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47-606: 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 . The reform removed inter-dialectal silent letters , simplified some letter sequences , and modernised archaic spellings to reflect modern pronunciation, but it also removed letters pronounced in some dialects but not in others. Irish spelling represents all Irish dialects to

94-612: A ⟨h⟩ , i.e. ⟨ bh, ch, dh, fh, gh, mh, ph, sh, th ⟩ . Lowercase ⟨i⟩ 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 . Irish punctuation

141-525: A language , including norms of spelling , punctuation , word boundaries , capitalization , hyphenation , and emphasis . Most national and international languages have an established writing system that has undergone substantial standardization, thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language. These processes can fossilize pronunciation patterns that are no longer routinely observed in speech (e.g. would and should ); they can also reflect deliberate efforts to introduce variability for

188-532: A lenited letter in Gaelic type is usually replaced by a following ⟨h⟩ in Roman type (e.g. ⟨ċ⟩ → ⟨ch⟩ ). The traditional Irish alphabet ( aibítir ) consists of 18 letters: ⟨ a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u ⟩ . It does not contain ⟨j, k, q, v, w, x, y, z⟩ , although they are used in scientific terminology and modern loanwords of foreign origin. ⟨v⟩ occurs in

235-552: A short vowel , an unwritten epenthetic /ə/ gets inserted between ⟨l, n, r⟩ + ⟨b, bh, ch, f, g, mh⟩ (as well as ⟨p⟩ , when derived from devoiced ⟨b, bh, mh⟩ ), when within a morpheme boundary, e.g. gorm /ˈɡɔɾˠəmˠ/ "blue", dearg /ˈdʲaɾˠəɡ/ "red", dorcha /ˈd̪ˠɔɾˠəxə/ "dark", ainm /ˈanʲəmʲ/ "name", deilgneach /ˈdʲɛlʲəɟnʲəx/ "prickly, thorny"’ leanbh /ˈl̠ʲanˠəw/ "child", airgead /ˈaɾʲəɟəd̪ˠ/ "silver, money". The main exception to this

282-717: A "popular edition" of the Constitution with simplified spelling and established a committee of experts, which failed to agree on recommendations. Instead, the Oireachtas' own translation service prepared a booklet, Litriú na Gaeilge: Lámhleabhar an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil , published in 1945. Some pre-reform spellings criticised by T. F. O'Rahilly and their modern forms include: beirbhiughadh → beiriú , imthighthe → imithe , faghbháil → fáil , urradhas → urrús , filidheacht → filíocht . The booklet

329-406: 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 . Orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing

376-560: A high degree despite their considerable phonological variation, e.g. crann ("tree") is read /kɾˠan̪ˠ/ in Mayo and Ulster , /kɾˠaːn̪ˠ/ in Galway, or /kɾˠəun̪ˠ/ in Munster . Some words may have dialectal pronunciations not reflected by their standard spelling, and they sometimes have distinct dialectal spellings to reflect this. Latin script has been the writing system used to write Irish since

423-500: A hyphen ( see below ). Vowel sequences are common in Irish spelling due to the " caol le caol agus leathan le leathan " ("slender with slender and broad with broad") rule, i.e. that the vowels on either side of any consonant (or consonant cluster ) must be both slender ( ⟨e, é, i, í⟩ ) or both broad ( ⟨a, á, o, ó, u, ú⟩ ), to unambiguously determine if the consonant(s) are broad or slender. An apparent exception

470-426: A language without judgement as to right and wrong, with a scientific understanding that orthographic standardization exists on a spectrum of strength of convention. The original sense of the word, though, implies a dichotomy of correct and incorrect, and the word is still most often used to refer specifically to a standardized prescriptive manner of writing. A distinction is made between emic and etic viewpoints, with

517-466: A n-iníon "their daughter". However, it is omitted when the vowel is capitalised, e.g. an tAlbanach "the Scotsman", Ár nAthair "Our Father". No hyphen is used when ⟨h⟩ is prefixed to a vowel-initial word, e.g. a hiníon "her daughter". A hyphen is also used in compound words under certain circumstances: An apostrophe ( uaschamóg ) is used to indicate an omitted vowel in

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564-460: A number of detailed classifications have been proposed. Japanese is an example of a writing system that can be written using a combination of logographic kanji characters and syllabic hiragana and katakana characters; as with many non-alphabetic languages, alphabetic romaji characters may also be used as needed. Orthographies that use alphabets and syllabaries are based on the principle that written graphemes correspond to units of sound of

