If you’re completely new to learning to speak the Irish language, it might seem that you’ll need to know thousands of words before making sense of the language. This depends on where you are on your language journey.
The number of Irish (Gaelic) words you actually need to learn is actually quite small. I’m not saying that learning to speak Irish is as simple as memorizing a list of Irish words, far from it! But if you can become familiar with a small list of core words, you’ll be laying a foundation for your language learning.
Here are the most common Irish words in Bitesize Irish Gaelic audio recordings
How many of those words do you recognize? Please leave a reply below. Were you surprised by the words that showed up here from our on-line Irish lessons?
Even if you’re just starting to learn Irish words and their pronunciation, it’s useful to see what the most common words are.
Here are certainly some important ones: Tá, go, maith, mé, sé, Ní, nach, tú le, bhfuil, liom, anseo… These words usually don’t make sense on their own. They belong to phrases and expressions. If you have taken our free Irish for Beginners mini-series, you’ll have encountered many of these words in your first conversation lessons.
But what if I don’t know these words?
We all start somewhere! If you’re completely new here, read our resource How to learn Irish?.
If you’re a Bitesize Irish Gaelic member, go to your 100+ lessons and continue listening to the several thousand of audio recordings. (If you’re not a member, you can sign up if you like).
Finally, if the pronunciation of these written Irish words seems alien to you, it’s that you don’t have the pronunciation rules yet. If you know the rules, you can even figure out the pronunciation of Irish words you have never before seen. See our Pronunciation Cheat Sheets to help you on this (but make sure you’re serious about learning before investing in them).
What new Irish word have you learned this week? Leave a reply below with that, or any questions you have.
10 thoughts on “How many of these Irish words do you know?”
Bhí a fhios agam ar fad iad.
Maith thú 🙂
Tá siad go léir agam 🙂
Bullaí fir!
I know most of them, but not all. Now to work on that! I think it’s great that “Eoin” shows up, too. 🙂
Ya, how inventive of us, huh?
Which ‘style’ of Irish are you using? From what area of Ireland?
Hi Dusty, a chara. In the lessons, we’ve tried to keep the written text standardized where possible, as I mention a litte on another post: http://www.bitesizeirishgaelic.com/blog/pronounce-agus-tu-fein/
I’m from Munster (towards the south of ireland), so that does influence the recordings you hear.
A Eoin, a chara,
Conas a rinne tú an ‘graphic’ sin?
Bheadh sé go deas ar T-léine.
Le gach dea-ghuí,
Gearóid
Rinne mé é le Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/
Tuairim mhaith faoin t-léine 🙂