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)