New book about the Leinster dialect of Irish

Gael

Many of you may be interested in this. It was written by the recently deceased Professor of Irish, Dáithí Ó hÓgáin.

http://www.coisceim.ie/leabhrann.html

http://www.litriocht.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=6626

Enkidu

That's great Gael, I've long being looking for something like this!

Enkidu

Okay, I bought the book and I thought I'd let everybody know what it's like.

First of all it is short enough, if you've fluent enough reading skills you'll finish it in one or two days and fortunately it's not really that daunting like a lot of academic texts.

As for the contents, some counties are represented much better than others, particularly in the choice of texts. A good amount of the texts in the book (~50%) are from around the 12th century. At first I was afraid this would mean they were in Bardic Irish, hence even if they were written in "County-X" they wouldn't reflect the local dialect. Fortunately they are in the local dialect, but since it is so long ago you can't really compare it to the Irish of today, you're basically seeing the "County-X"-dialect of Middle Irish.

What's much better are the texts from the 16th and 17th centuries which really show you what the county's dialect was like.

Dublin and Kilkenny probably have the best chapters (Kilkenny has stuff from 1910). Some interesting things (Gathain was Dublin for Cathain, also Canas was Conas). Anybody from Kildare might be a bit disappointed though.

All in all though it costs very little and there is no other resource like it. Might post some of the more interesting language points if anybody would like.

Gael

Enkidu wrote: »

Okay, I bought the book and I thought I'd let everybody know what it's like.

First of all it is short enough, if you've fluent enough reading skills you'll finish it in one or two days and fortunately it's not really that daunting like a lot of academic texts.

As for the contents, some counties are represented much better than others, particularly in the choice of texts. A good amount of the texts in the book (~50%) are from around the 12th century. At first I was afraid this would mean they were in Bardic Irish, hence even if they were written in "County-X" they wouldn't reflect the local dialect. Fortunately they are in the local dialect, but since it is so long ago you can't really compare it to the Irish of today, you're basically seeing the "County-X"-dialect of Middle Irish.

What's much better are the texts from the 16th and 17th centuries which really show you what the county's dialect was like.

Dublin and Kilkenny probably have the best chapters (Kilkenny has stuff from 1910). Some interesting things (Gathain was Dublin for Cathain, also Canas was Conas). Anybody from Kildare might be a bit disappointed though.

All in all though it costs very little and there is no other resource like it. Might post some of the more interesting language points if anybody would like.

Thanks for that, Enkidu. I bought the book too, but haven't got a chance to read it yet.

Insect Overlord

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