The Midlands

The centre of Ireland is a flat expanse bordered by the hills and mountains which occupy the coastal regions of the country. In general the term Midlands is used in Ireland to describe an area west of Co. Dublin as far as the Shannon and including its western shore linking up with east Clare, Galway and Mayo and on a north-south axis delimited by the border with Northern Ireland in the north and to the south by a line running roughly from Limerick across to Dublin. In this sense, Midlands actually refers to the north-central part of Ireland. Its extension to the south is limited and does not stretch far down into Co. Tipperary. The counties which are regarded as typically part of the Midlands are Westmeath, Longford, Offaly, Laois along with west Kildare and Meath, south Roscommon and north Tipperary. The main town in the Midlands is Athlone, situated on the Shannon about half way on its north-south course.

To the north, the Midlands show the transitional features of the north-south divide (Ó Baoill 1991) such as /u/-fronting, the use of dental fricatives for stops in the THINK-THIS lexical set or a retroflex  for the more general, traditional velarized  of the south. The single most obvious feature of the Midlands is the shift of /tj/ to /k/ in intervocalic position as in fortune  , already mentioned in the 19th century. Other features are shared by adjoining varieties.