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Modern Irish

Back to Celtic Languages

Almost all applications support Modern Irish accents. Guidelines for typing and using accents are given below.

  1. About the Language
  2. Accent Codes
    1. Windows Alt Codes
    2. Windows International Keyboard
    3. Macintosh Accent Codes
  3. Irish or International Keyboards (New Page)
  4. HTML Accent Codes
  5. Minority Languages of Spain
    1. Language Codes: ga (Irish)

About Gaelic

About Irish

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.

Note on Term "Gaelic"

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.

Irish Links

 

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Windows Alt Codes

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.

Three nested data tables
Alt Codes for typing Irish characters:
  Capitals
Á ALT+0193
É ALT+0201
Í ALT+0205
Ó ALT+0211
Ú ALT+0218

 

  Lowercase
á ALT+0225
é ALT+0233
í ALT+0237
ó ALT+0243
ú ALT+0250
  Currency
£ ALT+0163
ALT+0128

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Windows International Keyboard Codes

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

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Macintosh Accent Codes

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)

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HTML Accent Codes

Irish Encoding and Languge Tags

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.

HTML Entity 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.

HTML Entity Codes for Irish characters:
  Capitals
Á Á (193)
É É (201)
Í Í (205)
Ó Ó (211)
Ú Ú (218)

 

  Lowercase
á á (225)
é é (233)
í í(237)
ó ó (243)
ú ú (250)
  Currency
£ £ (163)
€ 

Using Encoding and Language Codes

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>

XHTML

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>

No Encoding Declared

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

Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the language of a page. These are meta data tags which indicate the page of a language, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.

See the Pan Romance Page for other languages of Spain

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Links

Irish Links

Linux/Unix

Most content in Irish.

 

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©Penn State University, 2000-2007.
This Web page maintained by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services. For questions or comments on this Web page, please contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt (ejp10@psu.edu).
Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.
Last Modified: Friday, 25-Apr-2008 10:57:55 EDT