Recently, I have taken an interest in learning the Irish language or Gaeilge again, after taking a somewhat extended break from it to learn languages like Maori. But immediately, I found myself in quite a bit of a pickle when it comes to learning how Irish sounds are written, and how written Irish is read. So today, I thought I would take you along my journey in learning how Irish orthography works.

The main golden rule of Irish orthography I found was “Caol le caol agus leathan le leathan”. This translates to “Slender with slender and broad with broad”. This points towards the broad-slender distinction of Irish consonants, which are marked by what the vowels adjacent to the consonant are. In fact, each consonant has to be unambiguously marked as either broad or slender in written Irish, leading to wild vowel combinations that are pronounced like something else. And for purposes of this post, I will be mainly looking at Ulster Irish.

To start off, we will first look at what makes a consonant broad and what makes a consonant slender. Broad consonants are marked by “a, á, o, ó, u, ú”, and slender consonants are marked by “e, é, i, í”. This makes the “t” in “teach” (house) slender, and the “D” in “Domhnach” (Sunday) broad.

Broad and slender consonants are articulated differently. Going down the alphabet, most broad consonants tend to be velarised, or pronounced with a velar glide /ˠ/, while most slender consonants tend to be palatalised, or pronounced with a palatal glide /ʲ/. Playing these contrasts on repeat, I cannot seem to hear a difference between the broad consonants and the unvelarised counterpart I am familiar with. Perhaps I need a little more practise with that.

But not all have this characteristic. Most remarkably of all, the letter ‘s’ has a notable difference between broad and slender pronunciations. A broad ‘s’ (and the ‘s’ in ‘sf’, ‘sm’, ‘sp’ and ‘sr’) is /sˠ/, while a slender ‘s’ is /ʃ/. Learning these basics, I understand why the given name Séan sounds pretty much like Shawn or Shaun.

Letter	Broad	Slender
b	/bˠ/	/bʲ/
c	/k/	/c/
d	/dˠ/	/dʲ/
f	/fˠ/	/fʲ/
g	/g/	/ɟ/
h	/h/	/h/
l	/lˠ/	/lʲ/
m	/mˠ/	/mʲ/
n	/nˠ/ /ɾˠ/ in e.g. mná	/nʲ/ /ɾʲ/ in e.g. gnéas
p	/pˠ/	/pʲ/
r	/ɾˠ/	/ɾʲ/ /ɾˠ/ before d, l, n, r, s, t, th   after s
s	/sˠ/	/ʃ/ /sˠ/ before f, m, p, r
t	/tˠ/	/tʲ/
v (loan)	/w/	/vʲ/
z (loan)	/zˠ/	/ʒ/

My first main challenge was understanding how the digraphs with the letter ‘h’ are pronounced. These are not only found within words, but also as lenitions that Irish words may undergo for some grammatical functions. To my knowledge, the digraphs “fh”, “dh”, and “gh” seem to be mainly silent, and “sh” and “th” are usually pronounced as /h/. Looking at Irish surnames like O’Seaghdha (sometimes alternatively written as O’Shea), I could pretty much guess how they might be pronounced.

What I did not know was the different pronunciations of these digraphs in different parts of a word, and the broad-slender distinctions. It turns out, while “sh” is almost always pronounced /h/, “th” may be silent if it comes after a long vowel or a diphthong. This makes the “th” in bláth (blossom) silent. The digraphs “dh” and “gh” carry a /j/ sound when slender (in Ulster Irish), and a /ɣ/ sound when broad at the start of a word. So the “dh” in words like “ádh” (luck), “dhorn” (fist), and “faidh” (prophet) are pronounced differently.

There are other digraphs I did not know how they were pronounced, until recently. For example, digraphs may also be formed from mutations or eclipsis, which makes voiceless sounds like /k/ become voiced, like /g/. This gives the digraphs ‘gc’, as in ‘ar an gcósta‘ (on the coast), and the ‘mb’ in ‘i mBaile Átha Cliath‘ (in Dublin).

This eclipsis also gives us the trigraph “bhf”. It is the eclipsis form of the letter “f”, which is a sound change made to serve certain grammatical functions. Broad “bhf” carries a /w/ sound, and slender “bhf” carries a /vʲ/ sound.

The other form of sound change is the t-prothesis, found in words like ‘an tSín‘ (China). While it also occurs on Irish words starting with a vowel, when it occurs before an ‘s’, it replaces that ‘s’ sound with a ‘t’. This gives more hints on how to pronounce the surname an tSithigh.

For better organisation, the pronunciation guide for the digraphs (and ‘bhf’), are presented here in a table.

Letters	Broad	Slender
bh	/w/	/vʲ/
bhf	/w/	/vʲ/
bp	/bˠ/	/bʲ/
ch	/x/	/ç/ /x/ before ‘t’
dh	/ɣ/ initial otherwise silent	/j/
dt	/t̪ˠ/ /d̪ˠ/ (eclipsis)	/tʲ/ /dʲ/ (eclipsis)
fh	silent	silent
gc	/g/	/ɟ/
gh	/ɣ/ initial otherwise silent	/j/
ll	/l̪ˠ/	/l̠ʲ/
mb	/mˠ/	/mʲ/
mh	/w/	/vʲ/
nc	/ŋk/	/ɲc/
nd	/n̪ˠ/	/n̠ʲ/
ng	/ŋg/ /ŋ/ (eclipsis)	/ɲɟ/ /ɲ/ (eclipsis)
nn	/n̪ˠ/	/n̠ʲ/
ph	/fˠ/	/fʲ/
rr	/ɾˠ/	/ɾˠ/
sh	/h/	/h/
th	/h/ silent after long vowel silent after diphthong	/h/ silent after long vowel silent after diphthong
ts	/t̪ˠ/	/tʲ/

If that is not confusing enough on itself, there are some exceptions to the rule when used in verb functions. One exception pertains to the letter ‘f’ in some verb endings. This would be pronounced as /h/ in words like ‘dhófadh‘ (would burn), and silent in words like ‘brisfidh‘ (will break) and ‘phronnfadh‘ (would crush).

There is also one that affects ‘dh’. Slender ‘dh’, when used before subject pronouns, is silent. But broad ‘dh’ is usually pronounced as /w/, including forming the preterite tense. When broad ‘dh’ is used before initial pronouns like ‘sé‘ (he), this would be pronounced /tʲ/. These two are the only exceptions that involves only consonants as far as I can remember, though I might be missing out on more exceptions elsewhere.

While I was eventually able to grasp which letters would be silent, and under which circumstances they would be silent, this is just the consonant section. Next week, we will explore the vowels, and oh boy, has it been a challenge to understand how those work. With just 10 vowel letters, it is interesting to find out just how much information their combinations pack, and this extends beyond vowel quality and marking of broad and slender consonants.