Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/336

 northern dialect, except in Sutherlandshire, when the word is associated with the first person, the vowel is changed to ì. In the south they say ‘Thu fhéin ’s mi fhéin,’ but in the north ‘Thu fhéin’s mi fhìn.’ In Sutherland with the first person, instead of either fhìn or fhéin, they say in one part of the county fhèin, (è nasal), and in another fhian—‘Thu fhéin ’s mi fhèin’ and ‘Thu fhéin ’s mi fhian.’

The Gaelic sound of i is like the English sound of e in ‘me’ or ee in ‘bee,’ ‘deep,’ long or short as the case may be. Sometimes when short, more especially in initial position, the vowel gets the sound of English i in ‘fit,’ ‘pin.’ This English sound of i is heard in Sutherland in inbhir (initially), sin, and for io in cionta and ciontach, crios, gliong, etc., and is more frequent in that county than in other districts. The lengthening of i before long liquids and the diphthongisation of long io have been dealt with already.

The digraph iu in Northern Gaelic, more especially in its western half, is very often pronounced not yu as elsewhere, but as a diphthong iu or sometimes iû. Iu, for example, is heard in iubhar, iuchair, iù in cliù, siùil (sails) and iû in iullagach, etc.

Io in many cases is pronounced yu or yû in great part of the south and east and, following out the analogy, is also made iu or iû in the north-west, as in iochd, iodhlann, iolach, fiodh. In Skye the diphthong is extended to words in which y is at least not usual elsewhere. There io is iu in iomadh, iomain, iomaire, iomchuidh, iompaidh, iomradh, iomlaid and others.

A certain number of words which have this diphthong in the north vary in spelling or in pronunciation between io and ea in the south. Ionndrain, in Arran and Kintyre i’nndrain, in Perthshire eanndrain—yanndrain in the east of the county and eunndrain (eu diphthong as in certain pronunciations of