Irish is represented by several traditional
dialects and by various varieties of "urban" Irish. The latter have acquired lives of their own and a growing number of native speakers. Differences between the dialects make themselves felt in stress, intonation, vocabulary and structural features. Roughly speaking, the three major dialect areas which survive coincide roughly with the provinces of
Connacht (),
Munster () and
Ulster (). Records of some dialects of
Leinster () were made by the
Irish Folklore Commission and others.
Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, had a form of Irish derived from the Munster Irish of the later 18th century (see
Newfoundland Irish).
Connacht Historically, Connacht Irish represents the westernmost remnant of a dialect area which once stretched across from the centre of Ireland. The strongest dialect of Connacht Irish is to be found in
Connemara and the
Aran Islands. Much closer to the larger Connacht Gaeltacht is the dialect spoken in the smaller region on the border between Galway () and Mayo (). There are a number of differences between the popular South Connemara form of Irish, the Mid-Connacht/Joyce Country form (on the border between Mayo and Galway) and the Achill and Erris forms in the northwest of the province. Features in Connacht Irish differing from the official written standard include a preference for verbal nouns ending in , e.g. instead of , "weakening". The non-standard pronunciation of
Cois Fharraige with lengthened vowels and heavily reduced endings gives it a distinct sound. Distinguishing features of Connacht and Ulster dialect include the pronunciation of word-final -
bh and -
mh as , rather than as in Munster. For example, ("mountain") is in Connacht and Ulster, as opposed to in the south. In addition Connacht and Ulster speakers tend to include the "we" pronoun rather than use the synthetic form favoured in Munster, e.g. is used for "we were" instead of . As in Munster Irish, some short vowels are lengthened and others diphthongised before , in monosyllabic words and in the stressed syllable of multisyllabic words where the syllable is followed by a consonant. This can be seen in "head", "crooked", "short", "sledgehammer", "foreigner, non-Gael", "a wonder, a marvel", etc. The form , when occurring at the end of words like , tends to be pronounced as . In South Connemara, for example, there is a tendency to replace word-final with , in word such as , (pronounced respectively as "shiv", "liv" in the other areas). This placing of the B-sound is also present at the end of words ending in vowels, such as () and ' (). There is also a tendency to omit in , and , a characteristic also of other Connacht dialects. All these pronunciations are distinctively regional. The pronunciation prevalent in the
Joyce Country (the area around
Lough Corrib and
Lough Mask) is quite similar to that of South Connemara, with a similar approach to the words , and and a similar approach to pronunciation of vowels and consonants. There are noticeable differences in vocabulary, with certain words such as (difficult) and being preferred to the more usual and . Another interesting aspect of this sub-dialect is that almost all vowels at the end of words tend to be pronounced as : (other), (feet) and (done) tend to be pronounced as , and respectively. The northern Mayo dialect of
Erris () and
Achill () is in grammar and
morphology essentially a Connacht dialect but shows some similarities to Ulster Irish due to large-scale immigration of dispossessed people following the
Plantation of Ulster. For example, words ending - have a much softer sound, with a tendency to terminate words such as and with , giving and respectively. In addition to a vocabulary typical of other area of Connacht, one also finds Ulster words like (meaning "to look"), (painful or sore), (close), (hear), (difficult), (new), and (to be able to – i.e. a form similar to ). Irish President
Douglas Hyde was possibly one of the last speakers of the
Roscommon dialect of Irish. Another noticeable trait is the pronunciation of the first person singular verb ending as , also common to the Isle of Man and Scotland (Munster/Connacht "I walk", Ulster ).
