This is the Unofficial English Translation of the Official Standard of the Irish Language.
There is no official English language version of An Caighdeán Oifigiúil 2017 (The Official Standard) which is quite frustrating to learners who wish to reference it.
For the sake of saving some time, (to begin) we will leave the opening pages untranslated and so will begin on page 29, An tAlt (The Article). Each link will lead to another post. As The Caighdeán is quite long, this will be a work in progress and each chapter will be linked once they have been completed.
The Irish Statute Book (eISB) notes that: “‘An Caighdeán Oifigiúil’ means the official standard of the Irish language, prepared by the Houses of the Oireachtas and published under Government copyright, to be used in primary and secondary legislation and as the guide for writing in the Irish language”.
It is not a dialect.
The original is available at the following website as of 24th August 2025. It contains Irish Public Sector Information licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
The Houses of the Oireachtas Copyright and Re-use Policy can be found here.
“The Houses of the Oireachtas comply with the European Communities (Re-use of Public Sector Information) Regulations 2005 to 2015, and encourage the commercial and non-commercial re-use of the information we produce. Re-use includes copying, issuing copies to the public, publishing, broadcasting and translating into other languages, as well as research and study. You have permission to re-use this copyright information free of charge, and in any format. The permission is subject to conditions as set out in our Oireachtas re-use licences”.
In summary, we acknowledge: This website contains material translated from the Gramadach na Gaeilge, An Caighdeán Oifigiúil 2017, published by the Houses of the Oireachtas.
The Oireachtas (Public Sector Information – Open Data) License can be found here.
Translation of the Preface to the Caighdéan
Chapters
Caibidil 1 An tAlt 1 (Chapter 1 – The Article)
Caibidil 2 An tAinmfhocal (Chapter 2 – The Noun)
Caibidil 3 Ainmfhocail chinnte agus éiginnte, giorrúcháin agus foirm an ainmnigh in ionad an ghinidigh (Chapter 3 – Definite and Indefinite Nouns, Abbreviations and the Nominative Form in place of the Genitive)
Caibidil 4 An Aidiacht (Chapter 4 – Adjectives)
Caibidil 5 An Briathar (Chapter 5 – The Verb)
Caibidil 6 An Dobhriathar (Chapter 6 – The Adverb)
Caibidil 7 An Chopail (Chapter 7 – The Copula)
Caibidil 8 An Forainmneach (Chapter 8 – Pronouns)
Caibidil 9 An Uimhir (Chapter 9 – Numbers)
Caibidil 10 An Forainmneach (Chapter 10 – Initial Mutations)
Caibidil 11 An Clásal Coibhneasta (Chapter 11 – Relative Clauses)