Southwest Tyrone English Irish


		Southwest Tyrone English A traditional Mid-Ulster English dialect
	Home Soundfiles The dialect Lexis W. F. Marshall Tyrone Irish References	One of the most intriguing questions about SwTE is the extent to which it was influenced in its development by Irish (Gaelic). Given that the dialect formed at a time when Irish was still spoken by many people in Tyrone as their first language, it would be surprising if Irish influence wasn't to be found in SwTE, but it's not always very easy to identify it, and even seemingly obvious cases like epenthesis in words such as film ('fillum') are not straightforward (see Maguire, in preparation). Tragically, however, the native Tyrone dialects of Irish died out in the middle of the 20^th century. But before they did various records were made of Sperrins and Killeter Irish, including the folk-tales collection Sgéalta Mhuintir Luinigh (Ó Tuathail 1933), data for the Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish Dialects (Wagner 1958-69, Stockman & Wagner 1965), Padaí Láidir Mac Culadh agus Gaeltacht Thír Eoghain (Ó Baoighill 2009) and the Doegen Recordings. These sources provide us with an invaluable insight into the Irish context in which SwTE developed, and a detailed comparison of the phonetics and phonologies of the two languages will help us to unravel this complex puzzle.




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