Munster Irish is the dialect of the Irish language spoken in the province of Munster. Gaeltacht regions in Munster are found in Counties Kerry (notably Dingle), Cork and Waterford.

Lexicon

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Munster Irish differs from the Ulster and Connacht dialects in a number of respects. Some words and phrases used in Munster Irish are not used in the other dialects, such as:

• in aon chur "at any rate" (other dialects ar chor ar bith)
• fé "under" (standard faoi)
• Gaelainn "Irish language" (standard Gaeilge)
• ná "that...not; do not" (standard nach)

Phonology

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The phonemic inventory of Munster Irish (based on the accent of West Muskerry in western Cork) is as shown in the following chart (based on Ó Cuív 1944; 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 is neither broad or slender.

Consonant phonemes	Bilabial		Coronal						Dorsal				Glottal
			Dental		Alveolar		Palato- alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Plosive
Fricative/ Approximant
Nasal
Tap
Lateral approximant

The vowels of Munster 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, Munster has the diphthongs .

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

• The fricative is found in syllable-onset position. (Connacht and Ulster have here.) For example, bhog "moved" is pronounced as opposed to elsewhere.
• The diphthongs , , and occur in Munster, but not in the other dialects.
• Word-internal clusters of obstruent + sonorant, + , and stop + fricative are broken up by an epenthetic , except that stop + liquid remains in the onset of a stressed syllable. For example, eaglais "church" is pronounced , but Aibreán "April" is .
• Orthographic short a is diphthongized (rather than lengthened) before word-final m and the Old Irish tense sonorants spelled nn, ll (e.g. ceann "head").
• Word-final is realized as , e.g. marcaigh "horsemen" .
• Stress is attracted to noninitial heavy syllables: corcán "pot", mealbhóg "satchel". Stress is also attracted to in the second syllable: coileach "rooster", beannacht "blessing", bacach "lame" (pl.).
• In some varieties, long is rounded to .

Morphology

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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 Munster synthetic forms are more often used than in the standard language, where analytic forms (those with a general ending + personal pronoun) are more common.

Munster	Standard	Gloss
molair	molann tú	"you (sg.) praise"
molaid	molann siad	"they praise"
mholas	mhol mé	"I praised"
mholais	mhol tú	"you (sg.) praised"
mholabhair	mhol sibh	"you (pl.) praised"
mholadar	mhol siad	"they praised"
molfad	molfaidh mé	"I will praise"
molfair	molfaidh tú	"you (sg.) will praise"
molfaid	molfaidh siad	"they will praise"

Some irregular verbs have different forms in Munster than in the standard:

• deinim "I do/make" (standard déanaim) and dheineas "I did/made" (standard rinne mé)
• chím "I see" (standard feicim)
• bheirim "I give/bring" (standard tugaim) and bhéarfad "I will give/bring" (standard tabharfaidh mé)

Past tense verbs can take the particle do in Munster Irish, even when they begin with consonants. In the standard language, the particle is used only before vowels. For example, Munster do bhris sé or bhris sé "he broke" (standard only bhris sé).

Syntax

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One significant syntactic difference between Munster and other dialects is that in Munster, go ("that") is used instead of a as the indirect relative particle:

• an fear go bhfuil a dheirfiúr san ospidéal "the man whose sister is in the hospital" (standard an fear a bhfuil...)
• an seomra go gchodlaím ann "the room that I sleep in" (standard an seomra a gcodlaím ann)

References

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• Ó Cuív, Brian (1944). The Irish of West Muskerry, Co. Cork. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. ISBN 0901282529.

Irish language