Gaelic type
| Gaelic script |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Type | |
| Languages | Irish |
|
Time period
|
1571 – |
|
Parent systems
|
Latin script
|
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| ISO 15924 | Latg, 216 |
Gaelic type (sometimes called Irish character, Irish type, or Gaelic script) is a family of insular typefaces devised for printing Irish. It was widely used from the 16th until the mid-20th centuries but is today rarely used. Sometimes all Gaelic typefaces are called Celtic or uncial, though most Gaelic types are not uncials. The "Anglo-Saxon" types of the 17th century are included in this category because both the Anglo-Saxon types and the Gaelic/Irish types derive from the Insular manuscript hand.
The terms Gaelic type, Gaelic script, and Irish character translate the Irish phrase cló Gaelach (pronounced [kɫ̪oː ˈɡˠeːɫ̪əx]). In Ireland the term cló Gaelach is used in opposition to the term cló Rómhánach 'Roman type'.
Besides the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, Gaelic typefaces must include all vowels with acute accents ⟨Áá Éé Íí Óó Úú⟩ as well as a set of consonants with dot above ⟨Ḃḃ Ċċ Ḋḋ Ḟḟ Ġġ Ṁṁ Ṗṗ Ṡṡ Ṫṫ⟩, and the Tironian sign et ⟨⁊⟩, used for agus 'and' in Irish.
Gaelic typefaces also often include insular forms: ⟨ꞃ ꞅ⟩ of the letters ⟨r⟩ and ⟨s⟩, and some of the typefaces contain a number of ligatures used in earlier Gaelic typography and deriving from the manuscript tradition. Lower-case ⟨i⟩ is drawn without a dot (though it is not the Turkish dotless ⟨ı⟩), and the letters ⟨d f g t⟩ have insular shapes ⟨ꝺ ꝼ ᵹ ꞇ⟩.
Many modern Gaelic typefaces include Gaelic letterforms for the letters ⟨j k q v w x y z⟩, and typically provide support for at least the vowels of the other Celtic languages. They also distinguish between ⟨&⟩ and ⟨⁊⟩ (as did traditional typography), though some modern fonts replace the ampersand with the Tironian note ostensibly because both mean 'and'.
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