Leinster Down to the early 19th century and even later, Irish was spoken in all twelve counties of Leinster. The evidence furnished by placenames, literary sources and recorded speech can be interpreted that there was no Leinster dialect as such. Instead, the main dialect used in the province was represented by a broad central belt stretching from west Connacht eastwards to the
Liffey estuary and southwards to
Wexford, though with many local variations. Two smaller dialect areas were represented by the Ulster speech of counties Meath and Louth, which extended as far south as the
Boyne valley, and a Munster dialect found in Kilkenny and south Laois. This main dialect had characteristics which survive today only in the Irish of Connacht. It typically placed the stress on the first syllable of a word, and showed a preference (found in placenames) for the pronunciation where the standard spelling is . The word (hill) would therefore be pronounced . Examples are the placenames Crooksling () in County Dublin and Crukeen () in Carlow. Speakers in East Leinster showed the same diphthongisation or vowel lengthening as in Munster and Connacht Irish in words like (hole), (monastery), (wood), (head), (crooked) and (crowd). A feature of the dialect was the pronunciation of , which generally became in east Leinster (as in Munster), and in the west (as in Connacht). Early evidence regarding colloquial Irish in east Leinster is found in
The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (1547), by the English physician and traveller Andrew Borde. The illustrative phrases he uses include the following:
The Pale – According to Statute of 1488
The Pale () was an area around late medieval Dublin under the control of the English government. By the late 15th century it consisted of an area along the coast from
Dalkey, south of
Dublin, to the garrison town of
Dundalk, with an inland boundary encompassing
Naas and
Leixlip in the
Earldom of Kildare and
Trim and
Kells in County Meath to the north. In this area of "Englyshe tunge" English had never actually been a dominant language – and was moreover a relatively late comer; the first colonisers were Normans who spoke Norman French, and before these Norse. The Irish language had always been the language of the bulk of the population. An English official remarked of the Pale in 1515 that "all the common people of the said half counties that obeyeth the King's laws, for the most part be of Irish birth, of Irish habit and of Irish language". With the strengthening of English cultural and political control, language change began to occur but this did not become clearly evident until the 18th century. Even then, in the decennial period 1771–1781, the percentage of Irish speakers in Meath was at least 41%. By 1851 this had fallen to less than 3%.
General decline English expanded strongly in Leinster in the 18th century but Irish speakers were still numerous. In the decennial period 1771–1781 certain counties had estimated percentages of Irish speakers as follows (though the estimates are likely to be too low): The proportion of Irish-speaking children in Leinster went down as follows: 17% in the 1700s, 11% in the 1800s, 3% in the 1830s, and virtually none in the 1860s. The Irish census of 1851 showed that there were still a number of older speakers in County Dublin. The last known traditional native speaker in Omeath, and in Leinster as a whole, was Annie O'Hanlon (née Dobbin), who died in 1960.
Urban use from the Middle Ages to the 19th century Irish was spoken as a community language in Irish towns and cities down to the 19th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was widespread even in Dublin and the Pale. The English administrator
William Gerard (1518–1581) commented as follows: "All English, and the most part with delight, even in Dublin, speak Irish", while the
Old English historian
Richard Stanihurst (1547–1618) lamented that "When their posterity became not altogether so wary in keeping, as their ancestors were valiant in conquering, the Irish language was free dennized in the English Pale: this canker took such deep root, as the body that before was whole and sound, was by little and little festered, and in manner wholly putrified". The Irish of Dublin, situated as it was between the east Ulster dialect of Meath and Louth to the north and the Leinster-Connacht dialect further south, may have reflected the characteristics of both in phonology and grammar. In County Dublin itself the general rule was to place the stress on the initial vowel of words. With time it appears that the forms of the dative case took over the other case endings in the plural (a tendency found to a lesser extent in other dialects). In a letter written in Dublin in 1691 we find such examples as the following: (accusative case, the standard form being ), (accusative case, the standard form being ) and (genitive case, the standard form being ). English authorities of the Cromwellian period, aware that Irish was widely spoken in Dublin, arranged for its official use. In 1655 several local dignitaries were ordered to oversee a lecture in Irish to be given in Dublin. In March 1656 a converted Catholic priest, Séamas Corcy, was appointed to preach in Irish at Bride's parish every Sunday, and was also ordered to preach at
Drogheda and
Athy. In 1657 the English colonists in Dublin presented a petition to the Municipal Council complaining that in Dublin itself "there is Irish commonly and usually spoken". There is contemporary evidence of the use of Irish in other urban areas at the time. In 1657 it was found necessary to have an Oath of Abjuration (rejecting the authority of the Pope) read in Irish in
Cork so that people could understand it. Irish was sufficiently strong in early 18th century Dublin to be the language of a coterie of poets and scribes led by Seán and Tadhg Ó Neachtain, both poets of note. Scribal activity in Irish persisted in Dublin right through the 18th century. An outstanding example was Muiris Ó Gormáin (Maurice Gorman), a prolific producer of manuscripts who advertised his services (in English) in ''Faulkner's Dublin Journal''. There were still an appreciable number of Irish speakers in
County Dublin at the time of the 1851 census. In other urban centres the descendants of medieval Anglo-Norman settlers, the so-called
Old English, were Irish-speaking or bilingual by the 16th century. The English administrator and traveller
Fynes Moryson, writing in the last years of the 16th century, said that "the English Irish and the very citizens (excepting those of Dublin where the lord deputy resides) though they could speak English as well as we, yet commonly speak Irish among themselves, and were hardly induced by our familiar conversation to speak English with us". In Galway, a city dominated by Old English merchants and loyal to the Crown up to the
Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653), the use of the Irish language had already provoked the passing of an Act of
Henry VIII (1536), ordaining as follows: ::
Item, that every inhabitant within oure said towne [Galway] endeavour themselfes to speake English, and to use themselfes after the English facon; and, speciallye, that you, and every one of you, doe put your children to scole, to lerne to speke English... The demise of native cultural institutions in the seventeenth century saw the social prestige of Irish diminish, and the gradual Anglicisation of the middle classes followed. The census of 1851 showed, however, that the towns and cities of Munster still had significant Irish-speaking populations. Much earlier, in 1819, James McQuige, a veteran
Methodist lay preacher in Irish, wrote: "In some of the largest southern towns, Cork,
Kinsale and even the Protestant town of
Bandon, provisions are sold in the markets, and cried in the streets, in Irish". Irish speakers constituted over 40% of the population of Cork even in 1851.
Modern urban usage The late 18th and 19th centuries saw a reduction in the number of Dublin's Irish speakers, in keeping with the trend elsewhere. This continued until the end of the 19th century, when the
Gaelic revival saw the creation of a strong Irish–speaking network, typically united by various branches of the , and accompanied by renewed literary activity. By the 1930s Dublin had a lively literary life in Irish. Urban Irish has been the beneficiary, from the last decades of the 20th century, of a rapidly expanding system of , teaching entirely through Irish. As of 2019 there are 37 such primary schools in Dublin alone. It has been suggested that Ireland's towns and cities are acquiring a critical mass of Irish speakers, reflected in the expansion of Irish language media. Many are younger speakers who, after encountering Irish at school, made an effort to acquire fluency, while others have been educated through Irish and some have been raised with Irish. Those from an English-speaking background are now often described as ("new speakers") and use whatever opportunities are available (festivals, "pop-up" events) to practise or improve their Irish. It has been suggested that the comparative standard is still the Irish of the Gaeltacht, but other evidence suggests that young urban speakers take pride in having their own distinctive variety of the language. A comparison of traditional Irish and urban Irish shows that the distinction between broad and slender consonants, which is fundamental to Irish phonology and grammar, is not fully or consistently observed in urban Irish. This and other changes make it possible that urban Irish will become a new dialect or even, over a long period, develop into a creole (i.e. a new language) distinct from Gaeltacht Irish. This, however, is paralleled by a failure among some urban Irish speakers to acknowledge grammatical and phonological features essential to the structure of the language. provide audio files in the three major dialects. The differences between dialects are considerable, and have led to recurrent difficulties in conceptualising a "standard Irish." In recent decades contacts between speakers of different dialects have become more frequent and the differences between the dialects are less noticeable. ("The Official Standard"), often shortened to , is a standard for the spelling and grammar of written Irish, developed and used by the Irish government. Its rules are followed by most schools in Ireland, though schools in and near Irish-speaking regions also use the local dialect. It was published by the translation department of in 1953 and updated in 2012 and 2017. == Phonology ==