Dublin Accent

koganei12

Hi, I'm starting to try and teach myself Irish (took it in school but, you know...) and I find that the only learning materials I can find are based on the Connemara dialect, the Munster dialect or the Donegal dialect. I know what you're thinking - that's all of the dialects, right? But I want to speak Irish with my normal Dublin accent. It's an Irish accent too. I'd ideally like to learn to speak like the people who came out of the gaelscoileanna in Dublin, as they have perfect Irish, but speak it with Dublin accents and in some cases have even sort of started to turn it into a dialect of its own. I do however have difficulty finding pronunciation guides that don't try to make me sound like I'm from Cois Fharraige. Any body know any where online I can get samples of Dublin accented standard Irish spoken?

MajorMax

:eek:But why? The dublin accent sounds like a cat being kicked down a hill

koganei12

Well it's my accent, and I'd rather not pretend I'm from somewhere in the countryside I've never even been. It's our language too you know. And us Dublin folk don't really tend to regard the country "brogue" as exactly sophisticated. I rather sound like myself thanks.

dubhthach

The thing to remember is that it's a Dublin accent of English. There's a high probability that the Dublin accent of Irish was quite different (There was Irish speakers in Dublin mountains until 1890's/1900's)

There's a number of phonological sounds in Irish that aren't present in English language -- hard ch,gh, vowel pronunciations, r is pronunced differently (tr -- good sign of this) etc.

Toyota_Avensis

get involved in a Ciorcail Gaeilge in the city to get interacting with Dublin speakers. There are plenty about, is just a matter of sussing them out. Conradh na Gaeilge í mBaile Atha Cliath make connect you with some Dublin speakers..

koganei12

Well, I've heard Irish spoken (completely understandably) in a Dublin accent by native speakers (they spoke it at home from birth and in school) and they seem to get by. The gh/ch sounds aren't the problem, it's the vowels. We get told we're pronouncing it wrong if we don't try to imitate the accent of the gaelteacht speakers, but that's just not how we sound. I refuse to put on a fake accent when speaking (what should be) my native tongue. The fact that there are Dublin speakers in the gaelscoileanna kind of proves we don't need to put on an accent. For the purposes of communication, the language works just fine in a Dublin accent. If you don't like the sound of it, that's you personal prejudice. Personally I don't like gaelteacht speakers sound. And if we could detach the language from the image of back water gaelteachts then maybe more Dubliners would take up the language. And I don't necessarily think the Dublin Irish accent would have sounded any different than Dublin English one does today. Maybe I'm wrong, if you have any sources that prove that Dubliners spoke Irish with a different accent when there was a Dublin Irish, then please post them.

koganei12

Toyota_Avensis wrote: »

get involved in a Ciorcail Gaeilge in the city to get interacting with Dublin speakers. There are plenty about, is just a matter of sussing them out. Conradh na Gaeilge í mBaile Atha Cliath make connect you with some Dublin speakers..

Thanks, I'll check that out. Unfortunately I'm living in Japan at the moment and was just looking for online help with the pronunciation. Just info mainly on pronouncing vowels and vowel combinations the way Dublin speakers do so I don't sound strange/ rural to other Dublin speakers.

dubhthach

Koganie12,

The reason is that Dublin speakers are undergoing a vowel-shift. Eg. In Dublin english there is a change going on in the value of vowels. This doesn't reflect the actual pronunciation of vowels in Irish. In terms of "Dublin English" it's a fairly modern development only dating back to the 1970's

As a result you can hear RTÉ presenters pronuncing Dáil as Doyle (doile?), and Fáil as Foil. There's quite a good overview to be found on this website:
http://www.uni-due.de/IERC/dublin.htm

Even if the Dublin vowels hadn't shifted there is still the point that vowels are pronounced differently in English language then they are in Irish.

