Page:An Irish-English dictionary, being a thesaurus of words, phrases and idioms of the modern Irish language, with explanations in English.djvu/13

Rh process must be gradual and, as it were, imperceptible. The diphthong has been used throughout instead of. I have followed Peter O'Connell in writing or  as the termination of abstract nouns, thus, not , though the verb is written.

The diphthong and not  is written throughout except in a few cases, and triphthongs are not in general accented. The diphthong is used in preference to  in unaccented syllables, thus  not. It has been found convenient for lexicographical order to observe the law even in compounds, though there are some instances of departure from it, But it should be noted that the observance of this law is not intended to prejudice the pronunciation. Words like are largely but not universally pronounced as if written  and ; thus we say  and not, etc. Though many hints regarding the pronunciation of words are scattered through the book, it was found impossible to treat the pronunciation of each word in a systematic manner, without unduly enlarging the work.

The more important verbals are given a separate heading; sometimes they have uses distinct from those of the corresponding verbs. The verbs are given under their first singular indicative, as this arrangement is generally adopted in modern vocabularies. The unsettled state of orthography of the language often necessitated the repetition of the same word under different forms, and recourse was had to phonetic spelling when the origin or etymology of the word was uncertain.

An effort has been made, as far as the limits of the