See Also: Other Celtic Languages | Germanic Languages
Almost all applications support Modern Irish accents. Guidelines for typing and using accents are given below.
Irish is a Goedelic Celtic language spoken in several areas of Ireland and is closely related to Scottish Gaelic and more distantly related to Welsh, Breton and Cornish. In fact, many words in Irish and Scottish Gaelic are identical, but spelled with differently angled accents.
Historically, the name "Gaelic" refers to the Celtic languages spoken in Ireland and Highland Scotland. Some sources refer to Irish as "Gaelic", but some speakers find that term objectionable in modern contexts. The term Irish or Modern Irish is the least controversial term to use, although the native language name Gaeilge can able be used.
All modern browsers support this script. Click link in list to view configuration instructions. In some cases, you will be asked to match a script with a font.
Modern versions of many fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Tahoman Times CE (Mac OS X) or Palatino (Mac OS X) are Unicode fonts and contain the letters needed for this language. it is recommended you transistion to the newer Unicode fonts whenever possible.
Old Irish spelling uses a series of dotted letters for lenited consonants instead of modern letter+h (e.g. ṡ, ḟ for sh,fh). The most commonly used dotted letters in Old Irish grammars and primers is ṡ and ḟ, although the use of other dotted letters is also attested in some older Irish language signs. The letters ṡ,ḟ,ḃ,ḋ,ġ,ṗ,ṫ,ċ,ṁ can always be substituted with sh,fh,bd,dh,gh,ph,th,ch,mh (and ṙ,ṅ can be replaced with r,n).
Modern versions of many fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Palatino, Cambria and others include dotted letters. However many decorative fonts may be missing these characters
Note: Information on generating dotted letters in different platforms and tools is included below under each platform and tool where available.
A commonly seen Old Irish abbreviation is the amperagus, to represent the word "and". In form it resembles the number 7, but does have its own code point in Unicode (⁊ or "7" - U+204A). Finally, the insular letter forms for d,g or Ꝺ,ᵹ and others are encoded in Unicode as well.
Although these characters are in the Unicode standard, they are not present in many fonts. The list below includes fonts which do have these characters.
In Windows, combinations of the ALT key plus a numeric code can be used to type a non-English character (accented letter or punctuation symbol) in any Windows application. More detailed instructions about typing accents with ALT keys are available. Additional options for entering accents in Windows are also listed in the Accents section of this Web site.
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If you are using a recent version of Microsoft Word (2003/2007/2010), you can use the following ALT key plus a numeric code can be used to type a Latin character (accented letter or punctuation symbol) in any Windows application.
Some recommended fonts include Arial Unicode MS (Win), TITUS Cyberbit, Junicode and Gentium
| Old Irish Dotted Letters | |
| ṡ | ALT+7777 s-dot (dot above) |
|---|---|
| ḟ | ALT+7711 f-dot |
| ḃ | ALT+7683 b-dot |
| ḋ | ALT+7691 d-dot |
| ġ | ALT+289 g-dot |
| ṗ | ALT+7767 p-dot |
| ṫ | ALT+7787 t-dot |
| ċ | ALT+267 c-dot |
| ṁ | ALT+7745 m-dot |
| ṙ | ALT+7769 r-dot |
| ṅ | ALT+7749 n-dot |
Below are codes for manuscript abbreviations amperagus (⁊) and insular letter forms, but you probably will need to download a comprehensive font to view them.
Note: Not all letters have a separate "Insular" counterpart.
| ALT Code | |
|---|---|
| ⁊ | ALT+8266 Amperagus /Tironian ET |
| Ꝺ | ALT+42873 Cap Insular D |
| ꝺ | ALT+42874 Lower Insular D |
| ᷘ | ALT+7640 Combining Lower Insular D |
| Ꝼ | ALT+42875 Cap Insular F |
| ꝼ | ALT+42876 Lower Insular F |
| ᵹ | ALT+7545 Lower Insular G |
| Ᵹ | ALT+42877 Cap Insular G |
| Ꝿ | ALT+42878 Cap Turned Insular G |
| ꝿ | ALT+42879 Lower Turned Insular G |
| Ꞃ | ALT+42882 Cap Insular R |
| ꞃ | ALT+42883 Lower Insular R |
| Ꞅ | ALT+42884 Cap Insular S |
| ꞅ | ALT+42885 Lower Insular S |
| Ꞇ | ALT+42886 Cap Insular T |
| ꞇ | ALT+42887 Lower Insular T |
In order to use these codes you must activate the international keyboard. Instructions are listed in the Keyboards section of this Web site.
