A phonetic comparison of two Irish English varieties

Abstract

This research offers a preliminary survey on vowels and diphthong variation between two Irish English varieties: Galway (GW) and Letterkenny (LK). The results showed only a smaller difference between GW and LK with respect to the monophthongs, whereas a larger difference was found for the MOUTH diphthong. Despite the great amount of literature on English dialects, a phonetic investigation of these specific varieties is still lacking. This study may open the path to further investigations of sociophonetic values and the stereotypes associated with different varieties, in particular those of the northern regions.