Chapter 3 of 17 · Explore the Irish path
The script · Chapter 3 of 17
Read your first eight Irish words
Two small tables carry every sound you need, and then you read eight real words: dog, woman, house, water, night, fox and more. These words come back in both stories at the end.
≈ 4 min of reading · Practise at your own pace
What’s in this chapter
- The two tables below carry every sound the eight words need, and nothing else yet.
- A consonant plus h is one softened sound: ch is the rasp in “loch”, never the ch of “church”.
- s and t change completely beside e or i: s becomes “sh”, t becomes “tch”.
- These eight words come back all the way to the two closing stories.
No alphabet yet. Everything the next eight words need is in these two tables. Work through a word left to right, say it, then reveal. Each hint supplies the one thing the tables do not.
Only the consonant sounds these words need
Try each sound on its own before you meet it inside a word.
| Letter | Sound to try |
|---|---|
| b | b — but a slender b carries a “y” into the vowel |
| c | always k, never s. There is no soft c in Irish at all |
| d | d beside a, o, u — closer to the j in jam beside e, i |
| g | always the hard g of got, never the g of gem |
| n | n; a double nn is still one n |
| r | a tapped r, nearer to Spanish than to English |
| s | s as in sun beside a, o, u — but sh as in ship beside e, i |
| t | t as in top beside a, o, u — but “tch” as in church beside e, i |
| ch | never “ch” as in church. Beside a, o, u it is the rasp in “loch”; beside e, i it is a strong h |
| -e | at the end of a word, a weak “uh” |
A consonant with an h after it is one softened sound, never two. Nine such pairs exist; ch is the one these words need. For the rasp: start to say k, then stop just short of closing and let the breath rasp through. You will soon meet gh and dh — the same rasp with the voice switched on, a gargle rather than a hiss.
The vowel groups these words need
A vowel group is two vowels making one sound. Usually only one of them is said.
| Group | Sound |
|---|---|
| ea | usually a as in cat, with the e a label only — but after a slender b it can pull a “y” in with it |
| ui | i as in sit; the u is a label |
| io | i as in sit — but u before nn; either way the o is a label |
| oí | ee — where a fada appears inside a vowel group, that is the vowel you say |
Eight words for the two stories
Use the tables and the hint. Try the word aloud, then reveal and say the whole thing.
- madra
Broad the whole way through, and the final a is “uh”.
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madraMOD-ruh “dog” - bean
The e is a label. Four letters, three sounds.
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beanban “woman” - beag
A slender b carries a “y” into the vowel.
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beagbyohg “small” - teach
The e labels the t, so the t is “tch”; then the rasp.
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teachtchakh “house” - uisce
The u is a label for the s. The c is k, and the final e is “uh”.
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uisceISH-kuh “water” - oíche
oí is “ee”. Here the ch is a light breath rather than the rasp.
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oícheEE-huh “night” - sionnach
The i makes the s slender. Then io before nn, then the rasp.
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sionnachSHUN-ukh “fox” - crann
c is always k, and nn is a single n.
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crannkran “tree”