To non-Gaelic speakers, the pronunciation of Gaelic can seem mysterious and unpredictable. This is often due to the fact that most consonants in Gaelic can be ‘lenited’ to the extent that their sound changes. In older Gaelic orthography, this was indicated by a dot over the consonant; nowadays a ‘h’ after the consonant is used. Thus bh can become w or v, dh sounds like y, ph is f, and ch, gh, sh and th can become subtle variations of guttural puffs of air or practically silent.

​

In addition, Gaelic is a much more inflected language than English, where words change their pronunciation and spelling to indicate different cases. For example, 'Seán's book' is leabhair Sheáin, where Sheáin means 'of Seán'.

Here are some of the names that occur in our story: