Irish phonology varies from dialect to dialect; there is no standard pronunciation of Irish. Therefore, this article focuses on phenomena shared by most or all dialects, and on the major differences among the dialects. Detailed discussion of the dialects can be found in the specific articles: Ulster Irish, Connacht Irish, and Munster Irish.
Irish phonology has been studied as a discipline since the late 19th century, with numerous researchers publishing descriptive accounts of dialects from all regions where the language is spoken. More recently, Irish phonology has been a focus of theoretical linguists.
One of the most important aspects of Irish phonology is that almost all consonants (except ) come in pairs, a "broad" and a "slender" pronunciation. Broad consonants are either velarized (; back of tongue is pulled back and slightly up in the direction of the soft palate during articulation) or simply velar (for example, ). Slender consonants are palatalized (; tongue pushed up towards the hard palate during articulation). The contrast between broad and slender consonants is crucial in Irish, because the meaning of a word can change if a broad consonant is substituted for a slender consonant or vice versa. For example, the only difference in pronunciation between the words ('cow') and ('alive') is that is pronounced with broad , while is pronounced with slender . The contrast between broad and slender consonants plays a critical role not only in distinguishing the individual consonants themselves, but also in the pronunciation of the surrounding vowels, in the determination of which consonants can stand next to each other, and in the behaviour of words that begin with a vowel. This broad/slender distinction is similar to the hard/soft one of several Slavic languages, like Russian.
Irish shares a number of phonological characteristics with its nearest linguistic relatives, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, as well as with Hiberno-English, which it currently has the most language contact with.
History of the discipline
Until the end of the 19th century, linguistic discussions of Irish focused either on the traditional grammar (issues like the inflection of nouns, verbs and adjectives) or on the historical development of sounds from Proto-Indo-European through Proto-Celtic to Old Irish. The first descriptive analysis of the phonology of an Irish dialect was , which was based on the author's fieldwork in the Aran Islands. This was followed by , a phonetic description of the dialect of Meenawannia near Glenties, County Donegal. is predominantly a historical account, but has some description of modern dialects as well. Alf Sommerfelt published early descriptions of Ulster dialects ( and for the village of Torr in Gweedore, , and for the now extinct dialect of South Armagh). The dialect of Dunquin on the Dingle Peninsula in Munster was described by . From 1944 to 1968 the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies published a series of monographs, each describing the phonology of one local dialect: for West Muskerry in County Cork (Ballyvourney, Coolea and vicinity), (first published 1945) for Cois Fhairrge in County Galway (Barna, Spiddal, Inverin and vicinity), for An Rinn in County Waterford, for Tourmakeady in County Mayo, for Teelin, County Donegal, for Erris in County Mayo. More recent descriptive phonology has been published by for Rosguill in northern Donegal, for Tangaveane and Commeen (also near Glenties), for Iorras Aithneach in Connemara (Kilkieran and vicinity) and for the Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry.
Research into the theoretical phonology of Irish began with , which follows the principles and practices of Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English and which formed the basis of the phonology sections of . Dissertations examining Irish phonology from a theoretical point of view include , in optimality theory, and and in government phonology.
Consonants Most dialects of Irish contain at a minimum the consonant phonemes shown in the following chart (see International Phonetic Alphabet for an explanation of the symbols). The consonant is neither broad nor slender.
+ Consonant phonemes Labial Coronal Dorsal Glottal broad slender broad slender broad slender Stop voiceless voiced Continuant voiceless voiced Nasal Tap
On- and offglides Broad (velar or velarized) consonants have a noticeable velar offglide (; a very short vowel-like sound) before front vowels, which sounds like the English but without rounding. Thus ('nine') and ('way, manner') are pronounced and , respectively. This velar offglide is labialized (pronounced [w]) after labial consonants, so ('yellow') is pronounced .
Similarly, slender (palatal or palatalized) consonants have a palatal offglide (; like English ) before back vowels, e.g. ('thick') is pronounced .
When a broad consonant follows a front vowel, there is a very short vowel sound (called an onglide) just before the consonant, e.g. ('sell') is pronounced . Similarly, when a slender consonant follows a back vowel, there is an onglide before the consonant, e.g. ('place') is pronounced , ('drinking' gen.) is pronounced , ('understanding') is , and ('to us') is .
These all are also a feature of certain Slavic languages such as Russian, as well as of Lithuanian.
Allophones (written as ) has two basic allophones: the labiovelar approximant and the velarized voiced labiodental fricative . The distribution of these allophones varies from dialect to dialect. In Munster, generally only is found, and in Ulster generally only is found. In Connacht, is found word-initially before vowels (e.g. 'is') and in other positions (e.g. 'saint', 'autumn', and 'hurried').
The remaining labial fricatives are typically labiodental , but they as well as the fricative allophone of have bilabial allophones in many dialects; the distribution depends partly on environment (bilabials are more likely to be found adjacent to rounded vowels) and partly on the individual speaker.
Most coronals are alveolar, except broad stops and approximants which are typically dental , and the slender fricative is typically postalveolar . may be realized as alveolo-palatal affricates in a number of dialects, including Tourmakeady, Erris, and Teelin.
may be true palatals or palatovelars .
has three allophones in most dialects: a palatal approximant before vowels (except ) and syllable-finally (e.g. 'nice', 'will be'); a voiced (post)palatal fricative before consonants (e.g. 'sun'); and an intermediate sound (with more frication than but less frication than ) before (e.g. 'straightened').
has the primary allophone , a palatalized postalveolar fricative.
In many varieties, and alternate with under a variety of circumstances. For example, as the lenition of and , is replaced by before back vowels, e.g. ('I would give'), ('drove'). In Munster, becomes after a vowel, e.g. ('twenty'). In Ring, final becomes in monosyllabic words, e.g. ('fear'). In some Ulster varieties, e.g. Tory Island, can be replaced by , e.g. ('not'), be deleted word-finally or before , e.g. ('greedy') and ('seven').
As in English, voiceless stops are aspirated (articulated with a puff of air immediately upon release) at the start of a word, while voiced stops may be incompletely voiced but are never aspirated. Voiceless stops are unaspirated after and (e.g. 'terror'); however, stops remain aspirated after the clitic is (e.g. 'it's crooked'). Several researchers (e.g. , , , , and ) use transcriptions like , etc., indicating they consider the stops that occur after voiceless fricatives to be devoiced allophones of the voiced stops rather than unaspirated allophones of the voiceless stops, but this is a minority view.
Fortis and lenis sonorants In Old Irish, the sonorants (those spelled ) were divided not only into broad and slender types, but also into fortis and lenis types. The precise phonetic definition of these terms is somewhat vague, but the coronal fortis sounds (spelled ) were probably longer in duration and may have had a larger area of contact between the tongue and the roof of the mouth than the lenis sounds. Fortis was probably a normal , while lenis was a nasalized semivowel , perhaps tending towards a nasalized fricative or when palatalized. By convention, the fortis coronals are transcribed with small capital letters or capital letters , the lenis with lower case (some authors, such as , instead use Latin for fortis and Greek for lenis). Thus Old Irish had four rhotic phonemes , four lateral phonemes , and four coronal nasal phonemes . Fortis and lenis sonorants contrasted with each other between vowels and word-finally after vowels in Old Irish, e.g. ('he shears') vs. ('he may carry'); ('hazel') vs. ('sin'); ('stake') vs. ('sound'). Word-initially, only the fortis sounds were found, but they became lenis in environments where morphosyntactically triggered lenition was found: ('mystery') vs. ('his mystery'), ('provision') vs. ('his provision').
In the modern language, the four rhotics have been reduced to two in all dialects, having merged as . For the laterals and nasals, some dialects have kept all four distinct, while others have reduced them to three or two distinct phonemes, as summarized in the following table.
Old Irish Ulster Connacht Munster Rosguill Glenties Erris Connemara Aran Dingle Peninsula West Muskerry word-initially elsewhere Note: and are alveolo-palatal consonants.
As for fortis and lenis , in time the lenis version (nasalized semivowel or labial fricative) came to be pronounced as a regular semivowel or fricative along with nasalization of the preceding vowel. The later loss of between vowels has resulted in phonemically nasalized vowels in some modern dialects (see below), but these are not robustly maintained in any dialect; the strong tendency is to eliminate the nasalization entirely. The original nasalized semivowel is still reflected as in the spelling, however.
Vowels
The vowel sounds vary from dialect to dialect, but in general Connacht and Munster at least agree in having the monophthongs , , , , , , , , , , and schwa (), which is found only in unstressed syllables; and the diphthongs , , , and .
The vowels of Ulster Irish are more divergent and are not discussed in this article.
Vowel backness The backness of vowels (that is, the horizontal position of the highest point of the tongue) depends to a great extent on the quality (broad or slender) of adjacent consonants. Some researchers (e.g. , , ) have argued that and are actually allophones of the same phoneme, as are and , as in a vertical vowel system. Under this view, these phonemes are not marked at an abstract level as either front vowels or back vowels. Rather, they acquire a specification for frontness or backness from the consonants around them. In this article, however, the more traditional assumption that are four distinct phonemes will be followed. The descriptions of the allophones in this section come from ; the pronunciations therefore reflect the Munster accent of the Dingle Peninsula. Unless otherwise noted, however, they largely hold for other Munster and Connacht accents as well.
Close vowels The four close vowel phonemes of Irish are the fully close and , and the near-close and . Their exact pronunciation depends on the quality of the surrounding consonants. is realized as a front between two slender consonants (e.g. 'country'). Between a slender and a broad consonant, the tongue is retracted slightly from this position (for which the IPA symbol is ), e.g. ('sale'), ('berry' gen.). Between two broad consonants, the tongue is retracted even further, almost to the point of being a central vowel (in IPA, ): ('sheep'). is a fully back between broad consonants (e.g. 'fort'), but between a broad and a slender consonant, the tongue is somewhat advanced (IPA ), e.g. ('three people'), ('eye'). Between two slender consonants, it is advanced even further, to a centralized vowel (IPA ): ('quiet').