Books and other items printed in Gaelic from 1841 to 1870 > Stéidhean a' Ghràmair Ghaëlig

INTRODUCTION.
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The Irish Gaelic Alphabet consists of the same letters as the
Scottish Gaelic. The old names of these letters bear marks of great
antiquity, and are nearly similar in sound to the names of their cor-
responding Hebrew and Greek letters ; as,
Letters.
Old Name.
Pronounced.
Hebre .
Greek.
A
Ailm
ailim
Aleph
Alphai
TD
-D
x>eitn
oen
jjcin
Beta
\jOLI
fcowl) kawl
Kaph
Kappa
Lf
Dair
d&ir
Tìn
UdiHilU
X-'clld
ìh
TTarlVi
xjaoin
egh
TTp
Eta
Fearn
ficLTTl
PVlO
X UtJ
PVii
Vjr
VjrOI l)
ffOTSt
TT
xi
xiuatn
huah
XlcLXl
TTa
XlO
Yod
Iota
L
Luis
luish
Lamed
Lamda
M
Muin
rnuin
Mem
Mu
N
Nuin
nùin
Nun
Nu

Oir
oir
Ain
Omicron
P
Peith
Pèh
Pe
Pe
Pv
Ruis
rùsh
Resh
Ro
s
Suil
suil
Shin
Sigma
T
Teine
teinè
Tau
Tau
U
Uir
uir
Vau
U
" The names of these letters are very ancient, and seem to have
been originally derived from the Noahic language, from which they
were adopted by the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Canaanites or Phce-
nicians, and by these introduced into Greece and the South West of
Europe. This has been the opinion of Eupolemus, Eusebius, St
Jerome, St Augustine, and Bellamine, with most of our modern
philologists." — Lynch's Introduction to the Irish Language.
The Irish Gaelic had the use of letters in the fifth century when
Christianity and literature were introduced by St Patrick ; and some
Irish records go back as far as the Christian era.+ It is evident that
the early writers of the Scottish Gaelic followed in many cases the
rules observed in writing the Irish.
The fewness of the letters in the Gaelic Alphabet has led to the
practice of employing a pair of consonants to represent sounds which
are made by one consonant in languages of more copious alphabets ;
thus bh is always sounded like v. Coincident vowels or diphthongs
belonging to different syllables are generally separated by a pair of
* Thelrish Alphabet was originally placed in the follovving order; as, b, l, n,
h,f, s, c, d, t, m, g, %>, r, a, e, i, o, u, and hence called Belusnin from its first
letters. There was another Alphabet employed by the Irish Celts, called Ogum,
or Oghum, occult writing ; polygraphy, said to have been chiefly used by the Druids.
It is formed by parallel short lines, one or more of which corresponds to a letter
placed below, across, and above a long ground line running from side to side of tlie
page.—See Irish Alphabet, p. 2. j Popular Encyclopedia.