The English and Irish words in this list generally agree sufficiently in both spelling and pronunciation between the languages to be immediately recognisable, and also have the same meaning in both languages. They therefore can be of help, especially for the novices.

The words in the word pairs in this list are similar, since in 'fairly recent time' one of them was borrowed from the other, or both were borrowed from a third language. 'Fairly recent time' here in general stands for 'At most a few hundred years back'. There are also word pairs which are related, but where the common ancestor of the words split at an earlier time. In fact, there are many such words, since both English and Irish ultimately derive from a common Proto-Indo-European language, spoken perhaps five thousand years ago. However, both language branches changed radically in these millennia, and most such 'cognates' are unrecognisable to-day, without studying a bit of philology. For examples, English three and Irish trí are cognates, originating from the same Proto-Indo-European word, as are four and ceathair. The first pair actually might be recognised also without an interest in etymologies, but hardly the second one. Many other words appear to be Irish borrowings into English, but are actually both languages borrowing from French or Latin. An interesting example is carr - apparently a direct borrowing of English car, both words actually have their root in Gaulish carros ("two-man chariot").