Irish orthography has a reputation as being very difficult to learn and bearing only a tenuous relationship to the pronunciation. The reputation is not entirely undeserved; the statements on this page must be interpreted as tendencies, not hard and fast rules. Among the vowels, there are exceptions to virtually every letter/sound correspondence listed below. Exceptions in the consonants are fewer, but there are still some. The orthography of a language is the set of rules of how to write correctly in the writing system of a language. ... In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract, in contrast to consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. ... A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture sufficient to cause audible turbulence, at one or more points along the vocal tract. ...

There are three dialects of spoken Irish: Ulster (now predominantly in County Donegal), Connacht (Counties Mayo and Galway), and Munster (Counties Kerry and Cork). None of these has the status of a standard pronunciation, and in schools pupils learn the pronunciation of whatever dialect is geographically closest, or else a mixture of all the dialects. In the media (for example the Irish language television channel TG4 and the Irish language radio station Raidió na Gaeltachta), the Connacht pronunciation is probably the most widely heard, and is therefore a good choice for a beginner, especially one outside Ireland and with no ties to one of the other dialects, to focus on. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Ulster (Irish: Cúige Uladh, IPA: ) is one of the four provinces of Ireland. ... For other uses, see Donegal (disambiguation) Donegal (Irish: Dún na nGall) is a county in the northwest of Ireland. ... Connaught redirects here. ... County Mayo (Irish: Maigh Eo, the plain of the yews) is a county on the west coast of Ireland. ... County Galway (Contae na Gaillimhe in Irish) is located on the west coast of Ireland. ... For other places with the same or similar names, and other uses of the word, see Munster (disambiguation). ... County Kerry (Irish: Ciarraí) is a county in the southwest of Ireland, in the Munster province of the Republic of Ireland, informally referred to as The Kingdom. ... County Cork (Contae Chorcaí in Irish) is the most southwesterly and the largest of the modern counties of Ireland. ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... TG41 is a television channel for speakers of the Irish language which was launched on 31 October 1996; it was known as Teilifís na Gaeilge or TnaG before a rebranding campaign in 1999. ... RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta (RnaG; Irish for Gaeltacht Radio) is the Irish language radio service of Radio Telefís Éireann in Ireland, and is available on 92-94FM in Ireland and via the Internet. ...

In addition, a committee from the Linguistics Institute of Ireland devised a standardized pronunciation called the Lárchanúint ('central dialect') that was intended to become a standardized, spelling-based pronunciation. It is easy for a beginner to learn, but it is quite artificial and is almost never used by native speakers or teachers.

The alphabet

The native Irish alphabet consists of the following letters:

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

In addition, foreign words may contain j k q v w x y z; of these, only v is at all common.

Consonants

The consonant letters generally correspond to the consonant phonemes as shown in this table. See Irish phonology for an explanation of the symbols used. The phonology of the Irish language varies from dialect to dialect. ...

In linguistics, vowel length is the duration of a vowel sound. ...

Vowels

The following chart indicates how written vowels are generally pronounced. Each dialect has certain divergences from this general scheme. In the Context column, C stands for a broad consonant and Cʲ for a slender consonant.

The epenthetic vowel

In a sequence of short vowel + /l, r, n/ + labial or velar consonant an unwritten /ə/ gets pronounced between the /l, r, n/ and the following consonant. Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ...

Examples: gorm /gorəm/ 'blue'; dearg /dʲarəg/ 'red'; dorcha /dorəxə/ 'dark'; ainm /anʲəmʲ/ 'name'; seanchaí /ʃanəxi:/ 'storyteller'; leanbh /lʲanəv/ 'child'; colm /koləm/ 'dove'

There is no epenthesis before voiceless stops or after long vowels and diphthongs: corp /korp/ 'body'; olc /olk/ 'bad'; téarma /tʲe:rmə/ 'term'; dualgas /duəlgəs/ 'duty' Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract, in contrast to consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds) is a vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

Special pronunciations in verb forms

Some letters and letter combinations are pronounced differently in verb forms than elsewhere. A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ...

In the imperfect, conditional, and imperative, -dh is pronounced /t/ before a pronoun beginning with s-

Otherwise it is pronounced /x/

In the preterite impersonal, -dh is pronounced /v/

-(a)idh and -(a)igh are pronounced /ə/ before a pronoun, otherwise /i:/

In the future and conditional, f (broad or slender) has the following effects:

After vowels and sonorants (/l m n r/) it is pronounced /h/:

It makes a voiced obstruent (/b v d g/) voiceless:

It is silent after a voicless obstruent (/k x p s t/)

But in the future and conditional impersonal f is always /f(ʲ)/

In the past participle th (also t after d) is silent but makes a voiced obstruent voiceless

Imperfect has several meanings: The imperfect tense in linguistics an imperfect cadence in music theory This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... In logical calculus of mathematics, the logical conditional (also known as the material implication, sometimes material conditional) is a binary logical operator connecting two statements, if p then q where p is a hypothesis (or antecedent) and q is a conclusion (or consequent). ... Imperative programming, as opposed to functional programming, is a sort of programming employing side-effect as central execution feature. ... In linguistics, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by a verb as not having happened yet, but expected to in the future. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...

See also

• Irish dialects
• Irish initial mutations
• Irish language
• Irish morphology
• Irish phonology
• Irish syntax