South-West Irish English (also known as South-West Hiberno-English) is a class of broad varieties of English spoken in Ireland's South-West Region (the province of Munster). Within Ireland, the varieties are best associated with either the urban working class of the South-West or traditional rural Ireland in general, and they are popularly identified by their specific city or county, such as Cork English, Kerry English, or Limerick English.
Among speakers in the South-West alone (famously Cork, Kerry, or Limerick), the vowel of raises to when before or (a pinâÂÂpen merger) and sentences may show a unique intonation pattern. This intonation is a slightly higher pitch followed by a significant drop in pitch on stressed long-vowel syllables (across multiple syllables or even within a single one), which is popularly heard in rapid conversation, by other English-speakers, as an undulating "sing-song" quality.
Among older speakers, and may respectively be pronounced as and before a consonant and so fist sounds like fished, castle like ', and arrest like '.
Certain South-West features may also exist in Ireland outside that region but typically only in rural areas. An example is the backing, slight lowering, and perhaps rounding of towards , so that, to a Dublin or General American speaker, about nears the sound of a boat. The consonants and (as in thick and those), which are typically dental in other Irish English varieties, are traditionally alveolar: and , respectively (thus, thick and those merge to the sound of tick and doze). and are preserved as long monophthongs: and , respectively. Those varieties are all rhotic, like most other Irish accents, but the sound is specifically a velarised alveolar approximant: . (Among some very traditional speakers, other possible variants include a "tapped R", the alveolar tap , or even a "uvular R", the voiced uvular fricative , in rural south-central Ireland.)
Features shared with both rural Irish English and working-class Dublin English include the vowels in , , and having a more open starting point and lacking a rounded quality: . Furthermore, for all of those varieties, and may also lack a rounded quality, the lexical set is very fronted (), the may be dropped before (hue pronounced like you), a distinction remains between tern and turn, and <w> and <wh> remain separate sounds.
South-West Irish English allows the use of a do be habitual aspect. Examples include I do be thinking about it or she does be late and replace Standard English constructions of those sentences: I think about it (often) or she is late (usually).
Non-canonical constituent order is also possible, in which a sentence may be arranged as Thinking to steal a few eggs I was (rather than I was thinking to steal a few eggs) to give the first clause salience or emphasis.