A few days ago, I was watching a TG4 news clip on Twitter, and the following are some quotes from the reporter in question:

"ar dhá chéad 's a seachtó [a] seacht leanbh agus déagóir"
"do daichead a sé leanbh"
"triocha [a] cúig moladh"

I was taken aback by his method of counting because it sounded like something a learner who didn't understand Irish very well would do. And yet I'm fairly sure the reporter was a native Irish speaker from west Kerry.

However, yesterday, i was perusing the Caighdeán Oigigiúil (for the first time) and - to my surprise- it gives two methods of counting: An Córas Seanbhunaithe and An Córas Simplithe.

The Córas Seanbhunaithe is what we learned going to school e.g. dhá chapall mhóra is daichead. If you go over 100, the word order changes in a way that makes it more similar to English e.g. dhá chéad ochtó is dhá chat fhiáine. (I don't hink we ever actually learned how to count above 100 in school for some reason. )

However the Córas Simplithe simply uses the form of the "bunuimhreacha" e.g. daichead a dó capall mór, dhá chéad ochtó a dó cat fiáin. I had no idea that this was allowable. I'm guessing that it was invented in modern times. I suppose it would be more practical when using decimal numbers e.g. 20.67 litres.

Add to this the base 20 counting system that is used in the Gaeltacht and it means that that are now three competing counting systems in the Irish language. Example for base 20 system: ceithre chapall déag is trí fichid (74 horses). I'm not sure how this would work over 100.

Apparently the Córas Seanbhunaithe had died out in the spoken langauage and was only revived in the late 19th century, as part of the Irish language revival.

Well, the original method was:
a seachtdéag is fiche

For reasons of simplicity and arithmetic, the archaic words for thirty etc were brought back:

a seacht is tríochaid (or triochaid, /tr'uxid'/)

Then the younger speakers go for the English word order tout court:

tríocha(id) a seacht

At the end of Chapter 1 of Ua Laoghaire's Mo Sgéal Féin, he writes:



It seems dates were regarded as a little different, and fiddly to put into Irish as a rule. Also, dates were often read in English by those who could speak English, even in the middle of an Irish sentence (I think I got this information from Donchadh Ó Céileachair's work on his father's Sgéal mo Bheatha).

While triochaid, daichead and caogaid were found in the Irish of Ua Laoghaire, Ó Céileachair, Ó Loingsigh, etc, seasca, seachtó, ochtó and nócha were not. They should be trí fichid, deich is trí fichid, cheithre fichid, deich is cheithre fichid.

The fact that someone is from the Kerry Gaeltacht does NOT mean that they speak the old dialect.

In fact, there was no such thing in traditional Irish as "dhá chéad ochtó is dhá chat fhiáine" because you had to deal with the hundreds separately: dhá chéad cat agus dhá chat fhiaine is cheithre fichid or (and this is better) dhá chéad agus a dó is cheithre fichid de chataibh.

This point was made by Peadar Ua Laoghaire:



And no, the Córas Sean-bhunaithe had not died out in native speech in the 19th century. It was precisely what Ua Laoghaire spoke. In fact words like caoga, seasca, seachtó had died out, although they existed in the Middle Ages.

"Million" is interesting.
There was originally no such word, although I believe Ua Laoghaire relented in his later books and used milliún.

The original words was: míle míle. 1m people - míle míle duine.

5m people: caogaid céad míle duine.

One of Ua Laoghaire's works has these examples:


Note the word for "one billion": deich céad míle míle. [Note: deich céad, not deich gcéad, as the final 'h' of deich devoices the following g - this is normally found as deich céad in Cork Irish literature.]

Another thing - you may know this - I'm just throwing out interesting points: use of the enumerative particle "a". Ua Laoghaire wrote:



I quote this because some people are unsure if it is "fiche" or "a fiche". Also "naid" does not take the enumerative partice. It is not *a naid.

Naid is used in telephone numbers and long lists of numbers, but not in arithmetic.

Two minus two is zero (2-2=0) in Irish is: a dó óna dó, sin neamhní. You can't say "sin naid".