Gaelic type (sometimes called Irish character, Irish type, or Gaelic script) is a family of

Insular script Insular script is a Middle Ages, medieval script (styles of handwriting), script system originating in Ireland that spread to England and continental Europe under the influence of Hiberno-Scottish mission, Irish Christianity. Irish missionaries ...

typefaces devised for printing

Early Modern Irish Early Modern Irish () represented a transition between Middle Irish and Modern Irish. Its literary form, Classical Gaelic, was used in Ireland and Scotland from the 13th to the 18th century. Classical Gaelic Classical Gaelic or Classical Irish ( ...

. It was widely used from the 16th century until the mid-18th century in Scotland and the mid-20th century in Ireland, but is now rarely used. Sometimes, all Gaelic typefaces are called ''Celtic'' or ''

uncial Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...

'' although most Gaelic types are not uncials. The "Anglo-Saxon" types of the 17th century are included in this category because both the Anglo-Saxon types and the Gaelic/Irish types derive from the insular manuscript hand. The terms ''Gaelic type'', ''Gaelic script'' and ''Irish character'' translate the

Modern Irish Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

phrase (). In Ireland, the term is used in opposition to the term ,

Roman type In Latin script typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of Typeface, historical type, alongside blackletter and Italic type, italic. Sometimes called normal or regular, it is distinct from these two for its upright style (relative to the ...

. The Scots Gaelic term is (). (–1770) was one of the last Scottish writers with the ability to write in this script, but his main work, , was published in the Roman script.

Characteristics

Besides the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, Gaelic typefaces must include all vowels with

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...

s as well as a set of consonants with

dot above When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot refers to the glyphs "combining dot above" (, and "combining dot below" ( which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in a variety of languages. Similar marks are ...

, and the Tironian sign et , used for 'and' in Irish. Gaelic typefaces also often include insular forms: of the letters and , and some of the typefaces contain a number of

ligature Ligature may refer to: Language * Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy) * Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words Medicine * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...

s used in earlier Gaelic typography and deriving from the manuscript tradition. Lower-case is drawn without a dot (though it is not the Turkish dotless ), and the letters have insular shapes . Many modern Gaelic typefaces include Gaelic letterforms for the letters , and typically provide support for at least the vowels of the other

Celtic language The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves ...

s. They also distinguish between and (as did traditional typography), though some modern fonts replace the ampersand with the Tironian note ostensibly because both mean 'and'.

History

The Irish uncial alphabet originated in medieval manuscripts as an "insular" variant of the Latin alphabet. The first Gaelic typeface was designed in 1571 for '' Aibidil Gaoidheilge agus Caiticiosma'', a

catechism A catechism (; from , "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of Catholic theology, doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adult co ...

commissioned by

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudo ...

to help attempt to convert the Irish Catholic population to Anglicanism. In 1611, Franciscans from Louvain, Belgium, created their own typeface, known as Louvain Irish Type.

Use

Typesetting in Gaelic script remained common in Ireland until the mid-20th century. Gaelic script is today used merely for decorative typesetting; for example, a number of traditional Irish newspapers still print their name in Gaelic script on the first page, and it is also popular for pub signs, greeting cards, and display advertising. Edward Lhuyd's grammar of the

Cornish language Cornish (Standard Written Form: or , ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language, Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. Along with Welsh language, Welsh and Breton language, Breton, Cornish descends from Common Brittonic, ...

used Gaelic-script consonants to indicate sounds like and . In 1996 created a new corporate logo. The logo consists of a modern take on the Gaelic type face. The R's counter is large with a short tail, the T is roman script while the E is curved but does not have a counter like a lower case E, and the letters also have slight serifs to them. TG4's original logo, under the brand , also used a modernization of the font, the use of the curved T and a sans-serif A in the word . Other Irish companies that have used Gaelic script in their logos including the GAA, and . The uses Gaelic Script on its official seal.

