Helping Your Child Learn Their Irish Spellings
The weekly Irish spelling list can be a struggle at home, especially if your own Irish is rusty. Here is how Irish classrooms teach spellings, and a free tool that reads every word aloud and tests your child the same way.
Every Monday the list comes home. Ten words, maybe a sentence or two at the bottom, and a test on Friday. If you went to school in Ireland you probably remember the routine. If your own Irish has faded since then, helping with it can feel harder than it should.
We've built a free page on Love Irish to make that week easier. It's called Litriú, the Irish word for spelling, and it takes your child's actual list from school and helps them learn it the way their teacher already does.
Why Irish spellings catch children out
Irish spelling is more regular than English once you know the rules, but children meet the words long before they meet the rules. The same few things trip them up again and again.
The fada. Clár and clar are not the same word, and a missing fada is marked wrong in class. It's the most common mistake by a long way.
Letters you don't hear. Samhradh (summer) has an mh and a dh that don't sound the way an English speaker expects, so children leave them out or put them in the wrong place.
Clusters of vowels. Irish follows the rule caol le caol, leathan le leathan: a consonant has matching vowels on both sides. That's why a word like eolaíocht (science) looks so crowded at first.
Capitals and full stops. When there's a sentence on the list, the teacher expects the capital letter at the start and the full stop at the end.
None of this is hard once it has been practised a few times. What matters is practising the right way.
Féach, Abair, Clúdaigh, Scríobh, Seiceáil
Many Irish schools teach spellings with the same five steps, sometimes on a poster on the classroom wall:
- Féach (look) at the word carefully, letter by letter.
- Abair (say) it out loud.
- Clúdaigh (cover) it.
- Scríobh (write) it from memory.
- Seiceáil (check) it against the real spelling.
It works because the child has to pull the word out of their own memory instead of copying it. The step that's hardest at home is the second one. If you're not sure how a word is said, it's hard to help them say it.
How Litriú helps
On the Litriú page you type in this week's list, or paste the whole thing in one go. It understands the way lists usually come home, so a line like "1. clár ama - timetable" goes straight in with the Irish and the English in the right places. Tap 🔊 beside any word to hear it read aloud in Irish.
Then your child works through the list one word at a time. The word appears with its meaning and is read aloud, so they can look at it and say it along with the voice. They cover it and write it from memory. The check shows any wrong letter or missing fada in red, so they can see exactly where it went wrong, not just that it did.
When they're ready there's a spelling test. Each word is read out the way the teacher would, with the English as a hint, and the test is marked at the end. A button then lets them practise only the words they missed.
A missing capital or full stop still counts as right, with a gentle reminder. A missing fada counts as a mistake, because that's how it's marked in school.
Tips for the week
Little and often. Five minutes a day from Monday does more than half an hour on Thursday night.
Let the voice do the pronunciation. You don't need good Irish to help. Your part is keeping them going and cheering the right answers.
Do the test twice. The first go shows which words need work. The second, a day later, shows whether they've stuck.
Share the list. "Share this list" gives you a link. Send it to the tablet your child uses, to a grandparent, or to the class WhatsApp group, and the same list opens for whoever taps it.
The list is kept on your own device, your child's answers never leave it, and you don't need an account.
Try it with a real list
The page opens with a sample list of first-year spellings for going back to school: clár ama, meánscoil, eolaíocht, Gaeilge, rialacha and corpoideachas, with two sentences at the end, Táim ar ais ar scoil anois and Bhí samhradh iontach agam. Have a go yourself first, then swap in your own child's list.
Open Litriú and start practising
Go n-éirí leis! Good luck with Friday's test.