What the fuck? If you go to Abair and Fuaimeanna, silmeth, you’ll see that they use /æ/ some of the time, as you said, you must have a lot of trouble in distinguishing them.

As for my accent, I actually try to not use /ɑ:/ at all, in keeping with my desire to not speak a specific dialect (a desire that, I’m now beginning to understand, would probably make me sound like a colorless bureaucrat who just sits at a desk and tells people to fill out paperwork all day), I just use a generic Irish accent when speaking Irish, and /ɑ:/ just doesn’t sound right to me. That might seem like an odd thing to do since there are no native speakers like that left, but if I am going to speak Caighdeán, it’s what I’d better do. If you’re wondering how good my ear is, Leinster Irish (or at least Louth Irish, which was apparently more similar to Ulster Irish than “Leinster Proper”), did in fact use /a:/ for á, and my accent is pretty close to theirs (not that surprising, since it’s so close to Dublin). The accent certainly isn’t made up, so it isn’t wrong, it’s just an accent that hasn’t been used by actual traditional native speakers in a long time (the last native speaker of Leinster Irish died in 1960).

And yeah, I didn’t even really notice the apostrophe, I just saw the “ɣ” and said, “That’s wrong.”

I didn’t really even try to distinguish myself whether the recordings have [a] or [æ], as I said, I don’t trust myself in distinguishing exact vowel sounds. ;-) I just checked that they do not use the /æ/ notation for the phoneme (although – in case of abair.ie and fuaimeanna – they don’t differentiate back and front short a in the transcription at all, treating both as a single phoneme – I guess because the back variant occurs after broad consonants, front after slender ones).

The point I was trying to make was that other sources I’ve seen use /a/ for the front one and /ɑ/ for the back one (and /ɑː/ for á) – that’s the transcription in Teach Yourself Irish from 1961, Ó Cuív’s The Irish of West Muskerry (although I just skimmed through fragments on Google Books, would need to get a copy to see what actually is stated about them), An Ghaeilge (which explicitly states that long á always have the back value, suggesting the same as short /ɑ/), the materials on corkirish blog (eg. dictionary there), Wikipedia (which does use /æː/, but only for Ulster long vowel) – which I find odd if the difference, in both Munster and Connacht, is in fact the one between [æ] and [a] instead.

Anyway, I’ve found a book The Sound Structure of Modern Irish by Raymond Hickey which indeed suggests [æ] for short front /a/ and [a] for back one, but then again marks examples with [æ] as Cois Fharraige.

I think I’ll buy Modern Irish by Ó Siadhail to have a better source on modern dialects.

And I’ll try to listen more carefully to some Munster recordings. I think I do hear some difference between all /ɑː/, /ɑ/ (/a/) and /a/ (/æ/), but if you asked me, I’d say /ɑː/ sounds rounded ([ɒ]) to me, /ɑ/ unrounded ([ɑ]), /a/ more fronted ([a]), but I don’t think I hear [æ] in words like fear, deas, bean (eg. in this recording by Séamas Ó Beaglaoich)… but then, I might be completely wrong, I’m bad at vowels. And then the difference between [a] and [æ] is quite minor so it probably isn’t really worth worrying about (at least when one does some distinction between all the as). And then my own pronunciation is so far away from native at the moment that I probably shouldn’t worry about exact vowel values right now anyway. ;-)

Okay. I see now where you are trying to go with your Irish. Have you heard any recordings of Louth Irish? It's an interesting mix of Southern and Northern elements (similar to Mayo dialect, yet different).

There are some old recordings from Louth at Doegen.

In those recordings, I hear /w´æs/ for bheas and /bæN/ for bean and elsewhere as expected in the South.

The á is certainly more open than Munster but it still has an /ɑ:/ feel rather than an /a:/ sound.

The r sounds are much the same as for Connacht: flapped with a rotic element when broad; buzzy when slender.

I feel your r's are more like Italian r's, Esszet. If you work on lightening them up, it will help your accent somewhat.

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

For some reason, Ó Siadhail doesn't transcribe the difference between /a/ and /æ/ in Modern Irish even for Cois Fhairrge utterances. Maybe he got lazy over time.


"Tá na Francaigh teacht thar sáile!" /tɑ:NəfrɑNki: t´æxt har sɑ:l´ə/
Ars an tSean-bhean bhocht. /ersəN t´æN væN voxt/

Definitely /æ/ for teacht, sean-, b(h)ean.

leathan /l´æhəN/
glan /gLaN/ = /glʌN/

All as expected in Southern Irish (Connacht and Munster). The t's are less palatised than in Connacht and broad bh is /v/. Some minor lengthening would occur in Connacht, especially in Cois Fhairrge.

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Wow thank you for actually making a recording Esszet, fair play to you for doing it.

Your accent is not too shabby! Where are you from? I'm getting a hint of a German accent or something maybe at some bits? Like the first half sounded Irish to me and then from the 11th/12th second there was some kind of German sounds in there or something on some of the vowels.


Breandan you could have fooled me with that recording. Well done sir. I'm no linguistic myself but I've read that accents of languages are often not easy for adult learners to perfect.

Sorry I didn't notice this until now.

https://app.box.com/s/kanc5n18wlo5lqbybbahifnfzirc2ui0

Breandán- Could you replace the link with the forum one thanks, I've forgotten how to do it.

Breandán: Yes, I am aware of that, you must have missed the link in my post. The á seems to be much too fronted to me to be /ɑ:/, it basically seems like simple /a:/. There actually seems to be variation between /a/ and /æ/ for phonemic /a/ before or after slender consonants, it just seems like one of those things you have to learn by just listening to other people speak. And yes, I’ll try softening my r’s from now on, it seems to make speaking easier in general. I was surprised to see how much they used English r even then. Kinda sad, really.

oisin: I’m from New Yawk (where the Irish run the New York City Police Department and have for a long time); I am part German, and I speak the language reasonably well (I’m far from fluent), but I didn’t think I sounded German there, does anyone else think so?

Definitely. I wasn't surprised at oisin's comment at all ... and he didn't even hear the full recording with the weird German English bit that came after it.

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

OK, fine, from now on, I vill try to...GET IT RIGHT!!!!!

And yeah, sorry, a Bhreandáin, if I just seemed like I was trying to sound really angry for no good reason (then again, I was trying to sound German), that video had several million views before the guy moved it to his other channel, and if you've never seen it, you wouldn't get the joke, sorry about that.