Yeah, I'm also keeping an eye on this thread. I'm working through the Dillon book as well and am just starting the 2nd chapter.

One thing that I have a lot of trouble with is not so much the grammar or vocab but getting the pronunciation correct to where I can consistently guess how a written word ought to sound. I was dissappointed that the audio files didn't sound out the individual consanant and vowel sounds. So if anyone is interested, I'd suggest that maybe we could post audio or youtube files with reading of short, random passages read according to Dillon's guidelines for Munster pronunciation or even just if someone were willing to take a stab at the sounding out the consonants and vowels, that would be a big help to me.

Welcome to the forum, Matt.

If you're looking for something that focuses more on pronunciation, I recommend Pimsleur Irish. You can get it fairly cheap on amazon. It's audio only, no written text and no explanation of the grammar, but they break the words down into individual syllables. The main drawback is that it's a very short course. You won't learn a lot of vocabulary, but the stuff you do learn will be learnt well.


That's a good idea. I don't think my pronunciation would be the best example to follow, but we do have a few people on the forum with good Munster Irish.

As far as I know, we only have one native speaker (Bríd Mhór). Her dialect is a little different to the Teach Yourself Irish course, but I think it would still be help to listen to her Focal an Lae (Word of the Day) thread.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1095

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Youtube - good idea.
But I wouldn't be able to help with Munster Irish.

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It is recommended that you always wait for three to agree on a translation.
I speak Connemara Irish, and my input will often reflect that.
I will do an mp3 file on request for short translations.
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Gumbi's not too bad at Munster when he sticks to what his father taught him and pays attention so the college urban doesn't creep in.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
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), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
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), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Great, I'll try to post something on youtube in the next day or so then. At the end of TYI, Dillon recommends that students ought to move on to the works of Peter O'Leary, so I thought that I'd try reading from O'Leary's historical novel, Niamh.

Here is the link for the bilingual edition at the corkirish website:
http://www.corkirish.com/wordpress/bili ... n-of-niamh

And to be honest, I'm starting from pretty much nothing in terms of pronunciation. I mean that every other word that I say will probably be flatly incorrect in every dialect, so my goal at the moment is just to get in the range of correct with respect to how the language is actually spoken. If there is someone who knows the Munster dialect and would be willing to listen to and correct my recordings that would be fantastic, but I think that any help I could get would be a big improvement at this stage. My first priority is just to make myself understood, and I'd personally rather have a slightly mixed up accent than not speak Irish at all because I couldn't learn it with a good Munster accent.

Hi Mick and An Cionnfhaolach,

I don't where you are with your Irish, but in my case I'm making my second pass at learning the language. I worked very hard on it about 5 or 6 years ago and got to the point where I could passably read the language but was pretty hopeless when it came to speaking or writing in it. Since the next several chapters will be mostly review for me (and maybe for you also) in terms of grammar and vocabulary maybe we could find some other things to work on as well? O'Leary's book, Séadna, which is a sort of Brothers Grim style story, is freely available on the internet in both English and Irish. Perhaps it might work as a group thing if we were to takes turns translating a paragraph from it and discussing any points of grammar and so on raised by it. My concern for a group like this is that the TYI book is somewhat dry in and of itself and might not require much discussion until several months in, when we begin to wonder which foot note from 10 or so chapters ago explains some question in chapter XVIII.

"If you're looking for something that focuses more on pronunciation, I recommend Pimsleur Irish. You can get it fairly cheap on amazon. It's audio only, no written text and no explanation of the grammar, but they break the words down into individual syllables. The main drawback is that it's a very short course. You won't learn a lot of vocabulary, but the stuff you do learn will be learnt well."

I was rooting around on the cork Irish website, and I found a page where a native speaker breaks down all the individual vowel, dipthong, and consonant sounds into individual sound files along with example words that the sounds occur in. I think it should be a big help to me. If anyone is interested, the link for it is here:

http://www.corkirish.com/wordpress/pron ... intonation

I actually did the Pimsleur cds several years ago and enjoyed them. They didn't help me much though in terms of knowing how to prounounce a written word that I was unfamiliar with. It's a shame pimsleur never made a complete Irish course.

I'm a massive fan of Peadar Ua Laoghaire and have read most of his works, so I'll just say a bit, I hope people find it useful.

Peadar Ua Laoghaire's books go roughly like this in difficulty, in my opinion, easiest first:
Sliabh na mban bhfionn
Mo Scéal Féin
Eisirt
An Craos-Deamhan
Don Cíochóté
Niamh
Cleasaidhe
Séadna
Táin Bó Cuailnge*

Peadar Ua Laoghaire wrote in a very pure form of Cork Irish, with lots of grammatical forms and subtleties that aren't used at all today. There's a lot of phrases and words in his books that had a separate meaning for him, but mean the same thing today. As well as a lot of words that have fallen out of use.
However Séadna and Cleasaidhe take this a step further and he in the first he is attempting to sound like his uncle born in 1780, so the Irish is even more archaic. In Cleasaidhe, I think he's trying to sound like an old Bardic story so he has things from the 16th century.

In general the stories are really fun and have a real medieval flavour to them. My favourite is Séadna, but Niamh probably has the best story. Personally I'd say Mo Scéal Féin or Niamh for an online group, or Séadna if we're feeling brave!

(* Táin is more modern than Séadna, but there is a lot of subtle uses of phrases and idioms.)

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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

Those sound files are excellent. I actually find real native Munster phonemes to be not that different from the Connemara ones, both being very different from the anglicised school Irish ones creeping into young people's speech.

Note especially the r sounds. They are nothing like an English r. Broad r is usually tapped/flapped, sometimes trilled. Slender r is somewhat buzzy like a z (approximant?).

Also, the broad ch is fricative /x/, not a plosive /k/ sound. One common mistake by school Irish is to substitute a hard k sound instead of the fricative sound.

Likewise, broad gh /ɣ/ is not a straight g sound /g/ but again a fricative /ɣ/, the voiced equivalent of /x/.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
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), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).