You might already know that Irish has three different dialects: Ulster (in the north), Connacht (in the west), and Munster (in the south). All these dialects are mutually intelligible and any Irish speaker should understand what you’re saying. As for me, since I started learning Irish using the Connacht pronunciation, that is the primary pronunciation I use as I write these lessons.
As I mentioned, these dialects are fairly mutually intelligible, but there are some significant differences. For example, if you want to say “how are you?” I teach that you say “cén chaoi a bhfuil tú?” which is the Connacht dialect. However, in Ulster, they say, “cad é mar atá tú?” And in Munster, they say “conas atá tu?’
With regards to pronunciation, there are some small differences, but nothing as major as what I just presented. For example, in the north, Dia Duit is pronounced as dia ghwit, with the “gh” representing the French “r” sound. In contrast, the south pronounces it as dia dit, with a hard “d.” Nevertheless, the message gets across.
You shouldn’t feel too pressured about the pronunciation. When I first started learning, I was very daunted by all the vowels and the weird sounds different consonants made. However, as I kept learning, I started to intuitively figure out how words were pronounced. When it comes to learning the vocabulary, I try to give the best approximation of the pronunciation from an American perspective. This is based both on what I hear (so there’s certainly some sort of bias) and also based on what some dictionaries use. In the second lesson, I use a mixture of IPA and Miriam Webster to display the sounds more formally. This isn’t to confuse my readers, but I cherry-picked based on what I thought would make the most sense and be the most intuitive.
If there’s something that doesn’t make sense, just keep going. I’ll probably explain it later. My goal is not just to grammatically teach Irish, but conversationally teach it as well. If you have any questions that persists, feel free to reach out to me at teangabites1@gmail.com.