| Character | Description |
|---|---|
| Acute Accent | ('+V) - Type apostrophe (singe quote), then the vowel. |
| £ | Control+RightAlt+4 |
| € | Control+RightAlt+5 |
Note: There is no method to input Old Irish dotted letters in the International Keyboard. It is recommended that the Character Map be used instead.
Here are the basic codes for Modern Irish accents in Irish.
| Character | Description |
|---|---|
| Acute Accent | Type Option+E, then the vowel. For instance, to type á hold down Option+E, then type lowercase A. To type Á, hold down Option+E, then type capital A. |
| £ | Option+3 |
| € | Shift+Option+2 (may not work for older System 9 fonts) |
| Dot Above | First activate Extended Keyboard Accent Codes |
To use the option codes below, you must activate and switch to the Unicode Hex Input Keyboard. Note that not all letters have a separate "Insular" counterpart.
Note: This character may not be visiable on a Windows machine unless a user installs a special font such as the ones listed above.
| Option Code | |
|---|---|
| ⁊ | Option+204A Amperagus /Tironian ET |
| Ꝺ | Option+A779 Cap Insular D |
| ꝺ | Option+A77A Lower Insular D |
| ᷘ | Option+1DD8 Combining Lower Insular D |
| Ꝼ | Option+A77B Cap Insular F |
| ꝼ | Option+A77C Lower Insular F |
| ᵹ | Option+1D79 Lower Insular G |
| Ᵹ | Option+A77D Cap Insular G |
| Ꝿ | Option+A77E Cap Turned Insular G |
| ꝿ | Option+A77F Lower Turned Insular G |
| Ꞃ | Option+A782 Cap Insular R |
| ꞃ | Option+A783 Lower Insular R |
| Ꞅ | Option+A784 Cap Insular S |
| ꞅ | Option+A785 Lower Insular S |
| Ꞇ | Option+A786 Cap Insular T |
| ꞇ | Option+A787 Lower Insular T |
These are the codes which allow browsers and screen readers to process data as the appropriate language. All letters in codes are lower case.
See Using Encoding and Language Codes for more information on the meaning and implementation of these codes.
Use these codes to input accented letters in HTML. For instance, if you want to type señor you would type señor.
The numbers in parentheses are the numeric codes assigned in Unicode encoding. For instance, because ñ is number 241, señor can also be used to input señor. These numbers are also used with the Windows Alt codes listed above.
The most commonly used dotted letters in Old Irish grammars and primers is ṡ and ḟ, although the use of other dotted letters is also attested in some older Irish language signs. The letters ṡ,ḟ,ḃ,ḋ,ġ,ṗ,ṫ,ċ,ṁ can always be substituted with sh,fh,bd,dh,gh,ph,th,ch,mh (and ṙ,ṅ can be replaced with r,n).
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Computers process text by assuming a certain encoding or a system of matching electronic data with visual text characters. Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure the proper encoding is specified in the header tags; otherwise the browser may default to U.S. settings and not display the text properly.
To declare an encoding, insert or inspect the following meta-tag at the top of your HTML file, then replace "???" with one of the encoding codes listed above. If you are not sure, use utf-8 as the encoding.
Generic Encoding Template
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=??? ">
...
<head>Declare Unicode
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8 ">
...
<head>
The final close slash must be included after the final quote mark in the encoding header tag if you are using XHTML
Declare Unicode in XHTML
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
...
<head>
If no encoding is declared, then the browser uses the default setting, which in the U.S. is typically Latin-1. In that case many Unicode characters could be displayed incorrectly. Also, older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 may not be able to process the entity codes correctly without the "utf-8" declaration.
Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the language of a page. These are metadata tags which indicate the language of a page, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.
Note: Unicode is especially recommended if you plan to include Old Irish dotted letters.
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Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.