NAME

       irish - flag format for Irish Ispell dictionaries

DESCRIPTION

       Irish  dictionaries  for  Ispell(1) supports 3 prefix and 14 suffix flags.  For a detailed description of
       how Ispell handles flags and capitalization, see Ispell(4).  This manual page only describes flags usable
       in dictionaries built using the gaeilge.aff affix file.

       The definitive meanings of the affixes is given in the file /usr/lib/ispell/gaeilge.aff but some  of  the
       reasoning and notes are given here.

       Irish  has an unusual (unique?) capitalization rule, which needs special handling.  Prefixes for eclipsis
       are not capitalized., e.g.  an tEarrach.  Ispell(5) assumes that in  an  uncapitalized  word,  the  first
       letter may be capitalized, so Earrach would be incorrectly prefixed and capitalized as Tearrach.

       The  file irish-prefixes.pl is a perl(1) script to preprocess the wordlist, and add 'by hand' the correct
       capitalization.  It will turn
            Earrach/P
       into
            Earrach
            tEarrach
       etc. It strips off the E and P flags used for eclipsis and leaves any other flags intact. The word should
       be Capitalized in the the word list; if the uncapitalized version is left in the word list with the flag,
       it will generate incorrect words, so enter the uncapitalized and capitalized versions seperately.

       One 'ordinary' prefix is handled by Ispell, H is used for aspiration of nouns, etc.  (Verbs  are  handled
       separately).

       Twelve  suffixes  are  used  for  handling  regular verbs. We use three suffixes each per conguation: one
       listing all suffixes available to both aspirated and unaspirated forms, one listing aspirated forms only,
       and one for unaspirated forms. So, for the verb mol for example, we have in the words list
            mol/BC
            mhol/BD
       so the 'B' set of endings apply to both forms, the 'C' set to unaspirated  only,  and  'D'  to  aspirated
       only. This pattern is repeated for all four conjugations.

       Irregular verbs just appear in the list in toto.

       Two  other  suffixes  are  currently  defined,  ,  'O'   for  Caolú  (attenuation),  and  'Q'for  Leathnú
       (broadening).

BUGS

       The dictionary is very small, and  pretty  incomplete.  Any  help  would  be  appreciated.   Please  mail
       additions and corrections to mckinstry@computer.org

SEE ALSO

       Ispell(1), Ispell(5), english(5)

                                                   2002-04-11                                           IRISH(5)