Hello, I am doing a report on Ireland and I need help. I did my report so now I have to follow up with the questions. I was looking for a translation for the color black. And is there a different gaelic alphabet or is the american one the same.

Black - Dubh.

Irish uses the latin alphabet, as does English.

However, the vowels can be accented áóúíé
And some letters are not used in Irish.

Irish uses
abcdefghilmnoprstu

v and j are sometimes used in loan words from English and other languages.

The first books in Irish, as was the case for all languages, used fonts which resembled handwriting. This is called Seanchló or Cló Gaelach, and you can see examples at http://www.fainne.org/gaelchlo

Information in Irish here http://www.connect.ie/users/morley/cloanna/

But this is still the latin alphabet, even if some letters look unfamiliar.

Also, consonants in Irish are often softened by adding a "h" after them. The monks used to save parchment by writing the h above the letter, which over the years became a dot. Books printed up to the 1960's used this convention too.

(Message edited by aonghus on November 04, 2004)

(Message edited by aonghus on November 04, 2004)

While the adjective "dubh" does mean black; when you referring to a black person, you use a different word for "black": "gorm".

"person" = "duine"

a black person = duine gorm

Everywhere else though, "black" = "dubh".

On a side note: "gorm", when not used to refer to a person's skin colour, means "blue".

"bag" = "mála"

a blue bag = mála gorm

check the yamada language center fonts page...irish doesn't use a different alphabet, but until the present age of printing did use a font derived from medieval latin script. it's called seanchló, or old style. the main differences that confuse english readers are the letters d, which people think is an o, t, which people think is a c, g, which people think is an s, s, which people think is an r, and r, the likes of which they have never seen. in all, tho, i think it looks attractive and given the differences in pronounciation between english and irish letters and letter combinations, it is easier to learn from because it is divorced in the brain from the english that irish words sometimes look like.