Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/116

 before l, n, and m in the whole of Gaeldom with the exception of the mainland of Ross-shire and Sutherlandshire.

The vowels sometimes remain unaltered before r with another liquid. In Strathspey and east Perthshire for example, they are short in words with rn—carn, dorn, burn, cuirn, etc., with the exception of ‘eòrna.’

The broad vowels (a, o, u,) have been lengthened before long r in Gaelic generally both south and north. In such words as barr, ard, cam, ceard, corr, ord, dorn, curr, durd, burn, ciurr, the vowels were short in the old language but are now sounded long, from Arran in the south to Sutherland in the north, and are often marked long in writing, bàrr, càrn, ceàrd, ciùrr, etc. Partial exceptions are Strathspey and east Perthshire, where, as already noted, the vowels are not usually lengthened before rn, and Badenoch and Rannoch, where a and o before rn and rd are dealt with otherwise.

The greatest development of lengthening is found in the mainland of Ross-shire and in Sutherlandshire. In those two districts u has been made long before all the long liquids. Moll, ‘chaff,’ for example, takes u there (as it does in east Perthshire also) in place of o and makes the vowel long ‘mùll.’ In like manner, null, cum, lunn are pronounced respectively, ‘nùll,’ ‘cùm,’ ‘lùnn,’ and so with sunnd, cunnt, unnsa, ung, etc. The slender vowels also have undergone the like change there. Fill is pronounced ‘fìll,’ im, ‘ìm,’ cinn, ‘cìnn,’ and so on. Im (butter) is of course often written ‘ìm’ by the authorities, but is never pronounced so except in the far north, just as am (time), cam, crom, etc., are often written ‘àm,’ ‘càm,’ ‘cròm,’ respectively. In the case of e the lengthening is accompanied by a change of the vowel to i; beinn, seinn, teinn, respectively, are ‘bìnn,’ ‘sìnn,’ ‘tìnn’; steill (peg) is ‘stìll,’ and creim (nibble) ‘crìm.’ In some cases the vowel remains short; teinntean is sometimes tinntean but not tìnntean. In other cases the vowel is undecided, sometimes