Page:Aids to the Pronunciation of Irish - Christian Brothers.djvu/55

 must be, a glide between the (a back consonant) and  (a front consonant). We shall pass over this glide. In pronouncing the the point of the tongue is drawn back as far as possible, and the back of the tongue is arched up (§ 11 (f)). Whilst bringing the tongue forward to the upper teeth in order to produce the “n” (§ 14), a broad glide is formed and is distinctly heard—viz., —As the is broad and the  broad, it is unnecessary to write this glide. Take, however, the dative case of this word—viz., Again the tongue in moving forward from the position for  to that of  must produce a glide, as in the former case, but  not because it is actually formed,   (§ 24 (a))—i.e., the tongue must touch the “hard rim” (§ 2). The tongue in passing up to the “hard rim” actually produces a slender glide. If we possessed distinct characters for the broad and slender sounds of the same letter, the writing of glides could be dispensed with; but we have not separate characters, therefore the glides are written to show whether the broad or the slender sound of the consonant is to be produced.

47. Sometimes the slender glide introduced affects the vowels already in the word. This matter is fully treated under the heading “Digraphs”—Chapter X.

48. It is quite evident from what has been already said that the spoken vowels (one or both may be only glides) surrounding a single consonant must be either