Does anyone have any information about dead Leinster dialects of Irish. I know it was spoken in Wexford and Louth until fairly recently, but does anyone know the grammar/idioms/vocabulary of these areas, or even areas that used to speak it long ago, e.g. a Dublin dialect from the 10th Century or something. Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

A Dhalta,

Tá cúpla leathanach sách tábhachtach ar an ábhar seo in _Stair na Gaeilge_: "Canúintí Chúige Laighean" agus "An tAiceann i nGaeilge Laighean" (lgh. 467 - 471).

Louth was an Ulster dialect, wasn’t it?

Dún Dealgan and that area(North and west louth) had Ulster.. Droichead Atha and south/ east had leinster..
Not forgetting that Droichead Atha was never Gaelic..And never left the Pale.

Bhí Droichead Átha Gaelach sula dtáinig na Sasanaigh ann ;-) . Ní ó thús an tsaoil a bhí an Pale ann...

When I was going to school in Dublin many years ago I remember being told by the teacher that no Irish had been spoken anywhere in Leinster for four hundred years. For some time now I have been hearing about isolated individual native Irish speakers in various counties of Leinster who were still living until recently. A few years ago I met an elderly American gentleman who told me that his grandparents were native Irish speakers from a village in Kilkenny. He said he remembered hearing them speak Irish when he himself was a little boy. I asked him if his grandparents had moved from some other county to Kilkenny. He said no. They were born in Kilkenny and everyone in that village, according to him, spoke Irish as a first language up to the time his grandparents emigrated to America. What puzzles me is how can isolated speakers preserve a language for such a long time without any support from even a small community of fellow speakers. Someone must have been passing it on.

it wasn't until fairly recently (post wwii) that mobility really became a factor. most of those people probably lived their whole lives in that town, with several venturing occasionally to the nearest large town for commercial purposes.

much the same way immigrant communities (chinatown, little italy, etc) can maintain their native language and little to no english in a surprising percent of the population despite being completely surrounded by an english speaking city

The louth area wasnt in leinster it was in an area called oriel which included armagh, monaghan, cavan im not sure about down as i think it was part of another dialect including antrim and rathlin irish. This irish was quite like scots gaelic.

The irish you spoke of in kilkenny is called ossary irish and died out with the last speaker in 1947. there may be speakers of this dialect on the doegen recordings aluded to earlier. I would hazard a guess thet the original dublin irish was similar to wexford and wicklow irish. If you would like to see wicklow irish look in the book of the o byrnes but alot of the irish here may have been written by file from outside the area. Still if you look at the writings of the dorans this should be a guide.
tadh ortsa. is as loch gairmain o dhucas me.

I am another Wexford man..apparently Irish was spoken in the north of the county around the time of the rebllion of 1798..as for Dublin not having had Irish speaking areas in 400 years that is patently ridiculous!thats what the revionists would make us believe! The Pale wasnt so strong that Irish speaking couldnt live within it boundaries (if there really was any??)

dalta I dont know a huge amount about dublin but I would suggest that you might either look at some of the more remote areas in dublin particularly in the dublin mountains or near areas such as around boherbreena, poulaphouca etc or towards the villages in the north of the county such as the naul. A good guide for monaghan was the monaghan story by fr. peadar livingstone maybe there is a book in this series on dublin.

I think there was Irish in Gleann na Smól, Co. Dublin, in the Early 1900's.

Biddy Jenkinson refers to it in a short story about Dineen. If I can I'll find a better source

http://www.feasta.ie/2004/bealtaine/alt4.html

Where is Gleann na Smól?

Anseo!
http://www.studentxpress.ie/educ/geog/geog2a/geog2a9.html

In De Fréine's book, The Great Silence, I think he speaks of Irish speakers in the Dublin mountains in the 1830's (they were bilingual at the time) and that 20 years prior they had no English.

I have also heard that the Stoneybatter area of Dublin had an Irish speaking enclave ( not sure when that died out )

Irish lived on to some extent both in Louth and Kilkenny into the 20th century, but the Irish of Louth was East Ulster Irish and the Irish of Kilkenny was East Munster Irish. There was also Irish spoken in West Meath fairly recently.

Saying that no Irish has been spoken in Leinster for 400 years is pure gobshit. For most of the last 400 years, the majority of people in Leinster has consisted of Irish monolinguals with no English. What will we hear next, that no French has been spoken in Paris for the last 600 years??

