So, you want to learn a Celtic language?

Whether you’re trying to connect with your family heritage, preparing for a trip, or just looking for a fun brain challenge, both Welsh and Irish are beautiful and fascinating choices.

They’re two of the most popular and well-supported Celtic languages today. But if you only have time to learn one, how do you decide?

In this guide, I’ll break down the differences between Welsh and Irish, explain how their grammar and pronunciation work, and help you figure out which one is the right fit for you.

Are Welsh and Irish similar?

A common mistake people make is thinking that because Welsh and Irish are both “Celtic” languages, they must be very similar.

The truth is, they’re completely different!

The Celtic language family is split into two separate branches:

• Brythonic (Brittonic) languages: Welsh, Breton, and Cornish.
• Goidelic (Gaelic) languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx.

Because they belong to different branches, a Welsh speaker and an Irish speaker can’t understand each other. They’re about as different from one another as English is from German.

To give you an idea of how different their vocabularies are, here’s a quick comparison table of some basic words:

Pronunciation and spelling

At first glance, both languages might look complex to an English speaker. But they play by completely different spelling rules.

Welsh spelling is highly phonetic. Many people joke that Welsh has “too many consonants” because words are full of Ws and Ys. But in Welsh, W and Y are vowels!

Once you learn the Welsh alphabet-like how dd makes a “th” sound and ll makes a breathy “h-l” sound-you can read almost any Welsh word exactly the way it’s written. There are virtually no silent letters.

Irish spelling has silent letters and complex rules. Irish words often look very long because of a rule called “broad with broad, slender with slender.” This means Irish groups a lot of vowels together to tell you how to pronounce the consonants around them. Because of this, Irish has many silent letters and combinations that don’t sound the way an English speaker would guess.

Grammar features they share

Even though their vocabularies are totally different, Welsh and Irish share some very unique grammar concepts because of their shared ancient Celtic roots.

1. Verb-Subject-Object word order In English, we say “I am eating” (Subject-Verb). In both Welsh and Irish, the verb comes first!

Here’s how you say a basic sentence in Welsh, using this unique word order:

Dw i’n yfed coffi

Doo een uh-ved koff-ee

I am drinking coffee (Literally: Am I in drinking coffee)

2. Consonant mutations This is the most famous feature of Celtic languages. The first letter of a word can literally change depending on the word that comes right before it!

For example, the Welsh word for “cat” is cath. But if you want to say “my cat”, the ‘c’ changes to ‘ngh’:

fy nghath

vuh ng-hath

My cat

Irish has its own version of this, where letters are added to the beginnings of words (like changing bád to mbád).

Speakers and everyday use

If you want to know how easy it’ll be to find people to talk to, here’s the current situation for both languages.

Welsh: Welsh is spoken by over half a million people, mostly in Wales. It’s incredibly visible in daily life. All road signs are bilingual, there are Welsh TV channels (S4C), radio stations, and heavily Welsh-speaking communities where it’s the everyday community language.

Irish: Irish is the official national language of Ireland. Everyone studies it in school, which means a huge portion of the country has some knowledge of it. However, the number of people who use it as a daily, community language is smaller (around 70,000 to 80,000 people), mostly in specific regions called the Gaeltacht.

Which language is easier to learn?

For a native English speaker, Welsh is generally considered a bit easier to learn.

Here’s why:

• The spelling is much more straightforward. Once you learn the alphabet, you can pronounce anything.
• Modern spoken Welsh has been simplified over the years, making the verb structures fairly easy to pick up.
• There are endless resources, podcasts, and active online communities for Welsh learners.

Irish can be a bit more challenging purely because of its spelling system and cases (the ends of words change depending on their grammatical role). However, Irish is incredibly popular globally, so finding courses, apps, and teachers is very easy.

Which one should you choose?

At the end of the day, language learning takes a lot of time and dedication. The easiest language to learn is always the one you’re most motivated to stick with!

• Learn Welsh if: You plan to visit Wales, you love phonetic languages where “what you see is what you get”, or you want a language with a highly active, visible, modern media presence.
• Learn Irish if: You have Irish ancestry, you’re planning to visit Ireland’s Gaeltacht regions, or you love traditional Irish music, poetry, and mythology.