611-399: A small number of (mainly onomatopoeic ) native words (e.g. vácarnach "to quack" and vrác "caw") and colloquialisms (e.g. víog for bíog "chirp" and vís for bís "screw"). ⟨h⟩ , when not prefixed to a word initial vowel or after a consonant to show lenition , primarily occurs word initially in loanwords, e.g. hata "hat". ⟨k⟩ is

658-411: Is ⟨ae⟩ , which is followed by a broad consonant despite the ⟨e⟩ . The pronunciation of vowels in Irish is mostly predictable from the following rules: When followed by ⟨bh, dh, gh, mh⟩ , a short vowel usually forms a diphthong or lengthens. For ⟨(e)adh, (a)idh, (a)igh⟩ , see - ⟨dh, (a)igh⟩ in exceptions in verb forms . After

705-1005: Is ⟨ng⟩ which is mainly used for /ŋ/ or /ɲ/ . Epenthesis does not occur after long vowels and diphthongs, e.g. téarma /tʲeːɾˠmˠə/ "term" or dualgas /ˈd̪ˠuəlˠɡəsˠ/ "duty", or across morpheme boundaries (i.e. after prefixes and in compound words), e.g. garmhac /ˈɡaɾˠwak/ "grandson" (from gar- "close, near" + mac "son"), an-chiúin /ˈan̪ˠçuːnʲ/ "very quiet" (from an- "very" + ciúin "quiet"), carrbhealach /ˈkaːɾˠvʲalˠəx/ "carriageway, roadway" (from carr "car" + bealach "way, road"). In Munster, epenthesis also occurs across morpheme boundaries, when ⟨l, n, r⟩ follow ⟨b, bh, ch, g, mh⟩ (after any vowel) or ⟨th⟩ (after short vowels), and when ⟨n⟩ follows ⟨c, g, m, r⟩ . In verb forms, some letters and letter combinations are pronounced differently from elsewhere. An Caighdeán Oifigiúil currently uses one diacritic ,

752-554: Is discussed further at Phonemic orthography § Morphophonemic features . The syllabaries in the Japanese writing system ( hiragana and katakana ) are examples of almost perfectly shallow orthographies—the kana correspond with almost perfect consistency to the spoken syllables, although with a few exceptions where symbols reflect historical or morphophonemic features: notably the use of ぢ ji and づ zu (rather than じ ji and ず zu , their pronunciation in standard Tokyo dialect) when

799-517: Is first attested in the 15th century, ultimately from Ancient Greek : ὀρθός ( orthós 'correct') and γράφειν ( gráphein 'to write'). Orthography in phonetic writing systems is often concerned with matters of spelling , i.e. the correspondence between written graphemes and the phonemes found in speech. Other elements that may be considered part of orthography include hyphenation , capitalization , word boundaries , emphasis , and punctuation . Thus, orthography describes or defines

846-576: Is placed between slashes ( /b/ , /bæk/ ), and from phonetic transcription , which is placed between square brackets ( [b] , [bæk] ). The writing systems on which orthographies are based can be divided into a number of types, depending on what type of unit each symbol serves to represent. The principal types are logographic (with symbols representing words or morphemes), syllabic (with symbols representing syllables), and alphabetic (with symbols roughly representing phonemes). Many writing systems combine features of more than one of these types, and

893-574: Is similar to English. An apparent exception is the Tironian et ( ⟨⁊⟩ ; agus ) which abbreviates the word agus "and", like the ampersand ( ⟨&⟩ ) abbreviates "and" in English. It is generally substituted by a seven ( ⟨7⟩ ) in texts. A hyphen ( fleiscín ) is used in Irish after ⟨t, n⟩ when prefixed to a masculine vowel-initial word as an initial mutation , e.g. an t-arán "the bread",

940-433: Is used to indicate a long vowel, as in bád /bˠaːd̪ˠ/ "boat". However, there are other conventions to indicate a long vowel, such as: The overdot ( ⟨◌̇⟩ ; ponc séimhithe "dot of lenition") was traditionally used to indicate lenition , though An Caighdeán exclusively uses a following ⟨h⟩ for this purpose. In Old Irish , the overdot was only used for ⟨ḟ, ṡ⟩ , while

