Hi!

I've been studying Irish "generally" for a few months now and decided I'm most interested in pursuing the Munster dialect. However, outside of the old Teach Yourself Irish book and that fantastic Cork Irish word press website, I don't have very many resources. I was wondering if anyone had some additional suggestions for me regarding resoruces? I did look at Lon Dubh's thread regarding Munster Irish but I'm curious if theres been any developments since that. ALSO-- How would one suggest I "convert" a book to serve my needs for pursuing Munster irish? I guess that means I'm really asking, is there a clear explanation of the major non-phonological differences between say Munster and Cois Fharraige ?

GRMA,

Domhnall

Hi ,

There are no specific "learning materials" available, that are geared towards novice learners, besides the OLD Teach Yourself Irish (which you obviously know about already). However, there are a lot of additional materials you could use. For instance, there are quite a lot of academic studies available that discuss the sub-dialects of Munster in detail (which are really glorified grammar books); when these resources are used in conjunction with works by native speakers (songs biographies, short stories, TG4 etc...), it can prove to be a fruitful and rewarding method of learning. Often with learning resources, concepts and language are thought independently from their context - Duolingo is a good example of this, where you get words being used in sentences that are non-nonsensical; and thus, you are required to piece together the semantics of the language from uncontextualised content. Going down the dialectal route, will give you a better impression of native Irish and its subsequent nuances, since the works of native speakers will become your primary learning tool.

However, you may initially feel overwhelmed and frustrated going down the dialectal root, stick at it and it should work out alright in the end. You do, however, need to have a good working knowledge of grammatical concepts (Jargon etc...) and a good basis of general Irish (Caighdeán) in order to navigate the vast majority of these resources; but, again the more you use them, naturally the better you become. If you embark on the journey of trying to learn a dialect and you feel that you are totally out of your depth, you can always return to learning the standard until you feel more prepared. Looking at these studies and works in advance - even before you feel ready - is good preparation anyway, as it will give you n insight into the kind of things you might want to go look up yourself now in order to make life easier for yourself later.

Question, which Muster sub-dialect are you interested the most in?

Note, that if you are interested in looking at the Irish of Kerry, the grammatical study is written entirely in Irish.

If it is Cork Irish, Lon Dubh has put together excellent resources for studying some of the works by Peadar Ua Laoghaire, e.g.

Séadna: https://wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Seadna.djvu (Pre-standard spelling)
Lon Dubh's notes: viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1556
Forum Discussion on Séadna: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1464&hilit=S%C3%A9adna+GM

In the mean time, this is an excellent general resource

http://www.scribd.com/doc/20623019/The- ... ster-Irish



There are no major comparative studies available; however, when you read dialectal studies, commentators will often use examples from other (sub-)dialects in order to explain forms and pronunciations that are really only found within the (sub-)dialect being studied.

For instance, as a basic example of dialectal difference, you may note that prepositions followed by the def. article sing will eclipse in Munster and Connacht Irish, e.g. ag a' bhfear 'at the man'; but will lenite in Ulster Irish, e.g. ag an fhear. You may also come to note differences at the minute, sub-dialect, level, e.g:

The ending for the autonomous past in East Muskerry and East Munster is -ag, e.g. do t(h)ugag 'was given'; in West Cork it is -amh, e.g. do thugamh; and in Kerry it is -ach, e.g. do t(h)ugach.

Once you have grasped one dialect, it is easy to note differences in the speech of other speakers. You will become accustomed to this very easily if you listen to TG4.

You could then further your knowledge by looking at dialectal studies and works of native authors from other dialects.

If you have any questions you could also post them here .

Cian

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

I would recommend the book Speaking Irish/An Ghaeilge Bheo. It comes with a DVD that contains two hours of (almost entirely) native informal spoken Irish. Now you can find videos of native Irish speakers for free on the Internet, but the advantage here is that the book has full transcriptions of all the dialogue along with notes on dialectal and individual peculiarities.

Of course, only some of the speakers are Munster (and IIRC none are from West Cork). But even if you're only interested in an active command of Munster, you'll want to learn to understand speakers of every variety.

I'm actually rewriting my notes at the moment, to cover more commonly encountered material, a reading list, e.t.c.

The difficulty is in knowing where to put the cut-off point. In certain elements of the grammar Munster Irish was last consistent in the 1940s, and since then everybody just speaks with whatever happened to be preserved in their individual family or townland's grammar, so it can be hard to give a detailed account that isn't overwhelming.

So one could just go with what you meet today, but then there is a lot in An tOileánach, Séadna, Eachtra Phinocchio, not to mention more difficult books from dialects now extinct, that you simple could not understand.

Anyway, my approach has been to give a basic account and then have the older stuff as an add-on.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal