The Irish manual alphabet is the
manual alphabet
Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often been used in deaf ...
used in
Irish Sign Language
Irish Sign Language (ISL, ) is the sign language of Ireland, used primarily in the Republic of Ireland. It is also used in Northern Ireland, alongside British Sign Language (BSL). Irish Sign Language is more closely related to French Sign Langu ...
. Compared with other manual alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, it has unusual forms for the letters G, K, L, P, and Q.
Like most European sign languages, Irish Sign Language uses a one-handed fingerspelling system.
Within ISL, fingerspelling via the manual alphabet is common even among fluent ISL signers, though usage rates vary by age and gender. Two major uses are to signal contrastive code-switching (e.g., for emphasis or clarification), and to fill lexical gaps (words/concepts for which there is not an established or known ISL sign).
[
image:ISL a.jpg, A
image:ISL b.jpg, B
image:ISL c.jpg, C
image:ISL d.jpg, D
image:ISL e.jpg, E
image:ISL f.jpg, F
image:ISL g.jpg, G
image:ISL h.jpg, H
image:ISL i.jpg, I
image:ISL j.jpg, J
image:ISL k.jpg, K
image:ISL l.jpg, L
image:ISL m.jpg, M
image:ISL n.jpg, N
image:ISL o.jpg, O
image:ISL p.jpg, P
image:ISL q.jpg, Q
image:ISL r.jpg, R
image:ISL s.jpg, S
image:ISL t.jpg, T
image:ISL u.jpg, U
image:ISL v.jpg, V
image:ISL w.jpg, W
image:ISL x.jpg, X
image:ISL y.jpg, Y
image:ISL z.jpg, Z
]
See also
* Fingerspelling
Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letter (alphabet), letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often ...
References
{{sign language navigation
Manual alphabet
Latin-script representations