South-West Irish English


South-West Irish English is a class of broad varieties of English spoken in Ireland's South-West Region. 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.

Phonology

Among speakers in the South-West alone, the vowel of raises to when before or 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, 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, so fist sounds like fished, castle like cashle, and arrest like arresht.
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 , which are typically dental in other Irish English varieties, are traditionally alveolar: and, respectively. and are preserved as long monophthongs: and, respectively. These varieties are all rhotic, as most Irish accents are, though the sound is specifically a velarised alveolar approximant:.
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 these varieties, and may also lack a rounded quality, the lexical set is very fronted, the may be dropped before , a distinction remains between tern and turn, and and remain separate sounds.

Grammar

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, whereas more standard English constructions of those sentences are I think about it or she is late .
Non-canonical constituent order is also possible, in which a sentence may be arranged as Thinking to steal a few eggs I was, in order to give the first clause salience or emphasis.