No, in the future too, sorry.
That's a pity about the Caighdeán.

Béad, beid (or beid siad), beimid etc
do bhíos, do bhís, do bhíodar, do bhíobhair, do bhíomair, all I say and their equivalent in almost every verb.
Tháim, tháir, tháid, thá sibh (although I have began to use táthaoi because of West Munster influence), tháimid...

Always the do dh'. Do dh'airigheabhair an fothram etc. Do dh'fhoghlamaíos.

For some reason though a lot of present tense and future tense for 'you' are unnatural except tháir and a few others.
Example: ní bheidh tú and ní dhéanfaidh tú not ní bheir or ní dhéanfair, I'm not sure why.
Yes, I recently realised that some of the older speakers in Connachta and in Ulster use the bhíos etc as well. Came as a shock.

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I recommend to learn Irish pronunciation on doegen.ie
Scottish Gaelic pronunciation on tobarandualchais.co.uk

In Kerry "do bhíobhair" is pronounced víovair, but in Cork it is víúir. So: do bhíúir. D'airíúir, etc.

I think in Ring it's the broad v as is in Kerry.


Yeah definitely. Given were using synthetic forms all over the place regardless, I don't think it would have been hard to tell us that we should avoid certain ones in the past tense when writing.

Also she didn't use 'do' (past tense) when chatting to us, but when with other Irish speakers she did.
In fact, I remember thinking that 'do' was meant to be used for emphasis in those tenses on top of the contrast forms.


I don't remember hearing tá with the seimhiú but I wouldn't be surprised if both lenited and unletited variaties are found in Ring.
The first time I heard thá and the like was from Helen Ní Shé on Saol ó Dheas and it blew my mind.
I was thinking that the Kerry folk had gone wild adding seimhiús for the craic of it.
tháir -> definitely keep this in your Irish! It's awesome.


Complete guesswork here, but I'm wondering if it's to do with how similar the future 2nd person and present 2nd person synthetic forms are.
I've been recently making my way through an audiobook of Séadna and in a bunch of places (or at least when spoken at pace) the future tense f/h sound seems to get dropped e.g. cuirir vs cuirhir both end up sounding the same.
Granted, from context it's obvious which form the speaker is going for "cuirfir ag gol í" but I could see why in other contexts it may not be so obvious.
Same goes for the 3rd person plural I'd guess cuirid vs cuirfid end up sounding similar.
I recently saw a post from An Londubh from a while back where he was saying some speakers keep the future 2nd person sg but ditch the present tense one.
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1406&p=17036&hilit=future+tense+synthetic#p17036

Peadar Ua Laoghaire wrote (in Mion-Chaint) that "do" could not be dropped before non-lenitable consonants. So you can say "ghlan sé" or "do ghlan sé" - as the g is lenited, it shows the presence of the "do" even if you don't say the "do". But "labhair sé" is just plain wrong, because the l is not lenited. I don't know if this was just his personal theory, but it is logical. "Labhair sé" without "do" is not found in Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh's Irish either.

PUL never uses the autonomous form of the past tense without "do", other than with irregular verbs where the autonomous is lenited, e.g. bhíothas/do bhíothas. Fuaradh/do fuaradh is another exception that can be used without "do". But it has to be do glanadh an tigh. Phrases like "rugadh agus tógadh sa Ghaeltacht me" are not found in his Irish. It should be do rugadh agus do tógadh sa Ghaeltacht me. Now PUL wrote a kind of educated/tied-up version of the dialect. In fact speakers such as Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh did use tógadh without "do".

Yes, the future forms with -f- often have only a very fleeting h or no h at all.

Thá agus athá i gcómhnuidhe isna Déise.
I always use the "do" unless speaking/writing fast.
Ring and Kerry Irish have many similarities.

And Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh used thá in lenited position (cé thá chúinn?, etc). Although as stated above, in the Decies it is lenited in all positions.

Thanks for all the extra info you both! I think I'll have to give mionchaint a shot too.

Regarding the weakening of the genitive, the way it works for most speakers is that they show the mutation for masculine nouns:

hata an fhear

But essentially do nothing for feminine nouns:

tigh an bhean úd

The genitive is typically dropped if qualified by an adjective or relative clause, or increasingly if the noun is polysyllabic or not a very common genitive.

The genitive plural or adjectives in the genitive are not said outside of stock phrases.

If one reads 18th or 19th century diaries or informal writing this was already well under way back then.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Just thought this might be of interest. A video was uploaded to YouTube just yesterday which covers this exact phenomenon from about the 22:25 mark on.

He refers to Ar, Níor, Gur and Nár as the "Old System", but notes that it is still used, and he calls An, Ní, Go and Ná the "New System".

Interestingly, he also stresses that the An of the New System is very unstressed, so you don't actually pronounce the n, and the particle may be dropped entirely.

That's great Ade, I hope he does more videos. He actually pronounces things properly. I think he is American. If he were a Galltacht Irishman, he would insist that Irish spoken with a thick English accent is actually a valid Dublin dialect of Irish and actually superior to Gaeltacht Irish...