IRISH SPELLING 



o,. uj-At) in cAotujjAt), etc 



* 



10. 

 ii. 

 12. 



These are fair samples. The list might be considerably 

 extended if we went deeper into dialects, which after all 

 no one can altogether avoid now, for the dialects are the 

 language. In various dialects we should find the same 

 sound u represented in the conventional spelling by UA, 

 o, 6, , 10, etc. And many of these combinations of 

 letters are also used to represent quite different sounds. 

 Compare muptA-bA and e&iAt>A, co-otAtui^ and LAD.AIJA. Or 

 take the sound i in oi, -pig, ^105, cige, fU$it), 

 olige-At), itnpi-oe, itnpi-6im, if$e, Sifvgitn, pite-A-DA, 

 pot), 01-oCe.f 



The conventional system of spelling contains at all 

 events one remarkable sign which must surely be unique 

 among " phonetic " systems. That is the symbol t>, the 

 algebraic x of Gaelic orthography. Where this letter has 

 any historical justification at all it comes from an old 

 spirant T>. But the one thing you may be positive about 

 is that it is never pronounced as a spirant t). It may, 

 however, represent the sound of a spirant guttural, voiced 

 ($) or unvoiced (c), or a guttural that is no longer a spirant 

 (5), or a labial spirant (o), or it may be a kind of vowel, 

 and form part of a diphthong (^t)). Or it may be equivalent 

 to the aspirate (n). Or it may be silent, lengthening a 

 preceding vowel. Or it may be silent without lengthening 

 the vowel. Sometimes when a word ends in -o you must 

 parse the word before you can pronounce it. Gaelic 



* The older spelling is 



f Professor O Maille draws my attention to the Connacht phrase 

 nA|\ f-A'bAi<> cu, in which f % AjbAi > 6(!) represents the sound a. And even 

 here the A should not be accented in the " historic " spelling, as it is short 

 by nature, and only lengthened dialectically by the loss of the following 

 . The early modern form was f"AA. 



