- Official language in
- Ireland
- Script
- Latin
- Speakers
- 1.9M (2022)
Where it's spoken
Irish is the first official language of Ireland, with English recognised as the second official language. According to the most recent census, about 40% of the population aged three and over say they can speak Irish. Daily use of the language, though, is concentrated in the Gaeltacht — Ireland's officially designated Irish-speaking regions — where about 31% of Irish speakers use the language every day.
Sources
- Constitution of Ireland (Bunreacht na hÉireann), 1937 — Article 8 (transcription of the official text) — Article 8, §§1–2
- Central Statistics Office (Ireland). "Census of Population 2022 Profile 8 – The Irish Language and Education" — Population who could speak Irish, and daily use in the Gaeltacht, Census 2022
Script & pronunciation
Irish is written in the Latin alphabet. Unlike English, though, its spelling changes at the start of a word to reflect grammar, through two processes traditionally called lenition and eclipsis, so the same word can appear with more than one spelling. Lenition adds the letter h after the initial consonant: in this app's Ní thuigim ("I don't understand"), thuigim is the lenited form of tuigim ("I understand"). Eclipsis adds a further letter in front of the initial consonant: in Ár n-arán laethúil ("our daily bread"), arán ("bread") becomes n-arán after the possessive Ár ("our"). This app's cards show the same pattern: in Cá bhfuil an leithreas inrochtana? ("Where is the accessible restroom?"), bhfuil is described as the eclipsis form of fuil. Because of these changes, a word's spelling in a given sentence can look noticeably different from the form given for it in a dictionary.
Sources
- McCloskey, Jim. "The Syntax of Irish Gaelic" (chapter manuscript), University of California, Santa Cruz — p.1 (Latin-alphabet example), p.3 (eclipsis example), p.6 (lenition/eclipsis definition)
Grammar essentials
Basic word order in Irish is verb–subject–object: the finite verb comes first in the clause, ahead of its subject. In the noun phrase, the noun itself comes first and adjectives follow it, as in this app's seomra ciúin ("a quiet room"). Negation in a finite clause is expressed by a small set of words placed before the verb, among them ní; in this app's Ní thuigim ("I don't understand"), ní negates thuigim, the lenited form of tuigim ("I understand").
Sources
- McCloskey, Jim. "The Syntax of Irish Gaelic" (chapter manuscript), University of California, Santa Cruz — p.1–2 (VSO order, noun-adjective order), p.11 fn.8 (negation)
Politeness & etiquette
This app's cards give the standard Irish greeting as Dia dhuit. A dictionary of Irish records the same greeting formula, spelled Dia duit, glossing "(Go mbeannaí) Dia duit, daoibh!" as "God save you!" — a blessing rather than a plain word for "hello." That dictionary's paradigm for the preposition do lists duit as "to you" addressed to one person and daoibh as "to you" addressed to more than one, so the greeting formula already marks number. This app's cards show the same number distinction elsewhere in courteous language: go raibh maith agat ("thank you") becomes go raibh maith agaibh when thanking more than one person.
Sources
- Ó Dónaill, Niall (ed.) (1977). Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla. An Gúm (online edition hosted by Foras na Gaeilge) — Entry "Dia"
- Ó Dónaill, Niall (ed.) (1977). Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla. An Gúm (online edition hosted by Foras na Gaeilge) — Entry "do" (prepositional pronoun paradigm)