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Life

19th Mar 2015

Audio: This is what regional Irish accents sound like according to a linguistic expert

Do you agree?

Paul Moore

Do you agree?

We all love the Irish accent because it’s widely acknowledged as one of the most envied, and dare we say it, sexiest accents in the world.

This being said, the same old chat-up line sounds the same in a Donegal or a Dublin accent so we’re putting a pin in that one.

Tourists might have been surprised to hear the variety of Irish brogues on offer during the Paddy’s weekend but the level of variety is second nature to linguistic expert Raymond Hickey.

From the mid 1990s until 2002, he travelled through the 32 counties and recorded the voices of urban and rural speakers for the purposes of comparison.

All the Irish people surveyed each read a sample sentence that was designed to target specific dialect features for purposes of study and comparison.

You can listen to some of the dialects here and it makes for some interesting findings.

Just click the ear in the diagram and listen to what’s on offer. Do you agree with how your own county sounds?