In case you haven't noticed I didn't mention anything about a preference, I'm just pointing out that vowels in english are different. If I started speaking French tomorrow and pronounced the vowels like I do in english it wouldn't be correct.

koganei12

dubhthach wrote: »

Koganie12,

The reason is that Dublin speakers are undergoing a vowel-shift. Eg. In Dublin english there is a change going on in the value of vowels. This doesn't reflect the actual pronunciation of vowels in Irish. In terms of "Dublin English" it's a fairly modern development only dating back to the 1970's

As a result you can hear RTÉ presenters pronuncing Dáil as Doyle (doile?), and Fáil as Foil. There's quite a good overview to be found on this website:
http://www.uni-due.de/IERC/dublin.htm

Even if the Dublin vowels hadn't shifted there is still the point that vowels are pronounced differently in English language then they are in Irish.

In case you haven't noticed I didn't mention anything about a preference, I'm just pointing out that vowels in english are different. If I started speaking French tomorrow and pronounced the vowels like I do in english it wouldn't be correct.

Dubhthach,

You are indeed correct about the pronuciation of Dáil as "Doyle", "Fáil" as "foil" and even "garda" as "gortha". I however, like most Dubliners do not pronounce these words this way. As far as a Dublin vowel shift is concerned, perhaps there is (maybe you are referencing the so called "D4" accent) a certain accent developing, however my grandparents who are in their 80's and whose accents were formed prior to the 1970's still sound like Dubliners. So if you're saying there's a new accent since then, then that's not the accent I use or intend to speak Irish with. Secondly, as regards your comment on vowel differences between English and Irish, well, there are vowel differences between different accents of ENlgish, and different accents of Irish or any other language. Vowels are the first thing to change when accents and dialects are compared. Donegal speakers of Irish use different vowels to connemara speakers. Does this mean one of them is right on the other wrong? Does a speaker from northern English speak English incorrectly because the don't sound like Londoners? The Dublin accent is as Irish as any other, and speaking Irish with a Dublin accent should be seen in the same light as speaking it with any other regional accent. Furthermore, If you were speaking French you would be attempting to speak a FOREIGN language, and thus would need to adjust to the accent. Irish is not a foreign language. I am not learning to speak Connemara-ese, I'm learning to speak Irish, and my accent and regional variant is as valid as any other. And anyway, that's like saying people from the gaelteacht don't speak English correctly because their accents (as are the accents of everyone in Ireland) are influenced by the phonetics of Irish, which is of course ridiculous.

dubhthach

koganei12 wrote: »

Dubhthach,

You are indeed correct about the pronuciation of Dáil as "Doyle", "Fáil" as "foil" and even "garda" as "gortha". I however, like most Dubliners do not pronounce these words this way. As far as a Dublin vowel shift is concerned, perhaps there is (maybe you are referencing the so called "D4" accent) a certain accent developing, however my grandparents who are in their 80's and whose accents were formed prior to the 1970's still sound like Dubliners. So if you're saying there's a new accent since then, then that's not the accent I use or intend to speak Irish with. Secondly, as regards your comment on vowel differences between English and Irish, well, there are vowel differences between different accents of ENlgish, and different accents of Irish or any other language. Vowels are the first thing to change when accents and dialects are compared. Donegal speakers of Irish use different vowels to connemara speakers. Does this mean one of them is right on the other wrong? Does a speaker from northern English speak English incorrectly because the don't sound like Londoners? The Dublin accent is as Irish as any other, and speaking Irish with a Dublin accent should be seen in the same light as speaking it with any other regional accent. Furthermore, If you were speaking French you would be attempting to speak a FOREIGN language, and thus would need to adjust to the accent. Irish is not a foreign language. I am not learning to speak Connemara-ese, I'm learning to speak Irish, and my accent and regional variant is as valid as any other. And anyway, that's like saying people from the gaelteacht don't speak English correctly because their accents (as are the accents of everyone in Ireland) are influenced by the phonetics of Irish, which is of course ridiculous.

You'd be surprised by the amount of people who use to regard "Hiberno-English" as divergent/deviant, after all we were all suppose to speak "Oxbridge"

In general if you are googling on the web for a more neutral Irish accent (neutral in that it doesn't pull too much towards any of the Gaeltachtaí) then the term to google is: Lárchanúint -- literally "middle dialect" which is suppose to be constructed from common features across all dialects.

As for "Dublin English", there are three specific accents in Dublin, all of them are divergent from the rest of "Hiberno-English" in a number of ways. The reason for this? Simple the accent has been under influence of the english language the longest. The same of course is true of accents of Drogheda/Dundalk/Arklow etc.

In general what is happening in Irish is you are getting a certain amount of Dialect-levelling. This can be seen somewhat on the likes of TG4, likewise of course you get the same thing happening in Hiberno-English with salient features of some accents in the process of disappearing.

Krusader

OP, what your mixing up is accent and phonology, of course you should speak Irish in your own accent but you must have correct phonetics and listening to native speakers is the best way to do that
Once you pronounce the right sounds in your own accent you should be fine
OP, if you want to hear good irish with a dublin accent, listen to Sharon Ní Bheoláin

the 'doyle' 'foyle' 'gorrtha' pronounciations are cringeworthy really

dubhthach

Crosáidí wrote: »

OP, what your mixing up is accent and phonology, of course you should speak Irish in your own accent but you must have correct phonetics and listening to native speakers is the best way to do that
Once you pronounce the right sounds in your own accent you should be fine
OP, if you want to hear good irish with a dublin accent, listen to Sharon Ní Bheoláin

the 'doyle' 'foyle' 'gorrtha' pronounciations are cringeworthy really

OP this is basically what I meant, however I did it in my usual windbag way --long day--

Regarding phonetics, this page has some mp3's which cover specific phonetic pronunciations of different letters. It notes where certain pronunciation is common across all dialects.

http://www.phouka.com/gaelic/sounds/sounds.htm

Enkidu

This is a difficult topic that comes up now and again, but Crosáidí has the right of it. The first thing to note is that Irish has sounds that are completely absent in English, so you will not sound the same as you do in English. These sounds are:

Broad dh/gh - Persian g or the Greek gamma, I'll repeat what I said in another thread:

To pronounce gamma go to this page:
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/consonants.html
And go to the "velar" column and the "fricative" row and click the second symbol on the right, it looks like a wierd y.
Although you'll probably be able to pick up the sound from Buntús Cainte if you listen to dh/gh words.

Broad ch - Can be found in the link above. Click on the χ symbol.

Slender ch - like German "ich", or the h in the English "hue".

Broad r - A single tapped r, like the Spanish "oro".

Slender r - This sound is very strange. I've only ever heard it in Irish and Icelandic. I'm not even going to try to replicate it in words, you'll need to listen to native speakers. Listen to TG4 and listen for the way "ceathair" is pronounced in the title.

None of these sounds exist in Dublin English (or almost all dialects of Irish English really), but they are grammatically necessary in Irish. For example:
Bóthar - road
Bun an Bhóthair - The bottom of the road

The r in Bóthar becomes a slender r and indicates the "of the road", so these things are necessary.

So you can have your accent, but you are going to sound very different.

Also studies have been done one these things and any English Dublin accent in living memory does not have the sounds of Dublin Irish when it still existed.

deise go deo

OP, You have to realize that there is a difference between speaking Irish correctly and trying to imitate a Connemara accent. To speak Irish correctly you will have to use sounds that don't exist in English, and you will have to pronounce letters differently than they would be pronounced in English.

You should of course use your own accent, but that dose not mean that you should try to pronounce Irish words as if they were English words.

Nuggles

Eh. . . . . .

Seriously?

You read the words in your accent. The connacht/munster/donegal dialects sound certain thinks differently, not everything. The basics things are all the same.

Like something like "cuirfidh", in Conamara we wouldn't pronounce that f, but lots of other people do.

I don't think you CAN learn Irish in a different accent to your own, that sounds a little crazy. And those people from Gaelscoileanna, learn from the same books that kids all over the country learn from. Most of what their pronunciation is founded on is from who teaches it to them.

koganei12 wrote: »

And anyway, that's like saying people from the gaelteacht don't speak English correctly because their accents (as are the accents of everyone in Ireland) are influenced by the phonetics of Irish, which is of course ridiculous.

If only you knew. . . .

koganei12

Ok, so, for one thing, if it comes to vowels, then different dialects of Irish use different vowels, (as do different dialects of any language) so I don't see why a Dublin dialect should be any different in that regard. If connemara speakers can use their vowels, Donegal speakers use a different set and Muster speakers use yet another, then Dubliners should be allow to use their own. Secondly, when it comes to the consonants, I've heard Dubliners speak fluent Irish in their own accents, not using those sounds that you mentioned (I know the sounds, and I know that the speakers I'm thinking of don't use them), and yet they seemed to be able to communicate their message perfectly well, despite you saying it's grammatically necessary. Actually, that's the reason that spurred me on to ask the question in the first place. I had read that these sounds were grammatically necessary and knew that people who speak Irish with my accent don't use those sounds and wondered how they deal with this supposed grammatical ambiguity. If "bóthar" (which I pronounce "bow-her") means "road" and "bhóthair" (which I would pronounce "voh-her", with thr "r" pronounced the same way as before) means "of the road" then how do the speakers with my accent differentiate? They must be able to, because they don't have communication problems as far as I know. As far as the broad "r" goes, I don't see why I can't pronounce it as I pronounce "r" in English. Does it have to be a tapped "r" for grammatical reasons or is it just the accent Irish is spoken in? If it's just the accent then I can use my own accent and people outside Dublin will just have to accept that in Dublin Irish we don't tap our "r"s. It's not the end of the world. We don't sound like you in English, why should we in Irish?
And as for the Dublin Irish having had a different accent, I'm sorry, but I'm going to hold onto my skepticism until I see/read proper proof. It wouldn't make sense for the accent to have popped out of nowhere, and it doesn't sound like an English accent, so I can't see how it could have come from there. I really don't think Dubliners sound any more different to Connacht people than Donegal people do, yet the difference between the Donegal accent and the Connemara one is respected as regional variation yet Dubliners are told that we have to change our accent when speaking Irish.

koganei12

Nuggles wrote: »

Eh. . . . . .

Seriously?

You read the words in your accent. The connacht/munster/donegal dialects sound certain thinks differently, not everything. The basics things are all the same.

Like something like "cuirfidh", in Conamara we wouldn't pronounce that f, but lots of other people do.

I don't think you CAN learn Irish in a different accent to your own, that sounds a little crazy. And those people from Gaelscoileanna, learn from the same books that kids all over the country learn from. Most of what their pronunciation is founded on is from who teaches it to them.




If only you knew. . . .

Of course you can learn it in a different accent. I could go to connemara and start learning Irish and start speaking with the accent. I'd imitated it just as if I were imitating how they speak English. Strangely, if I did it in Irish they'd tell me I was great for using the proper accent, yet if I tried to sound like them in English they'd say I was taking the piss out of them, which I would be. It's like telling me that in order to speak correct English I have to start sounding like I'm from London. How would you feel if a Londoner said that to you? You tell him where to go...

And the kids in the Gaelscoileanna are more influenced by each other and their normal English accents than by their teachers I'd say. They come up with their own slang and everything. It's great, they're truly making a dialect of their own out of it, as they should.

koganei12

Ok, I found this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l969H454bTw&feature=related

The guy singing in this video (in Irish) is from Dublin (I think) and he pronounces all the words as I would have done if asked to read them out (the lyrics or in the video). He does not use the tapped "r" nor does he (as far as I can hear) differentiate his "r"s between slender and broad (based on "r"s that come after slender vowels, which to my knowledge is when consonants get slenderised).
Is he coherent? Does this lack of slenderising "r" produce grammatically unintelligible speech? This is how I would speak Irish (perhaps with a slightly heavier Dublin twang, but the vowels and consonants are right). However there seems to be no resources for this dialect.

Krusader

koganei12 wrote: »

However there seems to be no resources for this dialect.

There is no Dublin Dialect for Irish, the people in Dublin who speak Irish learn the dialect of their teacher wether it be Ulster, Connacht, Munster or a mixture of all 3

When in 50 years time or so when generations of Dubs have passed their Irish on to their kids and kid's kids, then there might be a Dublin dialect or even an Urban Irish dialect, this dialect is too volatile at the moment and there is no coherant structure to it to have any material on it.
Two men on 1 street in Dublin could pronounce words differently due to having different teachers thats no basis for a dialect at this given time

It will happen though, but i recommend using native speakers as your guide in phonetics

Krusader

koganei12 wrote: »

And as for the Dublin Irish having had a different accent, I'm sorry, but I'm going to hold onto my skepticism until I see/read proper proof. It wouldn't make sense for the accent to have popped out of nowhere, and it doesn't sound like an English accent, so I can't see how it could have come from there. I really don't think Dubliners sound any more different to Connacht people than Donegal people do, yet the difference between the Donegal accent and the Connemara one is respected as regional variation yet Dubliners are told that we have to change our accent when speaking Irish.

