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The traditional Irish alphabet carved in Gaelic type on a building in Dublin, with each type of diacritic (síneadh fada and ponc séimhithe) as well as the Tironian et. The traditional Irish alphabet (aibítir) consists of 18 letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u .
Irish first began to appear in writing in Ogham inscriptions between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. When St Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century, Irish writers began to write in Latin, and at the same time Irish literature written in the Latin alphabet began to appear.
The Gaelic script is known as An Cló Gaelach (Gaelic type) in Irish. It is also known as Irish character, Irish type, Gaelic type, Celtic script or the Uncial alphabet. It is now used mainly as a decorative script on road signs, street names, shop signs and elsewhere in Ireland.
Irish literature is literature written in the Irish, Latin, English and Scots (Ulster Scots) languages on the island of Ireland. The earliest recorded Irish writing dates from back in the 7th century and was produced by monks writing in both Latin and Early Irish, including religious texts, poetry and mythological tales.
Today people write and type Irish Gaelic with the standard Latin alphabet. The Irish alphabet uses 24 of the 26 letters of the English alphabet, as opposed to the original number of 18.
An Cló Gaelach (Gaelic type) is another name for the old Irish alphabet used specifically for texts in the Irish language. This beautiful ancient script can be found adorning oad signs, street names and shop signs across Ireland.
Occasionally, when people ask for “the Old Irish alphabet,” they’re referring to a truly ancient system of writing called Ogham (pronounced “OH-um”). Ogham is the closest thing to a truly “old” Irish alphabet.