This document summarises answers to some questions that are asked a lot on soc.culture.irish. (It also contains answers to questions that are not asked very frequently, but are thought to be useful anyway.) The answers come from a large number of people who have volunteered their time to write them at various times and places. This document was originally part of the soc.culture.celtic FAQ maintained by Craig Cockburn; Godfrey Nolan wrote most of the Irish part. This FAQ now covers soc.culture.irish, though a lot of the original answers are still present almost unchanged.
The answers here are not the answers to your questions. No article posted to a soc.* newsgroup can ever contain the answers if the questions are interesting. However, the answers should be as fair and accurate possible without being bland or burdensome. Please send comments and corrections to the the maintainer.
FAQ-related messages can be sent to sci_faq@yahoo.ie. The FAQ maintainer is not an expert on all things Irish, just the person who maintains the FAQ. If you have a question that is not answered in the FAQ, it is a much better idea to ask on soc.culture.irish than to ask the maintainer. The newsgroup is also the right place to discuss controversial questions.
Please let the maintainer know if you find any inaccuracies in the FAQ. The maintainer cannot check everything and some things are bound to get out of date. The FAQ is corrected and updated fairly regularly, usually at least every month. If you are reading a version that is more than a couple of months old, it may be worth getting the current version.
Irish accented characters in this document are represented using the ISO-8859-1 character set, which can be used to represent all western European languages. Also known as Latin-1, ISO-8859-1 is a de facto standard on Usenet. If you can't read the accented characters, ask for help (for example from your service provider). Slashes for accents are ugly and unnecessary; see Question 10 in part 3 of this FAQ for help on typing accented characters.
The following people have contributed to the health and well-being of the FAQ by sending comments/suggestions/updates/corrections/additions or posting interesting information to soc.culture.irish. Special thanks to Christian Murphy and Godfrey Nolan.
Markie Becker
Joe Bernstein
Bart Connolly
Jeanne Cruden
K.E. Dennis
Ivan Harrow
Aidan Hollinshead
Fiona C. Hyland
Sean V. Kelley
Brendan Lawlor
Paul Linehan
Richard Logue
Donal Mac Craith
Gearóid Mac Cuinneagáin
Richard Marsh
Steve McKinty
Áine McManus
Peter Muldoon
Christian Murphy
Timothy Murphy
Godfrey Nolan
Séamas Ó Brógáin
Robin Popplestone
Clive Staunton
Dave Westland
[ Obviously they do not all necessarily endorse the whole of this FAQ. ]
Thanks also to others who contributed but did not want to be named.
If anyone
has been overlooked, please let the FAQ maintainer know.