/ Stories
Common Irish Words You Must Learn
The words that keep coming back — and a sensible order to learn them in.
Part 1 of a three-part beginner series.
You do not need thousands of words to start reading and speaking Irish. A few dozen do most of the work. The little words — an, agus, go — appear in almost every sentence you will ever meet, and a small set of verbs and nouns will carry you through your first conversations.
Below are the words worth knowing first, in five groups: the grammatical glue, words for movement and place, describing words, the verbs you meet earliest, and the everyday nouns. Read them top to bottom, or jump to the group you need.
New to the sounds? Start with the Irish alphabet, where every letter is playable. Pronunciation for individual words is in our reference dictionary.
1. The Little Words That Hold Sentences Together
These are the most frequent words in the language, and the ones learners skip past. Don't. Irish leans on them harder than English does: they carry the grammar that English puts in word order.
| Irish | What it does |
|---|---|
| an | the (one thing) |
| na | the (more than one) |
| agus | and |
| ag | at — and, with bí, how you say you have something |
| ar | on |
| go | to, that — also turns an adjective into an adverb (go maith = well) |
| ní | not — puts a verb in the negative |
| níl | is not, am not |
| bhfuil | the form of bí you see in questions: An bhfuil tú…? |
| is | the "is" of identity: Is mise Séan (I am Seán) |
| mé | I, me |
| sé | he, it |
| sí | she, it |
| siad | they |
| seo | this, here |
| a | his / her — which one depends on the next word |
| mo | my |
| le | with, to |
| leis | with him, with it |
| liom | with me |
A few of these are really the same verb wearing different hats. tá, níl and bhfuil all belong to bí (to be): a statement uses tá, a negative uses níl, and a question uses bhfuil. Learn them as a set and the verb stops being confusing.
They are also the words most likely to be swallowed in fast speech — agus becomes a short "is", an or a can shrink to a single vowel. Hearing them is a listening skill in itself.
2. Movement and Place
Eight words that let you talk about going, coming and being somewhere. They show up constantly in questions and instructions.
| Irish | Meaning |
|---|---|
| isteach | in, inwards |
| amach | out, outwards |
| suas | up |
| síos | down |
| anseo | here |
| ansin | there |
| arís | again |
| abhaile | home, homewards |
Note that several of these carry a sense of direction rather than a fixed position: abhaile is not just "home" as a place but the movement of going there — ag dul abhaile, going home.
3. Describing Words
Seven adjectives that will describe half of what you want to say today. In Irish, the adjective follows the noun: teach mór is a big house, word for word "house big".
| Irish | Meaning |
|---|---|
| maith | good |
| mór | big |
| beag | small |
| dearg | red |
| bán | white |
| sásta | happy, satisfied |
| bocht | poor |
Adjectives change too: they soften after a feminine noun, and take an ending in the plural. That is why a dictionary will sometimes show you two versions of the same word — learn the basic form first and let the rest come later.
4. The Verbs You'll Meet First
Here is something worth knowing about this list: almost every verb in it is in the past tense. That is not an accident. Irish conversation and storytelling are full of what already happened, and the past tense of a regular verb is the simplest form in the language.
| Irish | Meaning |
|---|---|
| tá | is, are (present) |
| bhí | was, were (past) |
| rith | ran |
| fuair | got, received |
| chonaic | saw |
| tháinig | came |
| léim | jumped |
| thosaigh | started, began |
| rinne | did, made |
| d'ith | ate |
| d'oscail | opened |
| chaith | spent, wore, threw |
| chuir | put, sent |
| dúirt | said |
| cheannaigh | bought |
Bí (to be) is the exception, and the one you cannot live without: tá for now, bhí for then. Everything else in the table is a past-tense form you will meet in your first week of reading.
Where does a verb go in an Irish sentence? First — before the person doing it. That is the subject of the next article in this series.
5. The Everyday Nouns
Fifteen nouns that cover common things at home, school and in the street.
| Irish | Meaning |
|---|---|
| fear | man |
| cailín | girl |
| buachaill | boy |
| scoil | school |
| teach | house |
| bosca | box |
| leabhar | book |
| doras | door |
| bord | table |
| madra | dog |
| capall | horse |
| gairdín | garden |
| cat | cat |
| siopa | shop |
| cistin | kitchen |
Irish nouns come in two genders, masculine and feminine, and the gender decides which form "the" takes and whether the word picks up an h after it. The dictionary always tells you which one a noun is.
How to Learn Them
- Learn words inside sentences. Tá leabhar agam (I have a book) teaches you three words, the verb, and how Irish says "have" — all at once.
- Pair the little words with a verb. níl only makes sense as "not tá". Learn them glued together.
- Say them out loud. A word you have only read stays on the page. Saying them out loud will build important pathways in your brain to support your language learning journey.
Next in the series: Part 2 — Understanding Irish: Sentence Structure →
TREORAí
Turn this list into speech
TREORAí is specially built to support your Irish Gaeilge language learning journey. Look any word up in the reference dictionary, work through courses that introduce vocabulary in order, and then take it into a real conversation with an AI companion that answers in Irish and helps you when you get stuck.
A word list is a start. Saying the words to somebody is what makes them stick.