987-434: Is é sin → .i. ("that is → i.e.") and agus araile → ⁊rl./srl. (" et cetera (and so forth) → &c./etc."). Like ⟨th⟩ in English, ⟨ú⟩ follows an ordinal numeral , e.g. Is é Lá Fheile Phádraig an 17ú lá den Márta "St. Patrick's day is the 17th [day] of March". The literary Classical Irish which survived till the 17th century was archaic; the first attempt at simplification

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1034-687: The caron on the letters | š | and | č | , which represent those same sounds in Czech ), or the addition of completely new symbols (as some languages have introduced the letter | w | to the Latin alphabet) or of symbols from another alphabet, such as the rune | þ | in Icelandic. After the classical period, Greek developed a lowercase letter system with diacritics to enable foreigners to learn pronunciation and grammatical features. As pronunciation of letters changed over time,

1081-620: The "dark", velarized allophone [ɫ] appears in syllable coda position (e.g. in fu ll ), while the "light", non-velarized allophone [l] appears in syllable onset position (e.g. in l awn ). Other accents of English, such as Scottish English , Australian English , and potentially standard U.S. and Canadian accents, have "dark L" in all positions. For many languages, velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants so that dark l tends to be dental or dentoalveolar, and clear l tends to be retracted to an alveolar position. The palatalized/velarized contrast

1128-400: The 5th century, when it replaced Ogham , which was used to write Primitive Irish and Old Irish . Prior to the mid-20th century, Gaelic type ( cló Gaelach ) was the main typeface used to write Irish; now, it is usually replaced by Roman type ( cló Rómhánach ). The use of Ogham and Gaelic type today is restricted to decorative or self-consciously traditional contexts. The dot above

1175-486: 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 ⟨h⟩ , e.g. Ḃí sé → Bhí sé "He/It was" and there is no standard for replacing an acute accent, though sometimes it is indicated by a following slash , e.g. fírinne → fi/rinne "truth". The acute accent ( ⟨◌́⟩ ; agúid or (síneadh) fada "long (sign)")

1222-467: The character is a voicing of an underlying ち or つ (see rendaku ), and the use of は, を, and へ to represent the sounds わ, お, and え, as relics of historical kana usage . Korean hangul and Tibetan scripts were also originally extremely shallow orthographies, but as a representation of the modern language those frequently also reflect morphophonemic features. An orthography based on a correspondence to phonemes may sometimes lack characters to represent all

1269-430: The correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are highly complex or inconsistent is called a deep orthography (or less formally, the language is said to have irregular spelling ). An orthography with relatively simple and consistent correspondences is called shallow (and the language has regular spelling ). One of the main reasons why spelling and pronunciation diverge is that sound changes taking place in

1316-604: 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 accumulating 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

1363-455: The diacritics were reduced to representing the stressed syllable. In Modern Greek typesetting, this system has been simplified to only have a single accent to indicate which syllable is stressed. Velarization Although electropalatographic studies have shown that there is a continuum of possible degrees of velarization, the IPA does not specify any way to indicate degrees of velarization, as

1410-448: The difference has not been found to be contrastive in any language. However, the IPA convention of doubling diacritics to indicate a greater degree can be used: ⟨ ˠˠ ⟩. A common example of a velarized consonant is the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (or "dark L"). In some accents of English, such as Received Pronunciation and arguably General American English , the phoneme /l/ has "dark" and "light" allophones:

1457-443: The emic approach taking account of perceptions of correctness among language users, and the etic approach being purely descriptive, considering only the empirical qualities of any system as used. Orthographic units, such as letters of an alphabet , are conceptualized as graphemes . These are a type of abstraction , analogous to the phonemes of spoken languages; different physical forms of written symbols are considered to represent

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1504-518: The following ⟨h⟩ was used for ⟨ch, ph, th⟩ and the lenition of other letters was not indicated. Later the two methods were used in parallel to represent lenition of any consonant (except ⟨l, n, r⟩ ) until the standard practice became to use the overdot in Gaelic type and the following ⟨h⟩ in Roman type. Thus the dotted letters ( litreacha buailte "struck letters") ⟨ ḃ, ċ, ḋ, ḟ, ġ, ṁ, ṗ, ṡ, ṫ ⟩ are equivalent to letters followed by

1551-569: The following cases: Capitalisation rules are similar to English. However, a prefixed letter remains in lowercase when the base initial is capitalised ( an tSín "China"). For text written in all caps , the prefixed letter is kept in lowercase, or small caps ( STAIR NA H ÉIREANN "THE HISTORY OF IRELAND"). An initial capital is used for: Most Irish abbreviations are straightforward, e.g. leathanach → lch. ("page → p.") and mar shampla → m.sh. (" exempli gratia (for example) → e.g."), but two that require explanation are:

