Hey, everybody.

Listen: Can you recommend some good books and tapes for learning specifically the Munster dialect? And a good place to get them online that can deliver the stuff worldwide?

Also, I was looking at a map of Ireland and shaded the areas where the different dialects were spoken, and I found that there was still a non-shaded area to the east. People don't speak Irish around there? What dialect do they speak in Dublin, for example?

Sorry if anyone finds this message annoying... and to the rest, thanx in advance for your help!!!

Daniel.

The local forms of Irish died out in the east of the country (i.e., Leinster) more or less by the year 1900 (although I seem to remember some speakers held on in the northeast of the province for longer than that.) The Meath Gaeltacht was founded by resettling Irish speakers from Connaught.

People in Dublin, etc. are influenced by the dialect that their teachers speak or family background. Most people I have met seem to speak a Munster Irish that is greatly influenced by the Caighdeán (Standard). Although many children go off to the Conamara and even Donegal Gaeltachts in the summer, they seem to remain fairly impervious to local influences. A recent novel set in a such an experience describes how one girl with Donegal connections maintains a kind of bilingualism within Irish and also how another girl is made fun of by her schoolmates for coming back from summer school with Conamara Irish. The kids in the gaelscoileanna naturally tend toward a common language for the sake of communication.

Try to get the old, out-of-print _Teach Yourself Irish_ by Dillon and Ó Cróinín. It won't be easy but it shouldn't be impossible either. If you are very lucky, you'll also find the tapes or records for it. Alternatively, you can learn with Standard Irish materials (which have varying tendencies toward Munster Irish anyway), then supplement them with: a. booklets like _Irish for Parents_ with the Munster tape (It's available with tapes for the different dialects) or phrasebooks cum tapes (although the phrases are fairly standard, the speakers are usually from Munster, for some reason. Don't forget Daltaí's phrase section where you can click on the sound); b. a summer course in the Kerry Gaeltacht; c. contact with Irish speakers, no matter how tenuous. When you make enough progress with the standard textbooks, you can start reading books for children, young people or adults in Munster Irish. Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé is a good popular writer.

To get stuff online, why not try www.litriocht.com? They are located in the Kerry Gaeltacht so they may be especially helpful to you. They ship worldwide.

While also seeking out material on Munster Irish, I got the booklet by ITE called An Teanga Beo: Corca Dhuibhne. Immediately I tried to "parse" the last phrase, Corca Dhuibhne. (I know the phrase as a whole refers to the people or area of West Kerry, in particular, apparently, to the Dingle Penninsula.) Corca seems straightforward as "a race or a people", but Duibhne puzzles me. So close to dubh or duibh, but where would the "n" come from. Even the little booklet doesn't seem to show any such "n" arriving in Munster Irish. I searched through a whole area of several dictionaries trying to find a word whose declension would lead to my word. No luck.

Any help out there?

www.bn.com
the Teach Yourself (TY) series
Teach Yourself Irish
A Complete Course For Beginners

Diarmuid Ó Sé and Joseph Sheils

$9.95 book only

tape/book set also available.

you'll want to pick up a dictionary while you're at it.

Go n-éirí an t-adh leat!

Hi Thomas. The name Corca Dhuibhne means "The People of Duibhne". Duibhne was an old Irish godess, but very little is known about her.

By the way, the book recommended by Antaine, Teach Yourself Irish by Diarmuid Ó Sé is in no way at all a course in Munster Irish, it is a standardized version