Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/341

 though they do not contain nasal liquids, their vowels nevertheless are nasalised. As a matter of fact the sounds also of o and of e, when nasalised, are changed. The nasal ò of sròn is not the ó of bó, mór, but neither is it the ó of brón, ór, though it is nearer to the latter than to the former. Also the nasal è of eun is not the é of breun, treun, nor is it the è of è, he, though it again is nearer to the latter than to the former. This pronoun è, he, is itself nasalised when preceded by a particle ending with n; compare Am b’ e, was it, with An e, is it, and Cha ’n e, it is not.

In North Argyll (Sunart) a when nasalised changes its sound and becomes e. This takes place, for example, in bàn, dàna, làn, ràn, slàn, àmhuinn, cnàmh (digest), làmh, nàmhaid, sàmhach, snàmh, tàmh, màg, màs, nàduir, smàd, snàth, mach, math, etc. The change of vowel resembles that from a to e in Arran and in Kintyre, but in this district it is found only in the case of nasalised a.

What has been called sometimes a euphonic a, to quote Munro’s Gaelic Grammar (2nd ed. pp. 96, 97), “is of constant occurrence in speaking; as in Gleanna gairidh, gacha ràidhe, gura mi, ma’sa tu, etc., where, without its intervention, the combinations nng, chr, etc., would sound extremely harsh and snappish. It is in compliance with this propensity to euphonia that the prefixes an, ban, etc., become, before certain letters, ana, bana, as in anabarrach, banacharaid, etc. Proper attention has not always been paid to this in the orthography; but as it is unquestionably a fixed principle in the pronunciation, it ought to be attended to in writing.” This parasitic vowel is found usually after liquids, as in ball-a-bùird, cam-a-chasach, sean-a-ghille, sean-a-mhàthair, barr-a-geal. Place-names having as their first part such words as cill, poll, toll, cam, druim, tom, beinn, ceann, gleann, barr, gearr, torr, often have the vowel. Cill Mhoire in Skye (‘Kilmuir’), Ardnamurchan, Knapdale, Kintyre, and Arran