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Irish orthography has evolved over many centuries, since Old Irish was first written down in the Latin alphabet in about the 8th century AD. Prior to that, Primitive Irish was written in Ogham. Irish orthography is mainly based on etymological considerations, although a spelling reform in the mid-20th century simplified the relationship between spelling and pronunciation somewhat. There are three dialects of spoken Irish: Ulster (now predominantly in County Donegal), Connacht (Counties Mayo and Galway), and Munster (Counties Kerry, Cork, and Waterford). Some spelling conventions are common to all the dialects, while others vary from dialect to dialect. In addition, individual words may have in any given dialect a pronunciation that is not reflected by the spelling. (The pronunciations in this article reflect Connacht Irish pronunciation; other accents may differ.) ==Alphabet== The alphabet now used for writing the Irish language consists of the following letters of the Latin script, whether written in Roman hand or Gaelic hand: :a á b c d e é f g h i í l m n o ó p r s t u ú; The acute accent over the vowels is ignored for purposes of alphabetization. Modern loanwords also make use of j k q v w x y z. Of these, v is the most common. It occurs in a small number of words of native origin in the language such as ''vácarnach'', ''vác'' and ''vrác'', all of which are onomatopoeic. It also occurs in a number of alternative colloquial forms such as ''víog'' instead of ''bíog'' and ''vís'' instead of ''bís'' as cited in Niall Ó Dónaill's ''Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla'' (Irish–English Dictionary). It is also the only non-traditional letter used to write foreign names and words adapted to the Irish language (for example, Switzerland, or Helvetia, is Gaelicised as ''An Eilvéis''; Azerbaijan, in contrast, is written ''An Asarbaiseáin'' rather than *''An Azarbaijáin''). The letters j, q, w, x, y and z are used primarily in scientific terminology or direct, unaltered borrowings from English and other languages, although the phoneme does exist naturally in at least one dialect, that of West Muskerry, Co. Cork, as the eclipsis of s. k is the only letter not to be listed by Ó Dónaill. h, when not prefixed to an initial vowel as an aspirate in certain grammatical functions (or when not used as an indicator of lenition when Roman type is used), occurs primarily in loanwords as an initial consonant. The letters' names are spelt out thus: :á bé cé dé é eif gé héis í eil eim ein ó pé ear eas té ú :along with jé cá cú vé wae eacs yé zae. Tree names were once popularly used to name the letters. Tradition taught that they all derived from the names of the Ogham letters, though it is now known that only some of the earliest Ogham letters were named after trees. :ailm (pine), beith (birch), coll (hazel), dair (oak), edad/eabhadh (poplar), fern/fearn (alder), gath/gort (ivy), uath (hawthorn), idad/iodhadh (yew), luis (rowan), muin (vine), nin/nion (ash), onn (gorse), peith (dwarf alder), ruis (elder), sail (willow), tinne/teithne (holly), úr (heather) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Irish orthography」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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