In Unicode

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

treats the Gaelic script as a font variant of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

. A lowercase insular g (ᵹ) was added in version 4.1 as part of the

Phonetic Extensions Phonetic Extensions is a Unicode block containing phonetic characters used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Old Irish phonetic notation, the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and American dictionaries, and Americanist and Russianist phonetic notat ...

block because of its use in Irish linguistics as a phonetic character for . According to

Michael Everson Michael Everson (born January 1963) is an American and Irish linguistics, linguist, Character encoding, script encoder, typesetting, typesetter, type designer and Publishing, publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which ...

, in the 2006 Unicode proposal for these characters: Unicode 5.1 (2008) added a capital G (Ᵹ) and both capital and lowercase letters D, F, R, S, T, besides "turned insular G", on the basis that Edward Lhuyd used these letters in his 1707 work as a scientific orthography for Cornish. * Ꝺ ꝺ Insular D (U+A779, U+A77A) * ◌ᷘ Combining Small Insular D (U+1DD8) (Used for

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

) * Ꝼ ꝼ Insular F (U+A77B, U+A77C) * Ᵹ ᵹ Insular G (U+A77D, U+1D79) * Ꝿ ꝿ Turned insular G (U+A77E, U+A77F) * Ꞃ ꞃ Insular R (U+A782, U+A783) * Ꞅ ꞅ Insular S (U+A784, U+A785) * Ꞇ ꞇ Insular T (U+A786, U+A787) Unicode 14.0 (2021) added characters, including Insular letters, for the Ormulum: * Ꟑ ꟑ Closed Insular G (U+A7D0, U+A7D1) * ◌ᫌ Combining Insular G (U+1ACC) * ◌ᫍ Combining Insular R (U+1ACD) * ◌ᫎ Combining Insular T (U+1ACE)

Samples

Gallery

Image:Dublin City Hall information.JPG, Gaelic script used on an information plaque outside

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

, near

Dublin Castle Dublin Castle () is a major Government of Ireland, Irish government complex, conference centre, and tourist attraction. It is located off Dame Street in central Dublin. It is a former motte-and-bailey castle and was chosen for its position at ...

. Image:Gates of Irish College.JPG, Gaelic script on the gates of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. File:Mac grait grave.jpg, Gaelic script on a gravestone in

County Kerry County Kerry () is a Counties of Ireland, county on the southwest coast of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, within the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. It is bordered by two other countie ...

. File:Sign-Irish-English-PS01.jpg, Gaelic script on an Irish national monument. File:Annagassan_fingerpost.jpg, Old road sign, reading ''Áth na gCasán'' File:Irish_Coast_Guard_sign.jpg, Stencilled Gaelic type File:Irish script.gif , Poem

References

Sources

* Lynam, E. W. 1969. ''The Irish character in print: 1571–1923''. New York: Barnes & Noble. First printed as Oxford University Press offprint 1924 in ''Transactions of the Bibliographical Society'', 4th Series, Vol. IV, No. 4, March 1924.) * McGuinne, Dermot. ''Irish type design: A history of printing types in the Irish character''. Blackrock: Irish Academic Press.

External links

* Brendan Leen'
Four centuries of printing in the Irish character
Cregan Library, St Patrick's College, Drumcondra * Vincent Morley'
An Cló Gaelach
(in Irish) * Mícheál Ó Searcóid'
The Irish Alphabet
an article on the origin, history and present-day usage of the Irish typeface, 1990 * Mathew D. Staunton'
Trojan Horses and Friendly Faces: Irish Gaelic Typography as Propaganda

La revue LISA
'. . Vol. III; n°1. 2005.

(in Irish), a Gaelic modern minuscule font in Unicode for non-commercial use.

(in Irish), a Gaelic type font in Unicode for non-commercial use.
Gadelica
a Gaelic traditional minuscule font in Unicode.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaelic Type Irish language Latin-script typefaces