I notice that some people on this forum use dialect spellings instead of standardised ones. This is something I'm curious about, because in a lot of cases, my spelling doesn't match my pronunciation. I write “ansin” and “faoi” because that is how I was taught to spell in school. But I say “ansan” and “fé” because that is how I learned to speak from friends (Munster dialect).

I'm interested in people's opinions on this. Is it better to stick to standard spellings when you're learning a specific dialect, or should the spelling match the pronunciation?

As an English speaker, I would always write “butter” even though I never pronounce the double t. If I read “bu'er” I would have a hard time understanding what it means, even though it is spelled exactly the way I pronounce “butter.”

My opinion is this: use a different spelling according to the people who will read your texts. If you write to people who are more or less fluent in Irish, you can write in dialect. If the people who'll read are mainly beginners, use a more standard spelling.



But in Modern English, the spelling corresponds more or less to etymology, and the dialectal pronunciations of English derive from that. (well maybe it's not clear, it's clear in my mind but I'm not sure I've managed to explain it properly)
In Irish it's more complicated than that, because certain forms, like ansin and ansan don't derive from the same thing (ansan isn't simply a dialectal pronunciation or ansin), they derive from different evolutions.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

I think you have kind of answered your own question, Mick. If you want to represent a particular dialect or the way the language is actually spoken, it is usually possible to do so to a certain extent within the basic framework of the spelling system of the language. Many novels written in particular dialects do exactly that, spelling faoi as fé or fá, anseo as annso, or duit as dhuit.

"Standard" spelling, on the other hand, can be used to reach a wider readership without declaring an allegiance to a particular region or dialect. Real people sometimes need to do one or the other depending on the context and the intended readership.

Dialect spellings look weird at first if you are used to reading standard stuff, but it doesn't take much exposure to become familiar with them, and they are essentially the same differences you would hear if those people were speaking to you directly so it makes sense to write them as well.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

When offering translations to someone who hasn’t specified any dialect preference, or when writing to someone whose level of Irish is not so that I’d expect them to recognise dialect forms and peculiarities, I’ll write in Standard Irish. When writing an official document (if for whatever reason I were ever to do that), I would write in Standard Irish.

If I’m ‘writing my mind’, as it were, I’ll more or less write dialect, to some degree.


That’s something different from writing dialect, though. In your dialect, an intravocalic, post-stress phonemic /t/ is simply realised as a glottal stop, rather as a t. In other dialects, it’s realised as a regular t, and in yet other dialects, it’s realised as a tapped [ɾ].

Similarly, in northern Donegal, a phonemic long /a:/ is often realised as [ɛː] (long, open e), while in Munster and parts of Connemara, it’s realised as [ɑː] (as in British English ‘father’). But they have the same underlying sound, it’s just realised differently. Nobody in Donegal would write tae instead of tá, even though some people may pronounce it like that, because they know the sound in that word is not an ae, it’s an á.

But when you write faoi, even though you say fé or fá, that’s dialect writing, because those are actually different words. It’s not just that aoi is realised as é in Munster and as á in Donegal, because it’s not. The dialects simply use different words here, and dialect writing is writing the word you say, rather than a standardised word.

An English counterpart (though it’s not really, since there is no unified standard English) would be that Americans would say (and write) ‘gas station’ or ‘service station’ (depending, again, on dialect), where Brits would say (and write) ‘filling station’. Americans would say ‘truck’, Brits (and Irish, right?) would say ‘lorry’. Donegalites would say tábla, Munsterites would say bord. Donegalites would say tá grá agam ort, most others would say tá grá agam duit. Brits would (often, though not always) say and write spelt/dreamt, whereas Americans would (often, though not always) say and write spelled/dreamed.

If there were some unified standard English that were to cover all varieties of English and be intended for official use, like Standard Irish is, then it would be considered dialect writing to write ‘lorry’, ‘dreamt’, or ‘filling station’ (assuming the American versions were the ones included in the standard). But to someone who would never personally say ‘truck’, ‘dreamed’, or ‘gas station’, using these words in writing is foreign and an acquired habit that would be learnt (<-- another one) for the specific purpose of writing Standard English. When there’s no real reason to write Standard English, everyone would naturally just revert to using the terms they actually say.

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Not a native speaker.

Always wait for at least three people to agree on a translation, especially if it’s for something permanent.

My translations are usually GU (Ulster Irish), unless CO (Standard Orthography) is requested.

This surprises me. I used ansin/ansan as an example because I thought they were different pronunciations of the same word. Do they have a different etymology? Is the similar sound and meaning just a coincidence?



Likewise with faoi/fé. I did think they were just different spellings/pronunciations of same word.



This makes more sense to me. Tábla/bord and orm/duit are clearly different words, with their own etymology. But that's a question of vocabulary rather than spelling.



This reminds me of the novel Trainspotting. A few years ago, a French-Canadian tourist gave me her copy because she found it impossible to read. The spelling mimics the Scottish accent, and the characters use a lot of slang that would be unfamiliar to anyone who has never been in Scotland. Even though I've lived in Scotland, I still found the book difficult in places. But overall, it was an effective technique, because I felt like I could hear the narrator's voice more clearly.

Sin and san are two variants, slender and broad, of a demonstrative word in Old Irish. You would use "sin" after slender letters and "san" after broad ones (still like that in Munster today).
It was "insin" in Old Irish, being spelt "ansin" later (I wonder why they changed the i to a) and the group -ns- became broad in Munster so they used the broad form -san there. I guess it's something like that. Anyway the distinction sin/san is very old and they should be kept in writing in the dialect where that distinctionstill exists...




not really because the f is broad in faoi, and slender in fé, and the vowel is different, so "fé" can't be a local pronunciation of "faoi", there is something more.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne