Hiberno-English - Pronunciation

Pronunciation

Hiberno-English retains many phonemic differentiations that have merged in other English accents.

• With some local exceptions, /r/ occurs postvocally, making most Hiberno-English dialects rhotic. The exceptions to this are most notable in Dublin and some smaller eastern towns like Drogheda. In Dublin English, a retroflex is used (much as in American English). This has no precedent in varieties of southern Irish English and is a genuine innovation of the past two decades. Mainstream varieties still use a non-retroflex (as in word-initial position). A uvular is found in north-east Leinster. /r/ is pronounced as a postalveolar tap in conservative accents. Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh and Jackie Healy-Rae are both good examples of this.
• /t/ is not pronounced as a plosive where it does not occur word-initially in some Irish accents; instead, it is often pronounced as a slit fricative .
• The distinction between w /w/ and wh /hw/, as in wine vs. whine, is preserved.
• There is some variation with the consonants that are dental fricatives in other varieties (/θ/ and /ð/); after a vowel, they may be dental fricatives or dental stops ( and respectively) depending on speaker. Some dialects of Irish have a "slender" (palatalised) d as /ðʲ/ and this may transfer over to English pronunciation. In still others, both dental fricatives are present since slender dental stops are lenited to and .
• The distinction between /ɒː/ and /oː/ in horse and hoarse is preserved, though not usually in Dublin or Belfast.
• A distinction between -- in herd-bird-curd may be found.
• /l/ is never velarised, except in (relatively recent) South Dublin English, often derisively termed D4 English, after the area where the accent predominates.
• The vowels in words such as boat and cane are usually monophthongs outside Dublin:, and .
• The /aɪ/ in "night" may be pronounced in a wide variety of ways, e.g., and, the latter two being the most common in middle class speech, the former two, in popular speech.
• The /ɔɪ/ in "boy" may be pronounced (i.e. the vowel of thought plus a y) in conservative accents (Henry 1957 for Co. Roscommon, Nally 1973 for Co. Westmeath).
• In some varieties, speakers make no distinction between the in putt and the in put, pronouncing both as the latter. Bertz (1975) found this merger in working-class Dublin speech, and a fluctuation between merger and distinction in General Dublin English (quoted in Wells 1982). Nevertheless, even for those Irish people who, say, have a different vowel sound in put and cut, pairs such as putt and put, look and luck may be pronounced identically.
• In some highly conservative varieties, words spelled with ea and pronounced with in RP are pronounced with, for example meat, beat.
• In words like took where "oo" usually represents /ʊ/, speakers may use /uː/. This is most common in working-class Dublin accents and the speech of North-East Leinster.
• Any and many is pronounced to rhyme with nanny, Danny by very many speakers, i.e. with each of these words pronounced with /a/ or /ɛ/.
• /eɪ/ often becomes /ɛ/ in words such as gave and came (becoming "gev" and "kem")
• Consonant clusters ending in /j/ often change.
  • /dj/ becomes /dʒ/, e.g. dew/due, duke and duty sound like "jew", "jook" and "jooty".
  • /tj/ becomes /tʃ/, e.g. tube is "choob", tune is "choon"
  • The following show neither dropping nor coalescence:
    • /kj/
    • /hj/
    • /mj/

Irish English also always uses the alveolar or "light" L sound, as opposed to other English dialects which use a velar or "dark" L in word-final position. The naming of the letter H as "haitch" is standard, while the letter R is called "or", the letter A is often pronounced "ah", and the letter Z is often referred to as "e-zed" in working-class Dublin accents or parodies of same. Some words gain a syllable in Irish speech, like film, which becomes "fillum".