Connacht Irish is the dialect of the Irish language spoken in the province of Connacht. Gaeltacht regions in Connacht are found in Counties Mayo and Galway (notably in parts of Connemara and on the Aran Islands. The Mayo and Galway varieties differ from each other in a variety of ways, as Mayo is geographically between Galway and Donegal, making Mayo Irish have a number of features in common with Donegal that Galway does not have. Documented sub-dialects include those of Cois Fharraige and Conamara Theas, both of which are in Galway, and Erris in Mayo.
Lexicon
Some differences between Mayo and Galway are seen in the lexicon:
Mayo
Galway
Gloss
cluinim
cloisim
"I hear"
doiligh
deacair
"difficult"
úr
nua
"new"
nimhneach
tinn
"sore"
Some words used in Connacht Irish that aren't found in other dialects include:
Variants distinctive of, but not unique to Connacht include:
fata, fataí, "potato", "potatoes"
fuisce, "whiskey"
muid, emphatic form muide for the first person pluralpronoun, Ulster Irish uses this form as well, whereas Munster Irish uses sinn, sinne although sinn, sinne are used in Mayo, particularly in the Erris dialect.
chuile, "every"
Phonology
The phonemic inventory of Connacht Irish is as shown in the following chart. Symbols appearing in the upper half of each row are velarized while those in the bottom half are palatalized. The consonant is neither broad nor slender. The vowels of Connacht Irish are as shown on the following chart. These positions are only approximate, as vowels are strongly influenced by the palatalization and velarization of surrounding consonants. In addition, Connacht has the diphthongs. Some characteristics of Connacht that distinguish it from the other dialects are:
In some varieties a four-way distinction among coronalnasals and laterals:,, often without lengthening of orthographic short vowels before them.
In the variety spoken in Cois Fharraige, underlying short is realized as a long front while underlying long is realized as a back.
is realized as after consonants other than. This happens in Ulster as well.
Broad bh is rendered even in initial positions, with a few exceptions.
The inflected pronouns agam, agat and againn are usually reduced into monosyllables,,.
The prepositions do, de are both realised as and their inflected forms are frequently pronounced in their lenited forms.
The preposition-article compound sa causes eclipsis, where it causes lenition in the Caighdeán and in the other dialects.
Morphology
Nouns
In some dialects of Connacht the plural endings -anna and -acha are always replaced by -annaí and -achaí. It is also common in many Gaelic-speaking areas of Connemara that the dative singular form of all 2nd declension nouns has been generally adopted as the nominative, giving these nouns the typical ending in palatalized consonants in the nominative singular. This is indicated in the spelling by the letter i before the final consonant.
Connemara form
Standard form
Gloss
-achaí, -annaí
-acha, -anna
Plural ending
bróig
bróg
"shoe"
ceird
ceard
"craft"
cluais
cluas
"ear"
cois
cos
"foot, leg"
láimh
lámh
"hand"
Verbs
are characterized by having a mixture of analytic/an fhoirm scartha forms and synthetic/an fhoirm tháite forms in their conjugation. In Galway and Mayo, as in Ulster, the analytic forms are used in a variety of forms where the standard language has synthetic forms, e.g. molann muid "we praise" or mholfadh siad "they would praise". However, the synthetic forms, including those no longer included in the standard language, may be used in answering questions. Díonaim in standard Irish Íosaim in standard Irish Connacht Irish favours the interrogative pronoun cén and forms based on it such as cén t-am, "what time" instead of the standard cathain, or céard instead of the standard cad. Relative forms of the verb such as beas for beidh, "will be", or déananns/déanas, "do", for déanann are frequently used.
