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When two consonants immediately follow one another the articulation of the second is as a rule not anticipated or in other words the off-glide of the first is distinctly heard as in French. In combinations such as tl, dl, kr, kl, k′r′, gl, gn, t′r′, b′r′, χl, ŋl, mn, vr′ and medial sr at first one almost fancies one hears a slight vowel-sound between the two consonants. For k′r′ cp. Henebry p. 30 and note the spellings in the old Manx Prayer-book gylaghty = Ir. gcleachdadh; mynayn now mraane (Rhys p. 15). In the following combinations, however, where the articulations are more or less homogeneous the glide is not heard – Lt, Nt, rN, rN′, sL, sN, Ns, NL, initial sr, and the combinations with s mentioned in the next paragraph.

t, k, p normally have strong aspiration but in certain positions these sounds together with the corresponding palatal sounds t′, k′, p′ are unmistakably lenes and therefore not aspirated. This is the case when they immediately follow s, ʃ, as in αspəl, ‘apostle’; αspUk, ‘bishop’; d′eiʃt′ən, ‘clenching of the teeth with pain’; fαsto:jəm, ‘I hire’; hαskar sə, ‘it thawed’; spɔ:l, ‘spool’; stær′, ‘history’. Similarly t is a lenis after χ in o̤χtαn, ‘lapful’; rαχtæl′, ‘to run’, Di. reachtáil. In these cases Modern Irish orthography somewhat naturally hesitates between the tenuis and the media. It is quite possible that lenes occur under other conditions than those just mentioned, as I have heard the t in bwel′ə tαləv, ‘a farm of land’, distinctly pronounced in this way.

It is perhaps not amiss to point out that the grammarian’s rule of ‘caol le caol’ is constantly broken in the spoken language. This occurs regularly in the case of the privative prefix αn- with uneven stress, e.g. ·αnɔ:li:, ‘an ignorant person’, ·αnɔ:lαχ, ‘ignorant’, Di. aineólach; ·αnɔil′, ‘proud flesh’, Di. ainfheoil. The other prefix αn&#8209;, ‘very’, has even stress, e.g. ·αn·i:ʃəl, ‘very low’; ·αn·f′αtə, ‘a great pot’. The ending of the conditional passive is &#8209;f′i:, no matter what the quality of the preceding consonant is, e.g. d′i:sf′i: from içə, ‘to eat’; vɛ:rf′i: from to:rt′ ‘to give’; χαsf′i: from kαsuw, ‘to meet’. Similarly in compounds, e.g. stαriəkyl′, ‘projecting tooth’, Di. stairfhiacail, Macbain starr-fhiacail; stαriəri:, ‘a stubborn attempt’; drɔχiəri: