Module 1: A Quick Guide to Understanding Irish

A basic knowledge of the fundamental idiosyncrasies of the Irish language will greatly increase your learning speed and comprehension. It will also help you avoid some of the initial confusion often experienced by speakers of other non Celtic languages such as English.

The fundamentals listed below will help you adjust your mind set to some of the basic differences in grammar, sentence formation and expression which so characterize the Irish language and Celtic languages, in general. In order to illustrate some important characteristics of the Irish language we'll compare some of the major ways it differs from English.

1. In Irish all things are either masculine or feminine.

There is only 'he' and 'she' and not 'it'. A car is masculine and referred to with the pronoun 'sé' (he), the weather is feminine and referred to with the pronoun 'sí' (she). The masculine form is most common.

2. Irish has two forms of the verb 'to be'.

These are 'tá' and 'is'. 'Tá' is used to describe actions or conditions, e.g. tá an aimsir go breá (the weather is fine). 'Tá' implies something impermanent. 'Is' is used to define someone or something , e.g. is fear maith é Niall (Niall is a good man). 'Is' thus implies a fact or something permanent.

3. Irish uses negative word forms.

While English uses 'is' plus 'not' to make a negative statement, Irish turns 'tá' or 'is' into the negative word form e.g. the weather is not fine = níl an aimsir go breá (níl = negative form of tá); he is not a good man = ní fear maith é (ní = neg. form of is).

4. Irish sentences start with the verb.

From the examples above you might already have noticed that the simple sentence, whether positive or negative, starts with the verb (the action word). If you translated 'tá an aimsir go breá' literally into English you would get 'is the weather fine', and 'ní fear maith é' would be 'is not a man good he'.

5. Irish verbs can be combined with personal pronouns.

When describing the action a person is taking, like I run, we run etc., the personal pronoun (I, you, he, she etc.) can be included in verb endings. Thus you will find that 'I am', we run etc. is only one word i.e. 'táim, rithimíd' etc.

6. Irish uses combined prepositional pronouns.

In many areas of expression the combination of pronouns e.g. me, you, etc. and prepositions e.g. on, at, to, with, in etc. are very important and should be studied carefully. For example the 'on me' is not 'ar mé' but 'orm'; 'to you' is not 'do tú' but 'duit'.

7. Irish often uses nouns with prepositional pronouns to express emotional states.

To express emotions and feelings or physical conditions like sadness, hunger, happiness etc. Irish uses the appropriate noun (thing word) and says that this 'noun' is ON me, you, etc. Thus you get constructions where the prepositional pronouns derived from 'ar' (on) are used: Tá brón orm (sadness is on me) and tá áthas air (happiness is on him).

8. In Irish the adjective follows the noun.

In English it usually precedes the noun, e.g. nice weather (nice = adjective, weather = noun) is 'aimsir bhreá' (aimsir = noun, bhreá = adjective).

9. Both nouns and adjectives are subject to declension.

According to their position and function in the sentence both nouns and adjectives can appear in different cases. This may often result in sound and spelling changes in these words, e.g. aimsir bhreá = fine weather, (comhartha) aimsire breá = (a sign) of fine weather.

10. Irish changes the beginnings of words depending on what precedes them.

These changes are divided into two classes: lenition and eclipses.

Lenition means that the letter 'h' is inserted after certain letters which are suitable for lenition. In section 9 above you see 'aimsir bhreá'. The original word for 'fine' is 'breá' but this is lenited because 'aimsir' is a feminine word and it is a grammatical rule that feminine words lenite the following adjective, if lenitable.

Eclipses means that a letter related to the first letter of a word is put in front of the letter thus eclipsing the original sound and replacing it with a closely related sound. The preposition 'i' (in), for example, causes eclipses of the following sound, thus you get i gCléire and i mBaile Átha Cliath.

Back to top