Irish Gaelic

Introduction

Irish (Gaeilge nah Eireann) is a Celtic language spoken mainly in Ireland. There are also Irish speakers in the United Kingdom, U.S., Canada, and Australia. The language is sometimes referred to as Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, or Erse, but in Ireland it is simply called Irish. It is estimated that it is spoken by some 260,000 people (Ethnologue).

Ireland was wholly Gaelic-speaking until the 17th century, but the dominance of the English and the effects of 19th-century potato famines and emigration led to a steep decline in the population. However when the Republic of Ireland came into existence in 1922, Irish was adopted as an official language, along with English. It received official recognition in Northern Ireland for the first time in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement. There is a cross-border body that promotes the language in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The main concentrations of native Irish speakers are scattered along the west coast of Ireland with a total population of about 83,000. These are the only areas of the country where Irish is still spoken as a native language. An Irish-speaking area is called Gaeltacht.

Island view Irish is a compulsory subject in government funded schools in the Republic of Ireland and has been so since the early days of the state. A relatively recent development is the spread of gaelscoileanna, schools in which Irish is the medium of instruction.

Irish is also used in radio broadcastin (Raidió na Gaeltachta), television (Teilifis na Gaeilge, or TG4), in newspapers, magazines, literature, theater, and the arts.

Thathched house In spite of all the efforts made since Ireland achieved independence, the Irish language is in decline in the Republic of Ireland. According to a 2002 survey, only one quarter of households in Gaeltacht areas are fluent in Gaelic. There is a real danger that Irish as a native language might become extinct by the end of the 21st century. It will, no doubt, continue to exist as a secondary language of English speakers in Ireland.

Dialects

There are three major dialects with considerable variation among them. Even basic phrases, such as "How are you?" can be very different.

Munster-Leinster (Southern Irish)	Cad é mar atá tú? "What is it as you are?"
Connacht (Western Irish)	Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú? "What way [is it] that you are?"
Donegal (Ulster, Northern Irish)	Conas taoí? "How are you?"

Structure

Sound System

university

celebration

There is considerable variation in pronunciation from dialect to dialect. The description below is of a somewhat 'idealized' phonology of Irish.

Vowels
Irish has the following short and long vowels. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning.

Short	Long
i - u	i:	u:
e - o	e:	o:
a	a:

Irish also has a number of diphongs, e.g., ai, au.

Consonants
Below is an inventory of consonant phonemes in Irish. Most consonants can be either velarized or palatalized. This makes a difference in word meaning. Please note, that the velarized-palatalized distinction is commonly referred to as broad-slender.

..		Labial	Dental & alveolar	Postalveolar & palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	velarized	p - b	t - d	.	k - g	.
Stops	palatalized	p' - b'	t' - d'	.	k' - g'	.
Fricatives	velarized	f - v	s	.	x -	h
Fricatives	palatalized	f' v'	.	sh	x'	..
Nasals	velarized	m	n	.		.
Nasals	palatalized	m'	n'	.	'	.
Laterals	velarized	.	l	.	.	.
.	palatalized	.	l'	.	.	.
Flap	velarized	.	r	.	.	.
.	palatalized	.	r'	.	.	.
Semivowels	.	w	.	j	.	.

Like other Celtic languages, Irish words undergo several kinds of initial mutations:

Stops become fricatives (this is indicated by h after the consonant, e.g., caith! "throw!" becomes chaith me "I threw."
Voiceless stops become voiced, e.g., tus "start" becomes ar dtus "at the start."
Consonants become nasalized, e.g., Gaillimh "Galway" become i nGaillimh "in Galway."

Stress normally falls on the first syllable of words, e.g. capall "horse." There are some exceptions, particularly in loanwords.

Click here to listen to the pronunciation of some common phrases in Irish.
Click here to listen to a few lessons in basic Irish.

Grammar

painting

book

row houses

Irish is a highly inflected language.

Noun phrase

Gender
Irish nouns are marked for gender. In general, words ending in a velarized (broad) consonant are masculine, words ending in a palatalized (slender) consonant are feminine.
Case
Irish nouns have four cases: nominative, vocative, genitive, and dative. There are five noun declensions that depend on several factors.
Article
The definite article has two forms: an and na. Their distribution depends on whether the noun is singular or plural, the case of the noun, and the initial sound of the noun. There is no indefinite article.
Modifiers
Adjectives follow the nouns they modify and agree with them in gender, number, and case.

Click here for a more detailed description of Irish nouns.

Pronouns
Personal pronouns are not marked for case, but there are three different sets of pronouns:

Conjunctive
If the personal pronoun is the subject of a sentence conjunctive forms are used. Keep in mind that the normal word order in Irish is Verb-Subject-Object.
Disjunctive
If a pronoun is not the subject or if a subject pronoun does not follow the verb, the disjunctive form is used.
Emphatic
As the name suggests, these forms are used to emphasize the pronoun.

