Irish Words & Grammar
Irish Words & Grammar is Rosmerta Publishing’s free, growing reference to the living Irish language (Gaeilge): its sounds, spellings, grammar, dialects, names, and vocabulary, with every entry traced to a named source. It is built to be used, whether you are learning Irish, writing in it, or just looking a word up.
Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla cliste.
Better broken Irish than clever English.
What this is
Irish Words & Grammar (Leabhar na Gaeilge) is Rosmerta Publishing’s free, sourced reference to the Irish language. Our editors consult it before publishing a glossary, a pronunciation guide, an Irish-language children’s book, or any volume in the Irish Culture Project. It brings together Irish spellings, mutations, fada placement, dialect tags, and the mythological vocabulary that runs through the medieval texts.
Choose a section below. Each one opens its own page so you can read it without the others crowding the screen.
What is new
34,000+ Irish words. Three-quarters backed by open-data sources (Wiktionary, gaelspell, Tatoeba, eDIL), each with a citation chip you can click to verify.
The translator works in both directions and handles the most common Irish idioms (need, like, love, prefer, in, from). Every translated word carries a confidence pip. See the Bibliography for sources.
New: Words English Can’t Say. 35 curated Irish words — dúchas, meas, seanchaí, geasa, uaigneas, craic — each with a paragraph on what the word actually does.
Where to go next
Every source behind these pages is listed in the bibliography, with its licence. Manx is the second language we have taken on: see Manx Words & Grammar. For how the two fit into the wider family, and why we do this at all, see The Celtic Languages.