Ok, so there seems to be four main sources of interest, Stair na Gaeilge, the writings of the dorans, the writings of the o byrnes and the doegen recordings. So, does anyone know where I might find this stuff? Particularly the 'writings of the dorans and o byrnes', that seems incredibly vague. Brendan, do you mean someone specific, a collection of writings or what?

Thanks to everyone for the help. When people say Ossary Irish was East Munster, does that mean it followed the same grammar patterns etc as Munster Irish? Is there any East Munster dialect still alive, An Rinn maybe? And the East Ulster, I head is similar to Scots Gael and is a bridge between the two languages, anyone have any information on that?

Lughaidh, bhunaigh Hugh De Lacy Droichead Atha sa bhliain 1171/2 - - Ní raibh móran daoine (Gaeil)timpeall na háite roimh ionsaí na nGall (1169)
Tá's a'am nach raibh an Pale ann ó thús an tsaoil ach bhí bac ar Ghaeilge sa Pale.. De dhéanta na fírinne chum siad an dlí sin anseo i nDroichead Atha
Rugadh i nDroichead Atha agus bródúil as - - ní dóigh liom é!

Regarding the Leinster dialect.

Thank you all very much for dispelling some of the doubts which I had about Leinster Irish. It is about time that someone expoded those myths.

"as for Dublin not having had Irish speaking areas in 400 years that is patently ridiculous! That’s what the revisionists would make us believe!"

"Saying that no Irish has been spoken in Leinster for 400 years is pure gobsh.t."

Well, tell that to the teachers who are spreading such falsehoods. It is difficult for a young schoolchild in third class not to heed the words of such a respected authority figure as the brother who is teaching him Irish. It would never have occurred to the child to challenge the teacher’s statement or to request proof. Surely such a person could not be suspected of being a revisionist or a shoneen.

Up to the time I left Ireland I was very familiar with County Louth, North County Dublin and The Dublin Mountains to the south of the city. If any Irish was spoken there I was not made aware of it. Not once did I ever hear anyone in any of those areas speak Irish nor even mention the existence of Irish. I used to go to Bohernabreena quite frequently. It was only a few minutes away by bicycle from where I was born and raised. It shocks me to think that the school was teaching that Leinster Irish was long extinct when positive proof to the contrary was so close at hand.

Who is qualified to draw dialect boundaries ? Could one not say that the Irish of Waterford is South Leinster Irish and that the Irish in Armagh is North Leinster Irish?
Such statements are easily made but is any proof offered? Dialects and even some languages have a tendency to overlap artificially created boundaries.

first of all ossary irish was not east munster irish it may have been similar but ossary is in leinster. The ring gaeltacht is what was once left of the great deisha gaeltacht which spread from youghall the whole way through the comeraghs to south tiperary http://www.irishmusicreview.com/labhr

These modern boundaries are meaningless however as at one time ireland consisted of a number of tuath each with its own king these made up the provinces of which there were five. The reason that ther were provinces at all was that there were provincal kings . Leinsters last king was probably art mac murrough kavangh but his decendent donmnall spaineach might argue that one was he still alive.

There is a poem thought to be in wexford irish written about bishop stafford in the late 1800s. I try and find the reference.
The book of the o byrnes is well known.
leabhar branach.
as to the dorans they were the file to the kavanghs so I would imagine they wrote in the dan direach so id check any leaving cert hons. text.
The rest you will have to find out yourself as the saying goes you can lead a horse to water...
t-adh ortsa. bb

>"Saying that no Irish has been spoken in Leinster for >400 years is pure gobsh.t."

Just open the Linguistic Atlas and Survey of the Irish Dialects, and you'll see two points that are in Leinster and where there was at least one native speaker, still alive in 1939.

>Well, tell that to the teachers who are spreading such >falsehoods.

I would love to.

"Is there any East Munster dialect still alive, An Rinn maybe?"

Yes, the Irish of An Rinn is East Munster Irish. What I've seen of Kilkenny Irish looks almost identical to the dialect in An Rinn.

"And the East Ulster, I head is similar to Scots Gael and is a bridge between the two languages, anyone have any information on that?"

In my opinion it almost looks more like Scottish Gaelic than Donegal Irish. Then again, that is probably only because I'm not familiar with the dialects of Mid Ulster. East Ulster Irish and the Gaelic of Islay (still very much alive) and Arran were particularly close.

