Connacht Irish () is the dialect of the Irish language spoken in the province of Connacht. Gaeltacht regions in Connacht are found in Counties Mayo (notably Tourmakeady, Achill Island and Erris) and Galway (notably in parts of Connemara and on the Aran Islands). Connacht Irish is also spoken in the Meath Gealtacht Ráth Chairn and Baile Ghib. The dialects of Irish in Connacht are extremely diverse, with the pronunciation, forms and lexicon being different even within each county.
The Irish of South Connemara is often considered the "standard" Connacht Irish owing to the number of speakers however it is unique within Connacht and has a lot more idiomatic connection to extinct dialects in North Clare (for example "acab" instead of "acu" in the rest of Connacht). Words such as and tend to be pronounced with a Munster accent in South Connemara whereas in Joyce Country, Galway City and Mayo they are pronounced with the Ulster pronunciation. In addition to this the standard in Connacht would be to pronounce the words and as "leofa" and "dófa" however in South Connemara and Aran they are pronounced "leothab" and "dóib". Lexical and pronunciation differences exist within Mayo with Tourmakeady featuring an "ÃÂ" sound in vowel endings much more commonly. In addition to this the lexicon of Dún Chaocháin to the east of Belmullet tends to be far more Ulster influenced than that of Eachléim ( vs ) and there is a huge Ulster influence on the dialect of North Mayo in general owing to historic migration. The Irish of Eachréidh na Gaillimhe and Dúiche Sheoigheach tend to share more phonetic commonalities with neighbouring Mayo than with South Connemara.
Documented sub-dialects include those of Cois Fharraige and Conamara Theas, both of which are in Galway, and Erris in Mayo.
Some differences between Mayo and Galway are seen in the lexicon:
Some words used in Connacht Irish that are not found in other dialects include:
Variant spellings include:
Variants distinctive of, but not unique to Connacht include:
The phonemic inventory of Connacht Irish (based on the Tourmakeady accent) is as shown in the following chart (see International Phonetic Alphabet for an explanation of the symbols). Symbols appearing in the upper half of each row are velarized (traditionally called "broad" consonants) while those in the bottom half are palatalized ("slender"). The consonant is neither broad nor slender.
The vowels of Connacht Irish are as shown on the following chart. These positions are only approximate, as vowels are strongly influenced by the palatalization and velarization of surrounding consonants.
In addition, Connacht has the diphthongs .
Some characteristics of Connacht that distinguish it from the other dialects are:
In some dialects of Connacht the plural endings and are always replaced by -annaÃÂ and -achaÃÂ. It is also common in many Gaelic-speaking areas of Connemara that the dative singular form of all 2nd declension nouns has been generally adopted as the nominative, giving these nouns the typical ending in palatalized consonants in the nominative singular. This is indicated in the spelling by the letter i before the final consonant.
Irish conjugation is characterized by having a mixture of synthetic forms (), which provide information about person and number in the verb ending, and analytic forms (), which require the addition of a pronoun. In Galway and Mayo, as in Ulster, the analytic forms are used in a variety of forms where the standard language has synthetic forms, e.g. "we praise" (standard ) or "they would praise" (standard ). However, the synthetic forms, including those no longer included in the standard language, may be used in answering questions.
Connacht Irish favours the interrogative pronoun and forms based on it such as , "when" instead of Munster , or instead of Munster/Ulster . As in Ulster, Scotland and the Isle of Man, relative forms of the verb such as "that/who/which will be", or , "that/who/which do~does" are frequently used.
Some notable Irish singers who sing songs in the Connacht Irish dialect include Seosamh àhÃÂanaàwho was the subject of a 2017 feature film, Song of Granite, by director Pat Collins, MacDara àConaola, Darach àCatháin, Seán Mac Donncha and Máire ÃÂine NàDhonnchadha.
Inis Meáin storyteller Dara Beag àFátharta was a notable exponent of Inis Meáin Gaeilge and appeared in several television programmes about the island on Irish and international screens.