I have Collins easy learning Irish Grammar book and Nollaig Mac Congáil's Irish Grammar Book. I find neither particularly easy to use. I tend to use nualeargais.ie/gnag/gram.htm far more than my books. But I find nualeargais.ie very technical and difficult to follow at times.

What are people's recommendations for the best Irish grammar guide in English or both languages at a reasonable price, say £40 or under? Ideally I would like the guide to handle the differences between the dialects as, for example, nualeargais.ie does. My preference is for Munster Irish followed by Connacht.

I don't mind buying an out of print book second hand.

You can post questions here.

There aren't any really good grammar books for Irish. The Standardised Irish ones are the only comprehensive ones. Older ones are actually no good. The explanations on nualeargais are great - and they are the best you will find. If you need more explanations, post here.

Thank you for the insights. I'll continue using nualeargais.ie.

Thank you for the offer. I'll post any questions that I have on here.

If you’re interested in older stuff, Gearóid Ó Nualláin’s Studies in Modern Irish books are a good resource (though not a grammar per se – and often use untranslated examples, so it’s not approachable for a beginner; you’ll find them on archive.org, the first volume is here), also his New Era Grammar is pretty good.

Note, though, that the two pretty much focus on West Munster, especially Cork, Irish of the late 19th, early 20th century.

Another great grammar book – but exclusively in Irish – is Gnás na Gaedhilge by Cormac Ó Cadhlaigh. It has more varied input (shows forms from texts by Ulster and Connacht authors too) but it’s still mostly based by Cork Irish of Peadar Ua Laoghaire, similarly to the aforementioned books by O’Nolan.

For modern standard Irish you have Graiméar Gaeilge na mBráithre Críostaí which you can find online (in Irish), but which also has an annotated translation to English published, as A Grammar of Modern Irish by Pól Ó Murchú.

Those generally are the resources I’d recommend.

Beside those books by Nancy Stenson, like Routledge A Comprehensive Grammar: Modern Irish or Studies in Irish syntax, or Basic Irish: A Grammar and Workbook might be worth looking at – AFAIK they’re pretty good but do contain small errors with more involved stuff. (Also, more focus on Standard Irish with input mostly from Connacht speakers while myself I tend to prefer… more Munster and historical bias in my resources and no focus on what’s accepted today by the standard and what isn’t ;-)).

I don't think this is genuinely annotated. Where are the annotations? The only thing is that he notes that some example sentences in Ó Dónall's dictionary don't correspond to Graiméar Gaeilge na mBráithre Críostaí. So the CO people differ among themselves (slightly).

I think a genuinely annotated grammar, where each point is annotated to explain which dialect GGBC took a grammatical rule from, or where the example sentences are from (many are lifted from Peadar Ua Laoghaire's works verbatim without acknowledgement) would be good.

Another idiocy is that Paul Murphy calls English "Béarla" throughout even in English-language sentences. He doesn't give a good explanation of that. I think he is just a Sinn Féiner for whom the Irish language is just an adjunct to his politics.

No idea how much/if it really is annotated – I’m just aware of that version, haven’t really seen it on my own (but some people quoted some translated passages to me, and those seemed fine). Maybe it’s “just” a translation. Still might be useful as an alternative to the original.

Yes it is. It's an exact translation of GGBC.

Thank you. Those suggestions are very helpful. I'll go off and have a look at those books. I am interested in Waterford Irish, in particular, because my father went to Mount Sion in Waterford in the 1940/50s with the Christian Brothers where 'everything' was done through the medium of Irish.

I've been using A Grammar of Modern Irish since 2013. The book is loaded with annotations that explain idiosyncrasies in the main text.

What's a "genuinely annotated grammar"? If you have access to a dictionary, try using Oxford's definition (before you write unbacked, anonymous idiocies on the internet), 'Add notes to (a text or diagram) giving explanation or comment'.

How is calling the language "Béarla" a sign of Sinn Féin affiliation? Before you make cavilling remarks about another book you haven't thoroughly read, try reading this quote from the first page of the Preface, '*Béarla is used since it specifically denotes the language into which Irish is translated'.

Instead of having a chip on your shoulder about another who put the effort in to write a brilliant reference, try learning the language and writing a grammar book that is better.

I am particularly interested in Munster Irish (specifically, Corca Dhuibhne).

Typically, if I have a question about grammar, I use Nualeargais.ie, however, the English version of the site is not running currently, so you'd have to use the German version (I use google translate along with the German because, whoops, I don't speak German ). I typically use A Grammar of Modern Irish as a second option (/last resort).
There are not many good comprehensive grammar books for dialects, usually those books just cover the grammatical features specific to THAT DIALECT and not the entire grammar as a whole, so I recommend reading something like GGBC or GMI and supplementing with a dialectal book (for example, I use Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne by Diarmuid Ó Sé, which is pretty good). There is, however, an earlier version of Teach Yourself Irish written in the Munster dialect, but this, AFAIK is currently out of print (HOWEVER, there is a series of YouTube videos reviewing the content from that book spoken in the dialect).

Sorry for the long and wordy response, I hope this helps anyways,

N