This is because the majority of Irish speakers in Dublin aren't native speakers, nobody is telling you to change your accent, speak irish with a dublin accent but use the right sounds. You wouldn't learn Breton from a recording of a native French speaker same applies to Irish

Enkidu

Crosáidí has said most of this already, but I'm just going to add detail.

koganei12 wrote: »

Ok, so, for one thing, if it comes to vowels, then different dialects of Irish use different vowels, (as do different dialects of any language) so I don't see why a Dublin dialect should be any different in that regard.

As already mentioned, there is no stable Dublin dialect, so it has no concrete set of vowel sounds.

Secondly, when it comes to the consonants, I've heard Dubliners speak fluent Irish in their own accents, not using those sounds that you mentioned (I know the sounds, and I know that the speakers I'm thinking of don't use them), and yet they seemed to be able to communicate their message perfectly well, despite you saying it's grammatically necessary.

Think about it though. I have imperfect French and with my imperfect French I can communicate with other learners of French and native speakers. A mistake I often make is not getting the tenses correct, because different tenses occur with different frequencies in French than in English. However I am still understood, mainly from context, despite my mistakes. That does not make my incorrectly inflected French the "Enkidu dialect" of French.
Those sounds are grammatically necessary, they have been used in Irish for at least 1,500 years and are necessary for the patterns and rhythms of countless songs, poems and speeches written in the language. Whatever about the "r" sounds, how do you do without the "dh" sound? There would be no difference between "a dhoras" and "a doras" for example.

I had read that these sounds were grammatically necessary and knew that people who speak Irish with my accent don't use those sounds and wondered how they deal with this supposed grammatical ambiguity.

I don't know how they deal with it either, I suspect a mix of context e.t.c. I know for a fact that fluent speakers of native Irish (my own Aunt for example has said this) often are confused as to what exactly they are saying.

They must be able to, because they don't have communication problems as far as I know. As far as the broad "r" goes, I don't see why I can't pronounce it as I pronounce "r" in English. Does it have to be a tapped "r" for grammatical reasons or is it just the accent Irish is spoken in?

Again, every Irish dialect has a tapped r, it is not an accent thing, it is a sound of the Irish language. It was present in the Leinster dialects of Irish, including Dublin Irish. See:
Stair na Gaeilge, published by NUI Maynooth, the "Canúintí Chúige Laighean" and "An tAiceann i nGaeilge Laighean" (pg. 467 - 471), for example.

And as for the Dublin Irish having had a different accent, I'm sorry, but I'm going to hold onto my skepticism until I see/read proper proof. It wouldn't make sense for the accent to have popped out of nowhere, and it doesn't sound like an English accent, so I can't see how it could have come from there. I really don't think Dubliners sound any more different to Connacht people than Donegal people do, yet the difference between the Donegal accent and the Connemara one is respected as regional variation yet Dubliners are told that we have to change our accent when speaking Irish.

The Stair na Gaeilge book above will tell you all you should need. If you want more references just ask. Nobody said it popped up from nowhere, but it has lost a lot of the vowel and consonant sounds of Dublin Irish.

koganei12

Enkidu wrote: »

Crosáidí has said most of this already, but I'm just going to add detail.


As already mentioned, there is no stable Dublin dialect, so it has no concrete set of vowel sounds.

I suppose what I'm referring to would be An Caighdeán Oifigiúil in a Dublin accent. And when I refer to Dublin speakers I'm not talking about people who speak it as a second language they learned in school for the leaving Cert. I mean people who speak it at home and/or went to both primary and secondary school entirely through Irish.