"Well, tell that to the teachers who are spreading such falsehoods. It is difficult for a young schoolchild in third class not to heed the words of such a respected authority figure as the brother who is teaching him Irish. It would never have occurred to the child to challenge the teacher’s statement or to request proof. Surely such a person could not be suspected of being a revisionist or a shoneen"

I agree 100%, it is a shame that some teachers just say whatever they think even if one second of rational thinking would tell them they're wrong.

"Who is qualified to draw dialect boundaries ? Could one not say that the Irish of Waterford is South Leinster Irish and that the Irish in Armagh is North Leinster Irish?"

If Irish had died out in almost all of Munster long ago and lived on in South Leinster even today, it is not at all unlikely that that would be the case. The Irish of East Munster and Southwest Leinster are/were very similar and differ(ed) from both West Munster and the rest of Leinster. Still, they are closer to the rest of Munster than the rest of Leinster, so perhaps East Munster Irish makes most sense.

D'oibrigh mé féin i gColáiste na Rinne i rith an tsamhraidh. So ó mo thaithí féin caithfidh mé a rá mura ndéanfaidh duine éigin chun Gaeilge a shabháil sa cheantar sin ní bheidh breac-ghaeltacht ann agus ní bheidh an canúint sin ann a thuilleadh.
Muintir na Rinne are actively bi-lingual or just use bloody béarla. Nach mór an trua é sin a chairde?

I would have to say that having grown up in wexford that there are strong differences in the accents between wexford and waterford. the north tipperary accent differs from the waterford accent but the south tipperary accent is very similar. A waterford accent is distinct from a cork or wexford accent. I wonder where all these accents in english came from, they must be echoes of the original cainuint. I would love to see any irish from kilkenny if anyone has any.

Humphrey O Sullivan's Cialae is still in print! It is a Irish speakers diary from the Cats county!

So, was there another dialect in Mid Leinster, or was that just ossary? Is ossary different again from East Munster. Any one have any info on the East Munster dialect, I've read plenty and have a book in West Munster, what are the differences? Is there anything written in East Ulster or Oriel Irish still available? And what about those recordings, where can I get my hands on them?

Humphrey O Sullivan's Cín Lae can be found by googling it.

A Jhonas,
"Saying that no Irish has been spoken in Leinster for 400 years is pure gobshit".

The term is 'bullshit' or 'horseshite'.

I am not familar with 'gobshit'. As a noun, not an adjective, it is 'gobshite', as in "he's a qwair gobshite".

"For most of the last 400 years, the majority of people in Leinster has consisted of Irish monolinguals with no English".

No, no, your wrong. After all didnt Cromwell clear them all out?...(sarcasm)

Are these the same gaelic teachers with the british/Dart accents who are let loose on children in gaelscoilleanna? Heres a Hiberno-English term for them: 'cunthoppers'

Spelling/pronounciation:

Gaelscoil
gaelscoileanna

One l. There's a huge difference between /l'/ and /L'/ except in Munster dialect (that only knows /l'/).

/l'/ sounds a bit like ENglish l in "to live"
/L'/ sounds like Spanish ll, and a bit like English l in "allure" (it's L-sound + y-sound pronounced simultaneously).

gaelscoileanna

Sorry, spelling mysték

/L'/ is like 'million' for more native english speakers than 'allure'. Not dissing Ur example, just that in Ireland 'allure' uses a little tap under the alveolar ridge almost at the teeth. But, as has been pointed out before, with the vareinces in English speech, you'll have that.

/L'/ is also the same tongue shape as the slender d in some speakers (not the affricative Donegal one)

Ok for "million".
Older speakers (like seanchaithe) don't make affricated consonants in Donegal.

Well, I did a bit of research and, having read Seosamh Laoide in An Claidheamh Soluis, he gives a fairly good explanation of alot of the sounds of the Leinster dialect proper. There were three dialects in Leinster, Oriel/Meath, Leinster proper and Ossory. Ossory was like E. Munster with a good few quirks from Connaught and Oriel. Oriel/Meath was East Ulster, Diann S. Pott(or something) even wrote a piece about it in his 'Canúintí an Tuaiscirt' series.

Leinster proper was seemingly a mix of the lot of them, with slightly more bias toward Munster. The thing is though, the Leinster dialect was dead so long that Laoide had to get most of his material from anglicising of place names and in scattered pieces of writing.

A few of the things I remember off hand:
ao - pronounced 'í', as in Connaught
'gh' - pronounced English 'y'
aigh - pronounced 'a', I think he said that's how it's done in Connaught
igh - pronounced 'e', as above re Connaught

ones that seemed a bit odd:
dh pronounced as v, what do you guys think of that one? I don't think he meant at the end of words, e.g. leanadh
'bh' and 'mh' silent between slender consonants, e.g. Sliebhe - Slea
r pronounced as s in cases, e.g. boithrín being rendered bosheen. He said bosheen was an Anglicisation before bothreen.

