The Dialects of Irish ─ Study of a Changing Landscape

Following his study of the structure of Irish, Hickey (linguistics, U. of Duisburg and Essen) here provides an overview of its present-day dialects, for students and scholars who do not necessarily have any prior experience of the language. There are three main dialects with further subdivisions, he says, that have diverged considerably in their development over the centuries. Unlike most other European languages, there is no official Irish pronunciation against which variants can be contrasted, and few of the major references on Irish refer to pronunciation at all, thus bypassing the issue of dialects. After reviewing the history, status, and sound system of Irish he describes collecting data, features of dialects, the prosody of Irish, dialect reconstruction, and further variation. The accompanying disk contains the actual recordings of over 200 speakers in different Irish-speaking regions that he made for study between 2004 and 2009. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Raymond Hickey, Universitat Duisburg-Essen, Germany.