Irish Alphabet
The first written form of the Irish language was Ogham, pronounced “AWGH (gutteral g) – um”, which consisted of lines carved in wood or stone. Notice that most of the letters are named after a tree/plant.
When Christianity arrived in Ireland, the monks, brothers, priests, etc. brought to Ireland the Latin alphabet, which was adapted for writing in Irish. The Irish alphabet with Latin origins has only 18 letters. To see these letters, both upper and lowercase, check out this pdf file: tradirishalpha.pdf. Notice the interesting G, lowercase R and lowercase S. Also, other than R and S, notice that all the lowercase letters are simply smaller versions of their uppercase letters. There is no letter K. The letter C has the K sound – hence the pronunciation of the word “Celts” as “Kelts”.
Posted: February 14th, 2007 under History, Literature.
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