Are there any resources for Irish specifically geared towards Munster Irish? I have a lot of friends in the Kerry Gaeltacht and would prefer to gear my learning towards the Munster dialect. Any help is appreciated.

Well, yes. There is the 1961 edition of Teach Yourself Irish with embedded audio from https://archive.org/download/TeachYourselfIrish/TYI1961.pdf Embedded audio can be hard to make work, so you can download the 4 original AIFF files from https://archive.org/download/TeachYourselfIrish/

There is a Polish-language book on Kerry Irish by Grossman and Doyle, which is out of print, I believe, but you might find a copy somewhere.

And anything on my former website at corkirish.wordpress.com

Go raibh maith agat, a chara!

Small nitpick: the author’s name is Edmund Gussmann ;-). The book is called An Ghaeilge (podręcznik języka irlandzkiego) (but even though the title is spelt in the standard, it does teach Kerry-ish Munster variety), but unfortunately it’s been out of print and out of stock for years.

(there are some bootleg copies flying around in the web and besides that I made a PDF with just the reading texts and glossaries translated to English from the book, which I hope is small enough part of the whole thing that the remaining living author and the publisher don’t mind me sharing online…)

Silmeth, that is an astonishing resource and probably the best resource for learning Munster Irish.

There is also a pdf version of the first edition of the book on this Russian site: https://www.twirpx.com/file/2243808/ (you have to pay about €2 to be able to download up to 50 files from that site).

There are also audiofiles for all the texts in the book, A. Doyle himself reads the texts in the book (the quality is poor though, it was taperecorded in the 90s), the link is here: https://mega.nz/folder/9V5CHDSJ#9l0C0_k8tzK6-SnPbbZlyg

Thank you. I didn't know audofiles were available. It's always best if native speakers do recordings. I'm not sure Aidan Doyle is a native speaker? Maybe someone can tell us? Still those files are useful.

The thing that gets me listening to recording no. 1 is "sa seomra". Where is Aidan Doyle's evidence that this is Kerry Irish? Sa tseómra is Munster Irish - and this is what was ALWAYS CORRECT in Irish - you can see it in the 17th century Bedell's Bible (don tsolus , etc). I'm not sure Doyle has any evidence for this.

There is a PDF with scans/photos of the second edition floating around too… but I won’t link to them here, I guess you can find them if you’re determined to do so.


Wow, this is great. I had no idea this was a thing! Was it ever available commercially? I am fairly sure they were never sold with the book, I was convinced for over a decade that no recordings for the book have ever existed.

Another thing, coming from a Cork Irish perspective is listening to his pronunciation of Déaglán, where he has /i@/ in the first syllable - where Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh would have had /ia/, with a very open /a/ in the second element of that.

Listening to the Doegen recordings of a Kerry native - https://doegen.ie/LA_1090d3 - it should be /ia/ in Kerry too. Aidan transcribes all these words with /ia/ in the textbook, and not /i@/, so he must know his pronunciation is wrong.

The book is good, although it needs supplementing with more dialectal information. Peig's nín for níl doesn't get a look in.

Tá siad for táid siad is also painful to hear in his recordings.

He makes a good attempt to pronounce both broad and slender R properly each time - he has to get a "tick" for that. He does not use the English R, as 100% of Irish learners do.

I'm not sure about the broad N in anois, which he favours - my sources tell me it is slender. ainIS.

Another thing that might be a dialectal difference is that he has compórdach, with /k@m/, but what I've learnt of Muskerry Irish is cúmpórdach with /ku:m/.

He gives the verbal noun of cuirim as cur, but states it is /kir/, with a broad R. It can be a slender R. He has siúcra and not siúicre and claims ubh is feminine and pronounces it /uv/ and not /ov/.

Wow, this is great. I had no idea this was a thing! Was it ever available commercially? I am fairly sure they were never sold with the book, I was convinced for over a decade that no recordings for the book have ever existed.[/quote]

I heard he'd made the recordings for his students at KUL in Lublin (Poland), so it was never available commercially.



As for 'éa' pronounced as 'i@' instead of 'ia' - such pronunciation occurs in Ó Sé's "Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne" even among speakers born before 1930, e.g.: téadan pronounced as (ti:@'da:n) page 207, sheanéadach as (han'i:@d@x) p. 213, féar as (fi:@r) p.214 and there are many more instances of this 'phenomenon'. It doesn't seem to be a typo though.

As for Tá siad vs Táid siad, they seem to be in free variation in Corca Dhuibhne and tá siad seems to be slightly more common.