Enkidu wrote: »

Think about it though. I have imperfect French and with my imperfect French I can communicate with other learners of French and native speakers. A mistake I often make is not getting the tenses correct, because different tenses occur with different frequencies in French than in English. However I am still understood, mainly from context, despite my mistakes. That does not make my incorrectly inflected French the "Enkidu dialect" of French.
Those sounds are grammatically necessary, they have been used in Irish for at least 1,500 years and are necessary for the patterns and rhythms of countless songs, poems and speeches written in the language. Whatever about the "r" sounds, how do you do without the "dh" sound? There would be no difference between "a dhoras" and "a doras" for example.

The gh/dh/ and ch sounds are not a problem. Maybe it's just because I was always taught them that they don't seem to feel strange to say. And as I said, The people I'm talking about are natives - people who think in Irish. These people have no communicative difficulty amongst each other. I think if you tried to tell them that they spoke their mother tongue brokenly they'd tell you otherwise. This isn't like assessing the ability of a French Breton speaker and a Breton one, it's like assessing and Irish English speaker and an English English speaker. Different accents - yes, is one right and the other wrong? - no.

Enkidu wrote: »

I don't know how they deal with it either, I suspect a mix of context e.t.c. I know for a fact that fluent speakers of native Irish (my own Aunt for example has said this) often are confused as to what exactly they are saying.

As I said, these people ARE fluent native speakers. They understand each other perfectly. Chalk your Aunt not understanding them up to dialectal difference.

Enkidu wrote: »

Again, every Irish dialect has a tapped r, it is not an accent thing, it is a sound of the Irish language. It was present in the Leinster dialects of Irish, including Dublin Irish. See:
Stair na Gaeilge, published by NUI Maynooth, the "Canúintí Chúige Laighean" and "An tAiceann i nGaeilge Laighean" (pg. 467 - 471), for example.

If it's a "sound of the language" that we don't use here (when speaking Irish) then it's not a sound of our language. As I already mentioned, these native speakers in Dublin do not use tapped "r" sounds. They get by fine without them. You can say that it makes them sound like they're speaking English when they're speaking Irish, but that's like saying English people could say all Irish people sound like they're speaking Irish when speaking English, because our accents come from the Irish language.

dubhthach

koganei12 wrote: »

If it's a "sound of the language" that we don't use here (when speaking Irish) then it's not a sound of our language. As I already mentioned, these native speakers in Dublin do not use tapped "r" sounds. They get by fine without them. You can say that it makes them sound like they're speaking English when they're speaking Irish, but that's like saying English people could say all Irish people sound like they're speaking Irish when speaking English, because our accents come from the Irish language.

I think a better comparison is the issue that alot of Irish use to have with th's in English (Some still do). Th sound is an integral part of the english language (across all dialects), however it doesn't exist as a phoneme in Irish. As a result when L1 (1st language) Irish speakers switched to English they pronounced th as t/d they then passed this to their children, by the time their grandchildren/great-grandchildren were L1 (native) English speakers they were still say t/d for th (Bertie for example)

However over time the pronunciation of th has "normalised" in an english phonetic sense. There are plenty of people now with Dublin accents or Galway accents who pronounce the th, it's not a case of changing your accent but using the correct phonemes.

Regarding Irish accents you have to realise that the current Hiberno-English accents are very different from those of 200 years ago. They are very much a hybrid of standard english and irish features. Traditionally in Hiberno-english Irish people would pronounce a s as a ſ (sh) if beside e/i -- slender s in Irish.

As a result west -> wesht, best -> besht etc.

Sometimes you might still hear this in the west of Ireland however now adays people of our generation would only use that in a joking matter ("country yokel" accent :rolleyes: ). It use to also be a feature of Dublin accent. If you read Joyce you can see he writes it in a phonetic passages for some of his Dublin characters. However now adays you won't heard any Dublin speakers (across all 3 accents) say it.

This is part of what they call "Dialect levelling" -- non standard features eventually get replaced as social advancement/improved communications occur.