Irish makes no distinction between familiar and formal second person pronouns, such as tu-vous in French, and tu-Usted in Spanish.

An interesting feature of Irish grammar is fusion of pronouns with prepositions (sometimes called inflected prepositions), as in the following examples using the preposition ag "at":

1st person	agam "at me"	*againn* "at us"
2nd person	*agat* "at you" (singular)	*agaibh* "at you" (plural)
3rd person	*aige* "at him" aici "at her"	*acu* "at them"

Numerals
There are three kinds of cardinal numbers in Irish: disjunctive, nonhuman conjunctive, and human conjunctive.

Disjunctive numbers are used in arithmetic, in telling time, in telephone numbers and after nouns in forms like bus a tri "bus 3."
Non-human conjunctive numbers are used for counting non-humans, e.g, tri chapall "three horses."
Human conjunctive numbers are used to count nouns that stand for humans, e.g., triúr páiste "three children."

Verb phrase

Conjugation
There are two verb conjugations: first and second. Verbs are marked for person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular, plural), tense (present, habitual past, preterite, future), and mood (conditional and imperative).
Impersonal form
In addition to the three persons, Irish also has an impersonal form (also called the "autonomous" form), which is used in forming passives and which means "one" or "someone."
Synthetic and analytic forms
Irish verb forms are constructed either synthetically or analytically:
Synthetic forms express information about person and number in the ending, e.g., molaim "I praise," where the ending -aim represents "1st person singular present tense." Pronouns are not used.
Analytic forms contain no information about person and number, e.g, molann sibh "you praise," where the ending -ann represents the present tense and the pronoun sibh "'you" represents the 2nd person plural.

Click here for a more detailed description of Irish verbs.

Vocabulary

cead mile failte

Although Irish has borrowed some words from English, its basic vocabulary is inherently Celtic. Here are some basic words and phrases in Irish:

*fáilte*	welcome
*slán*	good bye
*le do thoil*	please
*go raibh*	thank you
*tá brón orm*	sorry
sea	yes
ní hea	no
fear	man
bean	woman
páiste	child
uiske	water

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Irish. Do you see any words that you can recognize?

Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Irish

Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Writing

gaelic

There is little correspondence between symbols on paper and actual sounds of the language. So it would be no exaggeration to say that Irish has one of the worst spelling systems in the world.

Prior to the 20th century, Irish was written using the uncial script which is no longer used today, other than for decorative purposes. The alphabet used today contains the following letters:

a á b c d e é f g h i i l m n o ó p r s t u ú

Accented vowel letters represent long vowels.
Foreign words may contain the letters j k v x z which are not part of the Irish alphabet.

Click here for a detailed explanation of Irish orthography.

The Ogham alphabet
Irish first began to appear in writing in the form of Ogham inscriptions starting in approximately the 3rd century A.D. No similar script is found anywhere in Europe, and the very name for it, Old Irish ogham, a non-Celtic word, shows that it was probably inherited from the early inhabitants of the British Isles.

The inscriptions were chiseled on large stone slabs. The illustration below shows the letter"U" of the Ogham alphabet.

It is thought that this alphabet was used primarily for keeping records, and hence was not a fully developed writing system.

Leprechaun

Irish words and expressions in English
Here are just a few words and expressions of Irish origin.

banshee	from *bean sidhe* "female of the Elves," from bean "woman" + *sidhe, from sith* "fairy." Specifically, one who calls to the spirits of the dead.
blarney	This word has come to mean nonsense or smooth talk. Tradition says that if one paid a visit to the Blarney Castle in County Cork and kissed the Blarney stone, one would receive the gift of eloquence.
bog	from bogach "bog"
boycott	Charles Parnell, a 19th century Irish politician, and his supporters threatened to shun any landlord or estate agent who refused to lower rents. When Charles Boycott, an English estate agent in County Mayo, refused to do so, he and his family were completely shunned in their community. His name became synonymous with group action to withhold support or patronage in protest.
clan	from clann "family, stock, offspring"
leprechaun	from lupracan, metathesis from Old Irish luchorpan literally "a very small body," from lu "little" + corpan, diminutive of corp "body"
slob	from slab "mud"
whiskey	from Gaelic uisge beatha "whisky," literally"water of life," from Old Irish uisce "water" + bethu "life"

Resources

Click here to find out where Irish is taught in the U.S.

Resources for the study of Irish language and culture
Irish and Celtic Resources on the Internet
Irish grammar and vocabulary
Irish Language Information and Resources
Irish and Celtic Resources on the Internet
Wikipedia article on Irish
Ethnologue report on Irish