Page:Alexander Macbain - An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language.djvu/31

Rh that range. The Southern Dialect is more Irish than the Northern, and it has also adhered to the inflections better (e.g., the dual case still exists in feminine a nouns). The crucial distinction consists in the different way in which the Dialects deal with e derived from compensatory lengthening; in the South it is eu, in the North ia (e.g., feur against fiar, breug against briag, &c.) The sound of ao differs materially in the two Dialects, the Southern having the sound opener than the Northern Dialect. The Southern Dialect is practically the literary language.

Modern Gaelic has far more borrowed words than Irish at any stage of its existence. The languages borrowed from have been mainly English (Scottish) and Norse. Nearly all the loan-words taken directly from Latin belong to the Middle or Old period of Gaelic and Irish; and they belong to the domain of the Church and the learned and other secular work in which the monks and the rest of the clergy engaged. Many Latin words, too, have been borrowed from the English, which, in its turn, borrowed them often from French, (such as prìs, cunntas, cùirt, spòrs, &c.). Latin words borrowed directly into English and passed into Gaelic are few, such as post, plasd, peur, &c. From native English and from Lowland Scots a great vocabulary has been borrowed. In regard to Scots, many words of French origin have come into Gaelic through it. At times it is difficult to decide whether the Teutonic word was borrowed from Scottish (English) or from Norse. The contributions from the Norse mostly belong to the sea; in fact, most of the Gaelic shipping terms are Norse.

Under the heading of Phonetics we deal with the sounds of the language—the vowels, semi-vowels, and consonants, separately and in their inter-action upon one another.

The Gaelic alphabet consists of eighteen letters, viz., a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, I, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, and u. Irish, Old and New, have the same letters as the Gaelic. As this number of letters in no way adequately represents the sounds, signs and combinations are necessary.

Firstly, the long vowels are denoted by a grave accent: à, ì, ù, è, ò, the latter two having also the forms é, ó, to denote sounds analogous to those in English vein, hoar. Whereas à, ì, ù, which have only one sound, represent corresponding Indo-European sounds (ā, ī, ū), none of the long sounds of e or o represent simple corresponding I.E. sound.