Talamh was pronounced Tala and Gaeilge/Gaeilg/Gaolainn seemed to be rendered Gaelag.

very interesting stuff there Dalta. Is this on any website ?

Here follows the address I sent earlier, hopefully this one will work.
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/cadhla.htm

The information Dalta wrote down was very interesting.
If you want to hear genuine waterford irish tune into RnG and listen for one of the kelleher sisters odi or sorcha ni cheillichur i think. Thats the real blas.

The Dorans were file to the Kavanaghs and were based at Pallas just outside Gorey in Wexford.

Dalta says
"'gh' - pronounced English 'y' " in leinster.
but if you take the well known wexford hurling club.

oulart the balagh
its pronounced

oolrt de balla so to me agh is pronounced as a short a. Anyway.

ta cupla ceann ailt eile agam feach ar seo.

http://www.irishmidlandsancestry.com/content/laois/community/parishhistories/rat hdowney_parish.htm

hmmm. simiul.

I went to the National Library and read old copies of An Claidheamh Soluis. There was a piece in an tUltach aswell, but I didn't have enough time to read it. I took down some more stuff, here it is:

short a was pronounced as 'o', e.g. ag magadh -> ag mogadh

ua - as ó, e.g. buaile anglicised to booley
abhainn was pronounced 'een', i.e. aibhin, remember the 'bh' is silent in between slender vowels.
n is pronounced nn,
nn is pronounced 'ng', as in Munster I think.
l is pronounced ll, e.g. cailín pronounced caillín

Beachan, two things to say there, whereabouts in Wexford is that club? The dialect I'm taking about is the Laighean dialect, which was only spoken in North Wexford. Also, gh was pronounced y in between other letters, I forget to say that.

If I were to start speaking this dialect, e.g. dh as v and so on, would other Gaeilgeoirí be able to understand me would ye say?

"If I were to start speaking this dialect, e.g. dh as v and so on, would other Gaeilgeoirí be able to understand me would ye say?"

A Dhalta,
I think if you were to get all the 'rules' of that old dialect (and I do not know if there are ínuff reckordings left to abstract all rules therein), then you might just sound off.

It is a big of a question as on needs standards, and one needs a concensus, so an idisyncratic modality could make if difficult to engage with others, and you may end up dropping the differing forms just to fit back in, after all the hard work to learn them.

Also, I know you wish authenticity, but how much were those dialects alteed by English by the time they died out? The Limerick dialect was massivly chnaged, to the point of been worse than Manx, altho, I believe from a breif survey of the material at my disposal, thus far, other areas did not suffer such a faith.

>dh pronounced as v, what do you guys think of that one? >I don't think he meant at the end of words, e.g. leanadh

That is to be found at the end of some words (broad dh/gh in verbal forms) in some Irish and Scottish dialects

>'bh' and 'mh' silent between slender consonants, e.g. >Sliebhe - Slea

This one is like Kerry: sléibhe > "slé")

Is mor an trua a fhuair an Ghaeilge bas i moran ceanntair i nEireann

In southeast ulster the name murphy or Ó Murchada was pronounced murfy because the ch was pronounced like an f sound.

As to what you said of 1798 by diarmo "I am another Wexford man..apparently Irish was spoken in the north of the county around the time of the rebllion of 1798"

Im wouldnt be sure of this as the only letter from the period i have seen was father roches letter which was a safe pass for man through the rebel lines. This letter was in english. I hope Im wrong and someone out there knows something different. I do know that there were a number of texts from this period in irish but they are mostly songs from outside leinster.

Robert, thanks for the reply. Would it really be that different to another dialect speaker coming to town? E.g. It'ld probably feel the same as a Connaught man in Munster and so on. I'm not really one to be bothered about being the only man with something, so, as long as people can understand me, I think I'd be up for it.

The only dialect I'm looking to re-create if you wanna call it that is the Laighean Dialect, that is, Dublin, Laois, Carlow, North Wexford, Offally, that kinda area. It doesn't seem to be anglicised, all the idiosyncracies can be found in other dialects too. I have more research to do, so we'll see what else I find. And then, it's just a matter of testing it out in a Gaeltacht.

Thanks Lughaidh too for explaining them, I feel confident now about giving it a shot.