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The Irish number has three different shapes in the mind. First, it is a substantive. Like any other substantive, it stands either with or without the definite article. With the definite article it means some definite number; as = "the one,"  = "the ten,"  = "the first ten,"  = "the second five." Without the definite article it is an indefinite substantive, = "a five,"  = "a ten."

Secondly, in the Irish mind the idea of number is a mental instrument for counting. Then it has in speech the particle before it. = "one," = "two,"  = "three."

Every number, when thus used as a counter, has this particle before it. In counting, people have the habit of dropping, at certain numbers, from the second shape of the idea to the first, just as if, in English counting, a person were to say instead of "twelve," "a dozen," or instead of "twenty," "a score."

This alternation of the Irish mind, between the two shapes of the idea, gave rise to some confusion among scholars. They thought some of the Irish numbers took