Page:Aids to the Pronunciation of Irish - Christian Brothers.djvu/52

 43. is not a spelling rule. It is absurd to treat it as such. It is a law of speech.

Take for example the word If we wish to get a diminutive from this word we add the termination in. If we write we get a combination of letters which it is impossible to pronounce, as they stand, in one word. We could pronounce, by making a pause after the but then we get two words. If were a mere spelling rule, then the word would be appropriately written, or. Any of these spellings satisfies the so-called rule, and has, moreover, the advantage of preserving the original spelling of the stem. The three spellings just given are easily pronounced, because the broad vowel after the acts as a glide from the broad  to the slender  As a matter of fact the diminutive of the word  is not written like the above, simply because it is not so pronounced by Irish speakers. All Irish speakers make the  slender, on account of the influence of the slender. Now, before this slender there is a broad ; but we cannot pass from a broad vowel to a slender consonant without the aid of a slender glide, therefore the word is written.

44. We shall now enter more fully into this very important subject of “glides,” and endeavour to show how they are formed. We shall first take a few English words—e.g., “awkward,” “oak,” “cool,” and show that glides really exist in English, although most persons are unaware of the fact. Take the first syllable of the word “awkward”—i.e., awk. To pronounce the “aw”