I like to use Anki for a lot of my vocabulary revision, in which I use the definite article when it comes to languages such as German and Spanish in order to memorise noun gender. I prefer this to simply noting gender because I get a feel for when the article sounds right in the nominative context, rather than explicitly thinking masculine/feminine in my head. So far I've had the fortune of not putting any kind of focused study into a language in which this doesn't necessarily serve to disambiguate things, but it seems like Irish & Gàidhlig are going to change that. Is there any simple word I can include with a noun to help distinguish between the genders (which doesn't go so far as marking masc. or fem. on the cards)? Maybe it isn't that simple... here's hoping! :P

To any of you familiar enough with Scottish Gaelic, advice for that too would be very much appreciated.

You could create cards which show the definite article followed by the noun in question - for example:

an fear (the man)

an bhean (the woman) - as this is feminine the first letter is lenited

but if you look at the on-line dictionaries, they also tend to include the genitive, plural and plural genitive, as these sometimes can look quite different from the singular form.

The advice which franc gave applies equally to Scottish Gaelic. You'll find essentially the same changes to initial consonants (or no change, as the case may be) in both languages when you add the definite article. Scottish Gaelic may use a different word to mean the same thing in some cases, but where it uses the same word (even with spelling differences) the grammatical gender is almost always the same as in Irish (perhaps it always is, but I'm not comfortable saying that categorically, since exceptions may exist of which I'm unaware).

_________________
I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

It's probably not what you're looking for but what about using different colours to distinguish the genders - black for masculine and green for feminine or maybe green and orange / blue and red, etc. or any two other colours, or perhaps different fonts?

I think that's a very good idea.
You can visualise the colour and remember it much better. I actually do that with Welsh nouns too- pink and blue .

And what colours might you be using for an tuiseal ginideach, an tuiseal tabharthach, an tuiseal cuspóireach and not forgetting an tuiseal gairmeach ?

Rather than using articles, it's better to add an adjective afterwards. The article does not unambiguously mark gender, because nouns beginning with an unlenitable consonant don't have their gender indicated. If you use simple adjectives (eg mór, beag) it should always be clear which gender the word is.
(Is there "N-blocking" of lenition of dentals in Irish like in ScG..?)

_________________
A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

Ahh! I didn't realise quite how the noun itself reflected its gender in the presence of the definite article! Shows how elementary my knowledge is so far! :P I've tried colour-coding in the past, but unfortunately I really don't respond well to colouring (I'm not a very visual person at all; I tend to learn via context and application above all else).

I need to learn a little more to work out how adjectives reflect the gender. (If it isn't obvious, I only finally made the first step to begin focused learning of the language this morning, so I'm coming from a pretty basic place right now! :P) It certainly sounds like it might do the trick for the few consonants which don't change. And from what I've read today, NiallBeag, it applies in Irish - the letters D, L, N, S, T prevent lenition of the following D, S, T (there was an acronym for the rule, but I've lost the link >_<). Is the rule similar/identical in Gàidhlig? (Hope I'm not talking keich here, haha!)

You might like to have a look at this -

http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/gram.htm

DeNTaLS, perhaps...?

_________________
A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.