Two more resources you might be interested in if you lean towards Munster Irish are an Teanga Bheo: Corca Dhuibhne by Diarmuid Ó Sé and the Irish of West Muskerry, Co. Cork by Brian Ó Cuív. The former is in Irish, but is specific to the type of Irish which is closer geographically to Loop Head than Muskerry is. As djwebb said, though, the differences within the Munster dialect as a whole aren't particularly massive.

Another book which I think is particularly good for giving beginners a good understanding of Irish grammar and vocab particular to the general Munster dialect is Teach Yourself Irish by Myles Dillon and Donncha Ó Cróinín. This book has been out of print for a number of years now, however, and is unfortunately becoming difficult to find for sale anymore.

With that being said, if you want to be able to converse with people in Irish, wherever they may be from, and to understand speakers from all backgrounds on Irish radio and television shows, you're going to need to develop an understanding of not only the three major dialects, but also standard Irish. There is a certain push in Irish media towards using standard Irish, in a manner that is comparable to the use of the entirely artificial "Mid-Atlantic" accent in English language throughout the last century.

I think you're probably going to find it difficult to find a large number of resources for learning any of the three dialects as a brand new Irish language learner (though perhaps you have some basis in it already?). What most people do, who are not fortunate enough to grow up speaking Irish at home, is begin their learning using resources like Buntús Cainte, and other resources aimed at teaching standard Irish to learners. These are intended to give learners a good general understanding of the basics of the language. At the point where dialect specific variants come into play the learner can then adopt these in accordance with their preferences, while retaining the generalist tools of standard Irish. Some are critical of standard Irish as a concept, and not without good reason in some cases. Nevertheless, the practice of using it as a teaching tool for second-language learners is well in line with the use of received pronunciation in the UK, and Standard American English (Academic English) in the USA. Both of these are preferred language learning and education, as well as in generalist media broadcasting, even if speakers in Liverpool, Alabama, Newcastle, or the Bronx, all with their own well established dialects, are inclined to perceive them as artificial. You may find learning Irish a less daunting task if you decide to go down this route, and then to augment your grammar and vocabulary with dialectal variants once you've gotten the hang of the basics.

I should add that that 1961 Teach Yourself Irish with embedded audio is available for download on archive.org at https://archive.org/details/TeachYourselfIrish/TYI1961/

Unlike Received Pronunciation, which has native speakers, the Lár-chanúint set out in Foclóir Póca has not a single native speaker, and seemingly not a single speaker of any type. It was simply made up.

Standard English (which relates to grammar and is not the same as RP) also has native speakers. There are certainly some artificial elements in it. E.g. "it is I", which was promoted by grammarians in the 18th century, and the prohibition of the double negative (also artificially invented and completely wrong on historical grounds), although that seems to have been adopted by most speakers now.

Standard Irish doesn't have any native speakers and was made up by a committee in a way that is not comparable to Standard English. I suggest that learners of Irish learn a real dialect and avoid any contact with "Standardised Irish" written and audiovisual materials -- or with L2 learners who speak that form of butchered Irish....

Thank you for the very helpful information and advice. Last night, I decided to do what you have suggested here--start with Buntús Cainte to get a basic foundation then zero in on a specific dialect.

Thanks, again!

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Just starting my study with Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail.

Thank you for this additional resource! I actually bought this book back in 1982 as I was readying myself to learn Irish. Then my wife and I had a son and then a daughter and my spare time disappeared (which was all good).

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Just starting my study with Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail.

Regarding Gussmann and Doyle’s Polish textbook, you can find the texts from it with vocab lists translated to English here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BGKxgc ... DaM3R/view

That’s not the whole textbook – just reading texts, but should be OK as a beginner’s reader with good grammar progression, usable for an English speaker.

The textbook nowhere claims to teach Kerry Irish, by the way – it just broadly states it teaches “Munster Irish”, but parts of it are clearly based mostly on the dialect of Kerry (although they do give some excerpts from Peadar Ua Laoghaire, a Cork writer, in some lessons too). Still one of the best resources for West Munster Irish anyway.

The old Teach Yourself Irish IMO works better as a learner’s reference grammar than a textbook (it’s still very good though!) – there’s at least one big omission of a pretty basic thing there, in my opinion: it never teaches how to express pronoun objects in the progressive construction… (the tá sí am’ priocadh, tá sé á moladh, tá(id) siad ár mbualadh, etc.).

Well, Doyle and Gussman don't give unaltered excepts from Peadar Ua Laoghaire. The texts are altered to bring them into conformity with Kerry Irish.... This is how many Irish people treat their "heritage".

There is an extremely brief reference to pronoun objects/passive objects of the verbal noun on p110, note 2, but so brief that nothing is explained there.