and accusative ), gairmeach ( vocative ), ginideach ( genitive) and tabharthach ( prepositional ). The prepositional case is called the dative by convention. Irish nouns are masculine or feminine.
1. The Representation of Consonants. Irish consonants occur in pairs of palatalized (slender) vs. nonpalatalized (broad). The only exception to this generalization is /h/, which has no palatalized counterpart. In the orthography, both palatalized and nonpalatalized consonants are represented via the consonant symbols shown below:
