Connacht Irish

Connacht Irish is the dialect of the Irish language spoken in the province of Connacht. Gaeltacht regions in Connacht are found in Counties Mayo (notably Tourmakeady, Achill Island and Erris) and Galway (notably in parts of Connemara and on the Aran Islands). The Mayo and Galway varieties differ from each other in a variety of ways, as Mayo Irish has a number of features in common with Ulster Irish.

Lexicon

Some differences between Mayo and Galway are seen in the lexicon:

Mayo	Galway	Gloss
cluinim	cloisim	"I hear"
eallach	beithígh	"cattle"
úr	nua	"new"
nimhneach	tinn	"sore"

Phonology

The phonemic inventory of Connacht Irish (based on the accent of Tourmakeady in Mayo) is as shown in the following chart (see International Phonetic Alphabet for an explanation of the symbols). Symbols appearing in the upper half of each row are velarized (traditionally called "broad" consonants) while those in the bottom half are palatalized ("slender"). The consonant /h/ is neither broad or slender.

Consonant phonemes	Labial						Coronal						Dorsal				Glottal
	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Labio- velar		Dental		Alveolar		Alveolo- palatal		Palatal		Velar
Plosive	pˠ pʲ	bˠ bʲ					t̪ˠ	d̪ˠ	tʲ	dʲ			c	ɟ	k	ɡ
Fricative/ Approximant			fˠ fʲ	vʲ		w			sˠ		ʃ		ç	j	x	ɣ	h
Nasal		mˠ mʲ						n̪ˠ n̪ʲ		nˠ nʲ				ɲ		ŋ
Tap										ɾˠ ɾʲ
Lateral approximant								l̪ˠ l̪ʲ		lˠ lʲ

The vowels of Connacht Irish are as shown on the following chart. These positions are only approximate, as vowels are strongly influenced by the palatalization and velarization of surrounding consonants.

In addition, Connacht has the diphthongs .

Some characteristics of Connacht that distinguish it from the other dialects are:

• In some varieties, vowel lengthening before word-internal clusters of voiced stop + liquid (e.g. /ɑːgləʃ/ eaglais "church"
• In some varieties, a four-way distinction among coronal nasals and laterals: , often without lengthening of orthographic short vowels before them.
• In the variety spoken in Cois Fhairrge (the area along the north shore of Galway Bay between Barna and Casla), underlying short /a/ is realized as a long front [aː] while underlying long /aː/ is realized as a back [ɑː].
• /n/ is realized as [r] (or is replaced by /r/) after consonants other than [s]. This happens in Ulster as well.

Morphology

Nouns

In some dialects of Connacht the plural endings -anna and -acha are always replaced by -annaí and -achaí. It is also common in many Gaelic-speaking areas of Connemara that the dative singular form of all 2nd declension nouns has been generally adopted as the nominative, giving these nouns the typical ending in palatalized consonants in the nominative singular. This is indicated in the spelling by the letter i before the final consonant.

Connemara form	Standard form	Gloss
-achaí, -annaí	-acha, -anna	Plural ending
bróig	bróg	"shoe"
ceird	ceard	"craft"
cluais	cluas	"ear"
cois	cos	"foot, leg"
láimh	lámh	"hand"

Verbs

Irish verbs are characterized by having a mixture of analytic forms (where information about person is provided by a pronoun) and synthetic forms (where information about number is provided in an ending on the verb) in their conjugation. In Mayo, as in Ulster, the analytic forms are used in a variety of forms where the standard language has synthetic forms, e.g. molann muid "we praise" (standard molaimid) or mholfadh siad "they would praise" (standard mholfaidís).

Díonaim (I make/I do) in standard Irish (Déanaim)

References