Peadar Ó Laoghaire insisted, especially in his book Notes on Irish Words and Usages, that the noun rud is often used with the interrogative cad in phrases such as cad é an rud é sin 'what is that' (as opposed to cad é sin, which carries more of a surprised thought). I was wondering if this feature is exclusive to Cork Irish, or is less restricted in other Munster dialects. For example, when visiting CDh, I often heard people say cad é sin, but this might possibly be as a result of the standardisation of the language if cad é an rud é sin is truly used throughout Munster. But if this feature is more exclusive to Muskerry, would that also make such phrases as cad é mise (instead of cad é an rud mise) permissible?

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I'm an intermediate speaker of the Corca Dhuibhne dialect of Irish and also have knowledge on the old spelling
Soir gaċ síar, fé ḋeireaḋ thíar

It's easy to assume you must be dealing with a subdialect, but Cad é an rud is found in An tOileánach: https://wikisource.org/wiki/An_t-Oile%C3%A1nach/7

Cad é an rud é is specifically used when asking for a classification, not when hearing a noise. Maybe the instances you came across in Corkaguiny were not specifically of classification? Or maybe current speakers translate from English most of the time?

It's not often you would need, in any language, to say "what am I?"

Thank you

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I'm an intermediate speaker of the Corca Dhuibhne dialect of Irish and also have knowledge on the old spelling
Soir gaċ síar, fé ḋeireaḋ thíar