Ireland 6

Listen to Ireland 6, a 36-year-old man from Galway, Ireland. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples.  IDEA is a free resource;  please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 36

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1967

PLACE OF BIRTH: London, England

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Irish/Caucasian

OCCUPATION: actor

EDUCATION: N/A

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject was born in London but then, at the age of 7, moved to Cavan for a year, then to Reece (spelling is in question) and then finally to Galway.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject speaks of his rural Irish country upbringing, which would be a speech influence, as would both his parents’ East Galway speech patterns.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Robert Price

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

My parents came from the East Galway, which is in Ballinasloe, which is, which is around the Ballinasloe area, and I was born in 1967 in London, and I left there when I was 7, and I just around started school, and I; uh, the first place we moved actually was Cavan.  We lived in Cavan for a year, and, and I went to Reece [spelling?]; uh, it’s amazing, this beautiful little country school, where you had four classes.  It was, uh, th… the building was about 150 years old, and you had four classes in one room with one teacher.  And it was the kind of school where the swallows and birds were always flying into the classroom and flying around the rafters, and everything would stop and you’d just have to get rid of the birds and open the window and all that kind of stuff.  So it was kind of, it was, you know, early ‘70s, very nice childhood. I had a really, really great childhood.  I mean I had all the positive aspects of a kind of rural Irish country upbringing, I suppose.  You know like I mean we were probably one of the last school’s in the country that brought turf to school in the morning.  The kids brought turf to put in the fire, you know, stuff that disappeared within a year of me leaving the place.  Do you know what I mean? Um, so, and then I moved to Galway, where I … grown up most of my life and where my parents are from.  My parents spent years trying to get back to Galway, where the … always wanted to get back to their roots and that.  So I grew up there, near the sea.  I’m the eldest of six kids. I always, I’m still trying to get to live by the sea again.  I miss it a lot.  Galway City, but just on the outskirts, like going out towards Spiddal …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Rose Mignano

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/06/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

His dialect is a mild western dialect rather than the marked ‘Tuam’ Galway of Tom Murphy’s plays. The casting director who recommended this subject for IDEA described his dialect as “a perfect neutral Galway accent.” Ireland has no historical equivalent of RP, but there are characteristics that mark out a sort of “supra-regional” Irish standard accent among middle-class urbanites. This subject’s accent exhibits these features.

This is a rhotic dialect. Gave is pronounced [gɛv] a feature of western dialects. In addition, CLOTH is [ɒ], and CURE is [jø]. Also note that this subject, like most Irish people, refers to the language of Ireland as Irish, not Gaelic. In Ireland, Gaelic refers to the sport of Gaelic football; it is a mistake to refer to the Irish language as Gaelic.

COMMENTARY BY: Robert Price

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.