Sounds of Irish website

Anyone who has tried to learn Irish will have come across the following quizzical fact: the pronunciation of Irish is practically never given in teaching materials for the language. The reason for this is that there are three main dialects of the language – Southern, Western and Northern – and each of these is very different from the others, especially in pronunciation. So what happens with learners? If they are in Ireland then, in general, the school, college or university will favour the pronunciation of the region it is located in: Southern Irish in Cork, Waterford or Limerick (by and large), Western Irish in Galway, Northern Irish in Letterkenny, Derry, Coleraine or Belfast (the situation in Dublin is mixed, however). But what about learners outside Ireland struggling with the language? They need guidance with regard to pronunciation and it is the goal of the following sister website to the current one to provide this.

Fuaimeanna na Gaeilge / The Sounds of Irish

The above website explains the nature of Irish phonetics and phonology and lists the three main pronunciations (Southern, Western and Northern) for all the sounds of in the language. Each transcription given on the website has an accompanying sound file with the particular pronunciation spoken by a native speaker of the region in question.