The Basic Vowel Sounds of Irish

Like most European languages, Irish has vowels in five basic positions (aeiou), each with long and short counterparts. The following table gives examples of each of the basic vowels. You can download a sound file of each word individually by clicking on it.

Vowel Short Long

a ait strange áit a place

cath a battle cá where?

e leis with him léi with her

te hot té (the) one (who)

i i in í her

bith world bí be

o both tent bó a cow

do to, for dó to him, for him

u muc a pig múch quench

um around úim harness

Notes

The words in the table have been deliberately selected to present the minimum possible contrast, that is, a contrast of short and long vowels and nothing else. The words ending in -th do have a -h sound at the end, but otherwise contrast completely with their long-vowel partners. Many of these words (such as the prepositions) cannot carry stress, and so would never be said on their own in normal speech. This makes the examples a little artificial.
The pronounciation here is that of Munster. The only vowel in this table to differ significantly in the dialects is long a. As you travel further north, the pronounciation of long a moves forward in the mouth, until it is pronounced something as in English had in Donegal.
Long vowels in English tend to have off-glides. The vowel in a word like day begins with the e of bed and finishes with a quick ee as in beet. Irish vowels, like French, German or Spanish ones, are "pure" and have no such off-glides.
Short u is always pronounced as in put, not as in putt, which is its normal pronounciation in English today. Thus, Irish muc doesn't sound exactly like English muck, and Irish um doesn't sound exactly like English um.
Short a has two different pronounciations, one as in English hot and one as in hat. These two sounds contrast in English, that is, they count as two different sounds, but in Irish, they don't. Which one is used depends entirely on the quality of the surrounding consonants, broad or slender:

Next to Broad Consonant		Next to Slender Consonant
as	out of	ais	back(wards)
at	swelling	ait	strange
cad	what is...	caid	football
nach	that (is) not	neach	one, person

The Vowels ao and ae

There are two other "normal" vowels in Irish, one written ao and one written ae. The original pronounciation of these vowels is a matter of some controversy. Nowadays the vowel ae is pronounced like a long e, except more open. In Munster, ao is pronounced the same way before a broad consonant, but like a long i before a slender one. In northern dialects, ao is always pronounced like a long i, and never like ae. Thus:

Region	ae	ao + broad	ao + slender
North	long e	long i
South	long e		long i

The following sound files give the Munster pronounciation.

ae liver

aer air

gael Irish person

baol danger

gaoth wind

gaoithe of wind (genitive)

saoi wise person