Hi, a chairde,

Is there anyone here who can help me with Ulster Irish pronunciation? The particular area I'm looking for help with is working out Ulster Irish pronunciation from the spelling. The only two learning materials I have found which use Ulster Irish specifically are "Now You're Talking", which has no information on pronunciation and spelling at all, and "Tús Maith", which has a small section on the subject but only focuses on the basic, easy stuff like vowel length and broad vs. slender consonants, but doesn't pay any attention to the actual important, tricky stuff.

In particular, I'm looking for help regarding the pronunciation of the short vowel + bh/mh/dh/gh combinations which turn into diphthongs, as I've noticed on the recordings that these often seem to be different in Ulster Irish than in the Conemara/Munster/Standard Irish I get in other learning materials; but what I really have no idea of is whether these differences are merely lexicalised, i.e. do I have to somehow try to learn the pronunciation of each word individually, or is it more general, e.g. does Ulster Irish always or usually have /o/ where Conemara and Munster Irish have /au/... and so on.

There are also a few individial words I wonder about (such as deartháir and deirfiúr) whose pronunciation in Conemara and Munster Irish differs significantly from the spelling, so I'm wondering if the standard spelling here in fact represents the Ulster Irish pronunciation, or whether the spelling is etymological or something and the Ulster pronunciation is something else again.

If there's anyone here who could help me with this, either on the forum or via private correspondence, I would be very grateful indeed. Just a bit of background on myself, as I haven't yet gotten the confirmation email to activate my account and create a profile, I'm coming to Irish having already studied Scottish Gaelic (my MA is in Gaelic Studies from the University of Aberdeen) and Manx, and I do read both IPA and X-SAMPA.

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Thomas
Connecticut, USA