| Gaelic script | |
| Type: | Alphabet |
| Time: | 1571 – |
| Languages: | Irish, Scottish Gaelic |
| Fam1: | Latin script |
| Fam2: | Insular script |
| Sample: | Gaelic-font-Gaelach.svg |
| Iso15924: | Latg |
| Direction: | Left-to-right |
Gaelic type (sometimes called Irish character, Irish type, or Gaelic script) is a family of Insular script typefaces devised for printing Classical Gaelic. It was widely used from the 16th century until the mid-18th century in Scotland and the mid-20th century in Ireland, but is now rarely used. Sometimes, all Gaelic typefaces are called Celtic or uncial although 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 Irish: cló Gaelach (in Irish pronounced as /ˌkl̪ˠoː ˈɡeːl̪ˠəx/). In Ireland, the term Irish: cló Gaelach is used in opposition to the term Irish: cló Rómhánach, Roman type.
The Scottish Gaelic term is Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic: corra-litir (in Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic pronounced as /ˌkʰɔrˠə ˈliʰtʲɪɾʲ/). Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic: [[Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair]]|italic=no (–1770) was one of the last Scottish writers with the ability to write in this script,[1] but his main work, Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic: Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich, was published in the Roman script.
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 Irish: 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'.
See main article: Insular script. The Irish uncial alphabet originated in medieval manuscripts as an "insular" variant of the Latin alphabet. The first Gaelic typeface was designed in 1571 for a catechism commissioned by Elizabeth I to help attempt to convert the Irish Catholic population to Anglicanism.
Typesetting in Gaelic script remained common in Ireland until the mid-20th century. Gaelic script is today used merely for decorative typesetting; for example, a number of traditional Irish newspapers still print their name in Gaelic script on the first page, and it is also popular for pub signs, greeting cards, and display advertising. Edward Lhuyd's grammar of the Cornish language used Gaelic-script consonants to indicate sounds like pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/.
In 1996 Irish: [[Raidió Teilifís Éireann]] (RTÉ)|italic=no created a new corporate logo. The logo consists of a modern take on the Gaelic type face. The R's counter is large with a short tail, the T is roman script while the E is curved but does not have a counter like a lower case E, and the letters also have slight serifs to them. TG4's original logo, under the brand Irish: TnaG, also used a modernization of the font, the use of the curved T and a sans-serif A in the word Irish: na. Other Irish companies that have used Gaelic script in their logos including the GAA, Irish: [[Telecom Éireann]]|italic=no and Irish: [[An Post]]|italic=no. The Irish: [[Garda Síochána]]|italic=no uses Gaelic Script on its official seal.
The GAA logo uses the script to incorporate both the English language GAA acronym and the Irish language Irish: CLG acronym (Irish: Cumann Lúthchleas Gael). The logo more strongly shows the more widely used acronym GAA but taking a closer look a C joins with an L and then to a G lying down.
Unicode treats the Gaelic script as a font variant of the Latin alphabet. A lowercase insular g (ᵹ) was added in version 4.1 as part of the Phonetic Extensions block because of its use in Irish linguistics as a phonetic character for pronounced as /link/.
According to Michael Everson, in the 2006 Unicode proposal for these characters:[2]
Unicode 5.1 (2008) added a capital G (Ᵹ) and both capital and lowercase letters D, F, R, S, T, besides "turned insular G", on the basis that Edward Lhuyd used these letters in his 1707 work Latin: [[Archæologia Britannica]] as a scientific orthography for Cornish.
Unicode 14.0 (2021) added characters, including Insular letters, for the Ormulum:[4]