Did you know that the dialect of Irish spoken in the province of Connacht, is called Connacht Irish? The Gaeltacht, or Irish speaking areas located in the Connacht, are located in County Mayo and Galway. The dialects of Galway and Mayo are somewhat different from one another, as Galway Irish leans more heavily towards Munster Irish, and Mayo Irish is slightly more like Ulster Irish. If you listen closely, you can hear the pronunciation differences between the two, however it may be difficult to recognize if you are not a native Irish speaker. While it might sound strange that so many different dialects of Irish exist within such a small country, it's not so strange when you consider the age of the language. In the United States for example, a relatively new country by world standards, there are thick English pronunciation differences around the country. Tack a few hundred years on to that, and grammatical and word spelling difference will arise.