Tapped r's believe it or not are features of some Hiberno-English accents, especially among older speakers (50-60+) from the country. It also still appears among some speakers with a "Local Dublin" (Liberties/inner city) accent (other two accents been "Mainstream Dublin" and "New Dublin")

The stage irish accent that we all cringe about is somewhat based on the 18th century accent of Hiberno-English. In some ways this clearly shows how accents have changed. Even by late 19th century the accent in Dublin has clearly changed as can be seen in the riot that occured with the opening of "The Playboy of the Western World" in 1907. Sygne had based his dialogue upon those of the people in Mayo/Galway he had stayed with. These were people who only stopped speaking Irish the generation before. However the crowd in Dublin saw the accents as a slight on all Irish people.

Anyways back to tapped-r's. I don't think anyone is saying you sound like an english person if you don't use them. No more then Bertie sounds like a Connemara man due to his lack of th's. It's only one phoneme and accent is made up also of alot more then just phonemes (stress, tone, speed, prosody etc.). For example you can speak with a Liberties accent in Irish and still have tapped-r's

Regarding vowels the Lárchanúint indeed closely matches what's written in Caighdeán Oifigiúil. In general you can see people even on TG4 who are fairly "dialect free" in that they speak clearly (with some accents features -- but not much). I believe the Foclóir Póca pronunciation guide is based around this. I believe your original question of course was about resources online. In general I wouldn't think there is many but Radió na Life which does live streaming would probably be of help to you. It's based in Dublin and the presenters are mostly from the Dublin region. Their tagline is "Urban Irish Radio"

http://www.raidionalife.ie/

Anyways this is good discussion, it beats the hell out of some "punch and judy" threads on boards about political status of Irish etc etc.

Enkidu

koganei12 wrote: »

I suppose what I'm referring to would be An Caighdeán Oifigiúil in a Dublin accent. And when I refer to Dublin speakers I'm not talking about people who speak it as a second language they learned in school for the leaving Cert. I mean people who speak it at home and/or went to both primary and secondary school entirely through Irish.

An Caighdeán Oifigiúil is a grammatical standard, not a pronunciation one. I have heard people from Dublin Gaelscoileanna pronounce the tapped and slender r's, I've heard people only have the tapped r and people who have neither. That's the basic problem, people sound like their teachers (as they would naturally), so there is no stable Dublin dialect, there may be in a couple of decades, but not at the moment. So it is currently not a dialect, simply people in Dublin who speak varying forms of Irish.

Let me put it this way, the vast majority of native speakers of Irish and that includes a good amount in Dublin, use tapped and slender r. Poetry and Literature use the sounds of tapped and slender r. So I would think that they are good sounds to copy. If, in a hundred years, there is a stable dialect called Dublin Irish which doesn't use slender and tapped r, then fair enough. Currently there isn't one.

The gh/dh/ and ch sounds are not a problem. Maybe it's just because I was always taught them that they don't seem to feel strange to say. And as I said, The people I'm talking about are natives - people who think in Irish. These people have no communicative difficulty amongst each other. I think if you tried to tell them that they spoke their mother tongue brokenly they'd tell you otherwise. This isn't like assessing the ability of a French Breton speaker and a Breton one, it's like assessing and Irish English speaker and an English English speaker. Different accents - yes, is one right and the other wrong? - no.

Let me put this a different way, in case it sounds judgemental. If a group of people began to inflected the verb "to be" in English as follows:
I am
You are
He are
She are
We ams
You ares
They ares

I wouldn't recommend that you copy it. Certainly, I am sure that those people could understand each other, but it wouldn't be a standard form or even a stable dialect. However if it went on to be a stable feature of a dialect spoken in a certain region, e.t.c. then that's fine. However slender r and tapped r being absent are not the feature of any dialect currently, the are present in the speech of almost all native speakers of the language.

As I said, these people ARE fluent native speakers. They understand each other perfectly. Chalk your Aunt not understanding them up to dialectal difference.

I'm not so certain, she can understand speakers from the other two provinces. Isn't it a bit suspicious that the people who she finds difficult to understand are those who drop something that has been in the language since the beginning. That's another problem, those sounds are necessary to get the right rhythm of a lot of songs and poems, e.t.c.

