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i. The characters p, t, c had the values in O.W. of modern p, t, c. They also represented the mutated sounds b, d, g, see § 103 iii; as in scipaur ≡ scubawr, Mn. W. ysgubor ‘barn’, creaticaul. ≡ creadigawl, Mn. W. creadigol ‘created’. When they have this value they are sometimes doubled; thus in. we find catteiraul, Mn. W. cadeiriol ‘cathedral’ adj., carrecc, Mn. W. carreg ‘stone’, hepp, Ml. W. heb ‘says’. Possibly this is due to the influence of Irish spelling. [In Old Ir. original *nt > *d-d written t and sometimes tt.]

In Ml. W. p, t, c no longer represent b, d, g medially, but finally after a vowel they continued to do so even down to the Mn. period. The facts are briefly as follows: In the, late 12th cent., the final labial is written p, but often b (mab 27, 28, 29); the dental is always d, because t is used for the soft spirant ẟ; the guttural is always c. In the 14th cent. the labial very generally appears as b, though often as p; the dental is always t, the guttural always c. In the 15th cent. (e.g. Ỻ 28) we have b, d, c. In the 1620 Bible b, d, g, but c in many forms, unic, lluddedic, etc. The final c is still written in ac and nac, which should be ag, nag, § 222 i (1), ii (3). On the sound of the consonant in these cases see § 111 v (4).

Finally after a consonant p, t, c have always represented the voiceless sounds.

In Ml. W. and Early Mn. W., initial c is generally written k. The chief exceptions are the combinations cl, cr. Medially we find c, k, cc, ck. Finally after a consonant, though we generally have c, we also find k (or even ck); as grafangk, oerdrangk. 1321, diag̃k etc. do. 1314, digelk do. 1364, Iork 397, carbunck, Ỻ.. 170. In these words the sound was, and is, voiceless. Note that after a vowel, where the sound is now g, it is never written k in Ml. W. Thus k, which represents the tenuis only, is clearly distinguished from c, which also finally represents the media.

. In O. W. and the earliest Ml. W., as in. (about 1150), c alone is used; k appears in. and was general in Ml. and Early