Connacht Irish

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Connacht Irish" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Connacht Irish
Connacht Gaelic
Gaeilge Chonnacht
Pronunciation	Galway: [ˈɡeːlʲɟə ˌxʊn̪ˠəxt̪ˠ] Mayo: [ˈɡeːlʲɪc ˌxʊn̪ˠəxt̪ˠ]
Ethnicity	Irish
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Goidelic Irish Connacht Irish
Early forms	Primitive Irish Old Irish Middle Irish Early Modern Irish
Writing system	Latin (Irish alphabet) Irish Braille
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ga
ISO 639-2	gle
ISO 639-3	gle
Glottolog	conn1243
The three dialects of Irish. Connacht's speakers are spread from Galway and Mayo to Meath.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Connacht Irish (Irish: Gaeilge Chonnacht) is the dialect of the Irish language spoken in the province of Connacht. Gaeltacht regions in Connacht are found in Counties Mayo (notably Tourmakeady, Achill Island and Erris) and Galway (notably in parts of Connemara and on the Aran Islands). Connacht Irish is also spoken in the Meath Gealtacht Ráth Chairn and Baile Ghib. The dialects of Irish in Connacht are extremely diverse, with the pronunciation, forms and lexicon being different even within each county.

The Irish of South Connemara is often considered the "standard" Connacht Irish owing to the number of speakers however it is unique within Connacht and has a lot more idiomatic connection to extinct dialects in North Clare (for example "acab" instead of "acu" in the rest of Connacht). Words such as dubh and snámh tend to be pronounced with a Munster accent in South Connemara whereas in Joyce Country, Galway City and Mayo they are pronounced with the Ulster pronunciation. In addition to this the standard in Connacht would be to pronounce the words leo and dóibh as "leofa" and "dófa" however in South Connemara and Aran they are pronounced "leothab" and "dóib". Lexical and pronunciation differences exist within Mayo with Tourmakeady featuring an "í" sound in vowel endings much more commonly. In addition to this the lexicon of Dún Chaocháin to the east of Belmullet tends to be far more Ulster influenced than that of Eachléim (murlas vs ronnach) and there is a huge Ulster influence on the dialect of North Mayo in general owing to historic migration. The Irish of Eachréidh na Gaillimhe and Dúiche Sheoigheach tend to share more phonetic commonalities with neighbouring Mayo than with South Connemara

Documented sub-dialects include those of Cois Fharraige^[a] and Conamara Theas,^[b] both of which are in Galway, and Erris in Mayo.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).