Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/17

2 has determined the popular pronunciation, in certain combinations, of three English consonants, t, d, and th, but in a way (so far as t and d are concerned) that would not now be followed by anyone even moderately well educated. The sounds of English t and d are not the same as those of the Irish t and d; and when the people began to exchange the Irish language for English, they did not quite abandon the Irish sounds of these two letters, but imported them into their English, especially when they came before r. That is why we hear among the people in every part of Ireland such vulgarisms as (for t) bitther, butther, thrue; and (for d) laddher (ladder), cidher (cider), foddher, &c. Yet in other positions we sound these letters correctly, as in fat, football, white; bad, hide, wild, &c. No one, however uneducated, will mispronounce the t and d in such words as these. Why it is that the Irish sound is retained before r and not in other combinations—why for instance the Irish people sound the t and d incorrectly in platter and drive [platther, dhrive] and correctly in plate and dive—is a thing I cannot account for.

As for the English th, it may be said that the general run of the Irish people never sound it at all; for it is a very difficult sound to anyone excepting a born Englishman, and also excepting a small proportion of those born and reared on the east coast of Ireland. It has two varieties of sound, heard in bath and bathe: and for these two our people use the Irish t and d, as heard in the words given above.

A couple of centuries ago or more the people had another substitute for this th (in bathe) namely d, which held its place for a considerable time, and this