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PostPosted: Thu 21 Aug 2025 1:36 pm 
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Hi Everyone,

Recently I've been trying to get more insight into the dialects that existed in East Cork, namely from:
- Imokilly (https://www.townlands.ie/cork/imokilly/)
- Barrymore (https://www.townlands.ie/cork/barrymore/) (most of the barony is North Cork but the Glounthaune-Cobh-Carrigtwohill segment is all East)
- Kinatalloon (https://www.townlands.ie/cork/kinatalloon/)

I was surprised to see so much of Imokilly included on the 1926 Gaeltacht map (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/s-G ... _233040197) [note that they seem to have erroneously included a bit of Glounthaune/Knockraha on this, it's not mentioned in the original Act that I can see), but after seeing Breifne21's wonderful series of historical Gaeltacht maps on Reddit (links below, probably deserves its own thread if people haven't seen them already), it made more sense, given how long the area remained solidly Irish-speaking

Breifne21's Map Project Introduction - https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... pping_the/
1771-1781 -https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/1djj33n/the_irish_language_in_17711781_baronial_part_1_of/
1781-1791 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... part_2_of/
1791-1801 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... part_3_of/
1801-1811 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... rt_4_of_9/
1811-1821 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... part_5_of/
1821-1831 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... part_6_of/
1831-1841 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... part_7_of/
1841-1851 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... part_8_of/
1851-1861 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... part_9_of/
1861-1871 -
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/commen ... l_part_10/


I grew up in East Cork so finding out that there was up to very recently a living East Cork Irish dialect is exciting to me.

It seems like one Knockadoon speaker was recorded at least twice:
https://www.doegen.ie/LA_1044d1
https://www.canuint.ie/en/QQTRIN011594c1

There's also a recording of a Barrymore speaker, though he's from the northwest of the Barony, not the East.

A linguist at Newcastle University compiled a helpful Dictionary of Imokilly Irish from these recordings, identifying any words used, and highlighting where they differ from the Caighdeán:
https://www.academia.edu/6072166/Imokil ... Dictionary

AnLoingseach also mentions Ballymacoda phonetic features in passing in one of his videos, but doesn't elaborate on it (so possibly he's getting it from these recordings).

Where can I learn more about the speech of East Cork? I'm looking for Phonetics/pronunciation in particular (e.g. to what extent did East Cork use the Déise dipthong). I've seen Ó Cuív and Wagner's work mentioned here, do they cover this area in any depth?

I can't find it now, but there's also an old Daltaí thread from around 2009(?) where someone mentions that TG4 interviewed a surviving speaker of Ballymacoda Irish for their Muintir na Mara programme (presumably this episode https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30751256/) but I can't find a video of it to verify.

Does anyone know more about the dialect(s) of East Cork, or can point me in the right direction?


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PostPosted: Sat 18 Oct 2025 8:40 am 
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Heya saw this post a while ago and did some digging as I'm also from East Cork, if you can get your hands on 'Irish Dialects and Irish Speaking districts: Three Lectures' by Brian Ó Cuív in 1980. Theres a section on Cork Dialects where theres nearly 10 pages dedicated to the Ballymacoda Dialect.
Generally the point being made in that section revolved around the Dialect having significant overlap with both Muscraí and Déise Irish mainly in terms of vowels and dipthongs, it did differ from other Munster Dialects in pronouncing "ll"s, "dl"s, and very rarely just "l"s as "ld".
Also Ó Cuív mentioned Piaras Mac Gearailt and Pádraig Piarais (not the revolutionary) as 18th/19th century poets from the area, so if you can find there work there might be something there?

So far thats everything I found, thanks for the recording, I'll keep posting anything else I find on the thread if I do.


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PostPosted: Tue 16 Dec 2025 11:41 pm 
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Posts: 11
Thanks for the reply @ganidirlion, I've put in an order for the Ó Cuiv book, looking forward to reading it.

I have also come across this:
https://tonyofloinn.weebly.com/gaelainn ... cute.html/

He mentions that Liam Burke researched the Ballymacoda dialect in the 1960s, with recordings. The site mentions they'll be available digitally soon, but I'm not sure if that ever occurred.

The actual thesis he wrote is in the UCC library, I'll see if I can get an access card for a look next time I'm back in town.

Some of the other resources on that list could be worth a look as well


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PostPosted: Wed 17 Dec 2025 3:03 am 
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Apologies if there's a few sequential posts here (only after this post I spotted the Edit button, I'll use it in future). I'll add more information here as I find it - if nothing else just to have a central location for all of it.

I found the Daltaí thread I mentioned in the initial post:
https://www.daltai.com/discus/messages/ ... 1295726823

There are posts in the thread from 2011 claiming that there were surviving speakers in Ballymacoda, and that one of them had been interviewed on the TG4 show (which I haven't been able to track down to confirm yet). As this was nearly 15 years ago, if those speakers existed there's a good chance they're not still alive, so hopefully someone had the good sense to go record them at the time.


On the resources from the blog I posted, one features a recording of speakers from the Ballymacoda area that I hadn't seen mentioned before (not sure when these were recorded, but some transcripts mention Brian Ó Cuiv so possibly they were part of his research over the years?):
https://www.dias.ie/celt/celt-publicati ... glor-cork/

I haven't listened to all of them yet but the first recording is a conversation between a few men from Gleann an Mhuilinn (https://www.townlands.ie/cork/imokilly/ ... nawilling/), Cnoc an Dúin (https://www.logainm.ie/en/13681), and some other inaudible location (based on the transcript). It can get hard to hear due to multiple people talking at once, but it's around 23 minutes of casual conversation, which is pretty good for this kind of recording. One thing I noticed (and maybe this is also a Múscraí/Déise feature) is how nasal their pronunciation of "ní hea" is compared to the standard.

One of the speakers appears to be Séamus Breathnach, who is also in the Doegen and Repository of Irish Dialects recordings, mentioned above. The full list of recordings (apparently by the same man) from Doegen can be seen here - https://www.doegen.ie/taxonomy/term/21589

The Imokilly Dictionary academic seems to have used Ó Cuiv's work but I don't see this specific recording mentioned in the references, so possibly this is something less well-known.

If the Liam Burke thesis recordings were also to come to light there would be a pretty decent amount of material to go on for reconstructing or reviving this dialect (albeit that the same people seem to be recorded numerous times). The blog mentioned in the last post seems to be in some way connected to the Conradh na Gaeilge branch in Carrigtwohill, which is encouraging (i.e. someone there is at least aware of the dialect and enthusiastic about researching it)


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PostPosted: Tue 14 Apr 2026 2:03 am 
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Imokilly and East Cork Irish refers to the traditional variety of the Irish language once spoken in the Imokilly barony and the wider East Cork region in County Cork, Ireland. Ragdoll Hit


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