typelesson

PLAY WITH PURPOSE · Gaeilge

Irish typing games

Make repetition feel lighter. Three short games, all played in Irish. Every 4 clean hits raises the level, and it never drops back. Scores are kept in this browser; signed in, a new personal best also goes to the leaderboard.

GAME 01

Drift

Clear the sky

Words fall in gently and pick up speed. Type one, press space, watch it burst.

GAME 02

Orbit

Hold the ring

Characters circle the core. Strike each one before its arc runs out.

GAME 03

Signal

Beat the pulse

One word, one shrinking window. Keep the chain alive as the pulse quickens.

Practising Irish with games

Irish uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 5 characters beyond a-z — á, í, é, ó, ú.

If you already touch type English, most of Irish transfers on the first session. What does not transfer is the 5 characters this bank reaches for beyond a-z — á, í, é, ó and ú — and they are not decoration: leave them off and the word is misspelled. A large minority of words in this bank needs at least one.

Worth knowing before you start: these 87 words use 23 distinct characters, and the effort is not spread evenly across them. Ten of them do roughly 73% of the work, so the first week of practice buys far more than the tenth will. That is the normal shape of it, not a sign of a plateau.

The three games differ in what they pressure. One drops words you must finish before they land, one puts characters on a moving orbit, and one hands you a clock that shrinks every time you succeed. All three run on 87 common Irish words, and all three level up every four clean hits and never level down.

The temptation in Irish is to skip the accents while drilling and add them later. It does not work — the accent is part of the motion, and a hand that has practised the word without it has practised a different word. Drill them from the start, awkward as the first week is.

Writing system
Latin
Keyboard layout
Latin QWERTY family
Direction
left to right
Practice words
87
Distinct characters
23
Average word
4.7 units

Characters beyond a-z in the Irish practice words

  1. á13
  2. í8
  3. é7
  4. ó5
  5. ú1

Counted across the 87 practice words. 38% of them need at least one.

agus an na ar is do le go ach tá níl mór
The 12 commonest words in Irish — where the drills begin.

The fada, and the script Irish used to use

Modern Irish is written in the Latin alphabet with one diacritic, the síneadh fada — a long accent over a, e, i, o or u. It marks vowel length and changes meaning: seán and sean are different words, and getting it wrong in a name is noticed.

Until the mid-twentieth century Irish was commonly printed in the Gaelic script, an insular typeface with distinct letterforms and a dot above certain consonants to mark lenitation. The dot was replaced by a following h during the same reform that adopted Roman type, which is why modern Irish has so many h's in it.

The Irish keyboard is a UK layout; the fada is produced with AltGr and the vowel, or with a dead key, depending on the system.

Questions about typing in Irish

Do I need an Irish keyboard?

No. The characters beyond a-z in these practice words — á, í, é, ó and ú — are reachable on the keyboard you already own once the right layout is selected in your operating system's settings. Some layouts give them their own keys, others build them from a modifier; either way the hardware is unchanged.

Which Irish keyboard layout do these games use?

Latin QWERTY family, plus the 5 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 87 practice words between them use 23 of those 31, so 8 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.

What will I actually be typing in Irish?

87 of the most common words in Irish, drawn at random. They use 23 distinct characters between them and average 4.7 written units each, with the longest running to about 9. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.

Are game scores saved?

On this device, always. On the leaderboard, only if you have signed in and chosen a name — and a leaderboard name is never your email address.

Which game should I start with?

Whichever appeals — they pressure different things. Falling words reward finishing what you started; the orbit rewards picking a target and committing; the shrinking timer rewards not hesitating. If you are trying to fix hesitation specifically, the third one is the unpleasant and effective choice.

Do games help, or are they just a break?

Both, honestly. They will not teach you a key you have never drilled, and they are very good at exposing which keys you only think you know — under time pressure the shaky ones fail first. Treat them as a diagnostic and the lessons as the fix.

Is Irish hard to type?

Only slightly, if you already touch type. 38% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 5 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.

Do I need an account, and is it free?

No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.

Also in Irish: lessons and the speed test.

Other languages written in Latin: Italian, Javanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Malay. Or browse all 86 by writing system.

Further reading