The audio book for An tOileánach is read by Domhnall Mac an tSíthigh. I was wondering if this speaker could be considered a reliable native speaker, and accurate pronunciations could be derived from his reading of the book.

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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

I've never come across that. Is it out of print?

If this is from Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThPTP90 ... hannel=CCc - then it would be good, but he may have been supplied an altered text. Eg. the opening chapter has "Sin é an fáth gur fágadh comh fada ar na cíní me" and he reads it "sin é an RÉASÚN gur fágadh cómh fada ar na CÍOCHA me". I'm afraid Irish people are infernal when it comes to destroying their own cultural heritage.

I see that Youtube channel has, in four separate audio files, the whole book, but as with EVERY LITTLE THING connected to the Irish language, it wasn't done properly. Go mbeidh is read out as "a mbeidh", "ar" becomes "inár" and so on. And the text varies from the original edition, making it likely he is reading from an updated later version with many CO things in it.

Thank you. He is reading from the more widely available version of the book that is still in print.

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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

In terms of your core question, I think the answer would be yes. Here's an interview with him on TG4 and he has beautiful Irish (god rest his soul).

But David is also correct that he's probably reading from a CO version of the text. All the same, for pronunciation, intonation and so on this seems to be a great resource! Good find.

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