If it's a "sound of the language" that we don't use here (when speaking Irish) then it's not a sound of our language. As I already mentioned, these native speakers in Dublin do not use tapped "r" sounds. They get by fine without them. You can say that it makes them sound like they're speaking English when they're speaking Irish, but that's like saying English people could say all Irish people sound like they're speaking Irish when speaking English, because our accents come from the Irish language.

Wouldn't it be nice though if the new Dublin Irish had the r sounds that the original Dublin Irish had?

Krusader

@koganei12

Tá súil agam go bhfuil tú slán sábháilte sa Seapáin tar éis an chrith talún

Nuggles

I'm somewhat confused by this whole thread. Is the OP saying that he wants to say vowels, while speaking as Gaeilge, the way they are pronounced in English?

So he/she pronounces bóthar "Bow-her", which is fine. But pronounces Bhóthair
"voh-her", ignoring the i? That doesn't even make sense if he does pronounce it like it's an english word.

And if one is to learn an ghaeilge chaighdeánach, you have to pronounce the last r as a consan caol, otherwise you're pronouncing it wrong. Not wrong as in "the dublin way, that isn't a gaeltacht dialect", but wrong in all dialects/accents of the language.

le and lee sound very different, you can't just ignore the other vowel, same for the i in bhóthair

Fuinseog

koganei12 wrote: »

Well it's my accent, and I'd rather not pretend I'm from somewhere in the countryside I've never even been. It's our language too you know. And us Dublin folk don't really tend to regard the country "brogue" as exactly sophisticated. I rather sound like myself thanks.

hear, hear. otherwise you would have to put on a peaked cap and save the hay. the urban gaeilgeoir is on the rise. You need to find a Gaeilge that embraces Dublin.
Breatnaigh ar BAC le Gaeilge ar Facebook

BTW culchies do not regard certian dublin accents as being refined.

Fuinseog

Toyota_Avensis wrote: »

get involved in a Ciorcail Gaeilge in the city to get interacting with Dublin speakers. There are plenty about, is just a matter of sussing them out. Conradh na Gaeilge í mBaile Atha Cliath make connect you with some Dublin speakers..

most Dublin libraries have one. Ilac for example is saturaday mornings

Fuinseog

koganei12 wrote: »

Thanks, I'll check that out. Unfortunately I'm living in Japan at the moment and was just looking for online help with the pronunciation. Just info mainly on pronouncing vowels and vowel combinations the way Dublin speakers do so I don't sound strange/ rural to other Dublin speakers.

amhrain?

cad faoi www.tg4.tv?

deirdremf

koganei12 wrote: »

Ok, I found this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l969H454bTw&feature=related

The guy singing in this video (in Irish) is from Dublin (I think) and he pronounces all the words as I would have done if asked to read them out (the lyrics or in the video). He does not use the tapped "r" nor does he (as far as I can hear) differentiate his "r"s between slender and broad (based on "r"s that come after slender vowels, which to my knowledge is when consonants get slenderised).
Is he coherent? Does this lack of slenderising "r" produce grammatically unintelligible speech? This is how I would speak Irish (perhaps with a slightly heavier Dublin twang, but the vowels and consonants are right). However there seems to be no resources for this dialect.

As a non-native speaker of Irish, if I was writing this singer's words down, it would be difficult to say whether many of the consonants are caol or leathan. Others are definitely slender where they should be broad, and some are neither one thing nor the other.
In other words, for this singer, the spelling of Irish is totally arbitrary, as it does not represent his pronunciation. This is typical of speakers of Dublin Irish, and of learners generally. They were not taught to pronounce (and I'm not reccommending elecution here!!), and so speak Irish as though they were speaking a foreign language.
To give an example to someone who is living in Japan, and probably hears Japanese people speaking English on a frequent basis, in recent days I heard an announcer on NHK pronouncing "f" more or less as "h". Obviously, it is "wrong" but I understood her.
It's the same with Irish - poor pronunciation can often, even usually, be understood, but you are immediately put down as a learner/non-native speaker.
On the other hand, a language-learner who gets the sounds right will be given great leeway with poor grammar, as everyone gets the grammar wrong on a frequent basis!

To end - just one question. When you say you pronounce "bóthar" like "bow-her", is that bow as in the bow of a violin, or as in "take a bow"?