This book offers a concise presentation of the main features of Modern Irish. The first chapter contains a brief historical survey of the language, and discusses the present sociolinguistic situation. The next three chapters are concerned with the sound-system of Irish, its morphology, and its syntax, and the book concludes with two sample texts, accompanied by a phonetic transcription and interlinear translation. In the chapter on phonology, the question of morphophonological alternations is discussed in detail: these include variation in the quality and quantity of vowels, shifts in stress, and initial mutations. In the chapter on morphology, particular attention is paid to the morphosyntactic use of initial mutations, numerous paradigms being provided of the effect exerted by various particles on the major lexical categories of Irish. One section is devoted to derivational morphology, an aspect of the language which has been neglected in past studies. This study will be of interest both to general linguists with no previous knowledge of Irish, and also to lecturers and students of Celtic studies interested in language.