1598-663: The national language, including its orthography—such as the Académie Française in France and the Royal Spanish Academy in Spain. No such authority exists for most languages, including English. Some non-state organizations, such as newspapers of record and academic journals , choose greater orthographic homogeneity by enforcing a particular style guide or spelling standard such as Oxford spelling . The English word orthography

1645-465: The only letter not listed by Ó Dónaill . Vowels may be accented with an acute accent ( ⟨á, é, í, ó, ú⟩ ; see below ). Accented letters are considered variants of their unaccented equivalent, and they follow their unaccented equivalents in dictionaries (i.e. a , á…abhac , ábhacht , abhaile ...). English letter names are generally used in both colloquial and formal speech but there are modern Irish letter names (based on

1692-422: The original Latin names ), similar to other languages that use a Latin script alphabet . 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. ( IPA ) In grapheme to phoneme correspondence tables on this page: See Irish phonology for an explanation of

1739-480: The phonemic distinctions in the language. This is called a defective orthography . An example in English is the lack of any indication of stress . Another is the digraph | th | , which represents two different phonemes (as in then and thin ) and replaced the old letters | ð | and | þ | . A more systematic example is that of abjads like the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, in which

1786-481: The sake of national identity, as seen in Noah Webster 's efforts to introduce easily noticeable differences between American and British spelling (e.g. honor and honour ). Orthographic norms develop through social and political influence at various levels, such as encounters with print in education, the workplace, and the state. Some nations have established language academies in an attempt to regulate aspects of

1833-475: The same grapheme if the differences between them are not significant for meaning. Thus, a grapheme can be regarded as an abstraction of a collection of glyphs that are all functionally equivalent. For example, in written English (or other languages using the Latin alphabet ), there are two different physical representations (glyphs) of the lowercase Latin letter a : ⟨a⟩ and ⟨ɑ⟩ . Since

1880-552: The short vowels are normally left unwritten and must be inferred by the reader. When an alphabet is borrowed from its original language for use with a new language—as has been done with the Latin alphabet for many languages, or Japanese katakana for non-Japanese words—it often proves defective in representing the new language's phonemes. Sometimes this problem is addressed by the use of such devices as digraphs (such as | sh | and | ch | in English, where pairs of letters represent single sounds), diacritics (like

1927-438: The spoken language are not always reflected in the orthography, and hence spellings correspond to historical rather than present-day pronunciation. One consequence of this is that many spellings come to reflect a word's morphophonemic structure rather than its purely phonemic structure (for example, the English regular past tense morpheme is consistently spelled -ed in spite of its different pronunciations in various words). This

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1974-538: The spoken language: phonemes in the former case, and syllables in the latter. In virtually all cases, this correspondence is not exact. Different languages' orthographies offer different degrees of correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. English , French , Danish , and Thai orthographies, for example, are highly irregular, whereas the orthographies of languages such as Russian , German , Spanish , Finnish , Turkish , and Serbo-Croatian represent pronunciation much more faithfully. An orthography in which

2021-428: The substitution of either of them for the other cannot change the meaning of a word, they are considered to be allographs of the same grapheme, which can be written | a | . The italic and boldface forms are also allographic. Graphemes or sequences of them are sometimes placed between angle brackets, as in | b | or | back | . This distinguishes them from phonemic transcription, which

2068-463: The symbols used and Irish initial mutations for an explanation of eclipsis and lenition. Consonants are generally "broad" ( velarised ) when beside ⟨a, á, o, ó, u, ú⟩ and "slender" ( palatalised ) when beside ⟨e, é, i, í⟩ . Irish orthography does not allow consonant letters or digraphs to be doubled (except in ⟨ll, nn, rr⟩ ), in compound words which would result in doubled consonants they are broken up by

2115-464: The symbols used in writing, and the conventions that regulate their use. Most natural languages developed as oral languages and writing systems have usually been crafted or adapted as ways of representing the spoken language. The rules for doing this tend to become standardized for a given language, leading to the development of an orthography that is generally considered "correct". In linguistics , orthography often refers to any method of writing

2162-405: 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

2209-476: Was not until 1639. The spelling represented a dialect continuum including distinctions lost in all surviving dialects by the Gaelic revival of the late 19th century. The idea of a spelling reform , 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 dictionary by Patrick S. Dinneen used traditional spellings. After

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