Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/345

 whence Gaelic spiolg, to unhusk. Muinighin is muinigin in Early Irish, and may have had its pronunciation affected by analogy or some other influence. The old Irish colum, a dove, for example, is written now columan, calaman, and calman, and according to current pronunciation the best form phonetically is the last named.

In all these instances the liquids that precede the svarabhakti have those sustained or lengthened pronunciations already noticed (p. 99). Wherever indeed a long liquid is followed immediately by a vowel in the written word, that vowel, so far at least as its present value in the spoken language is concerned, is a svarabhakti. Such vowels are rather to be extirpated where they have appeared especially if there are alternative spellings without them already, than to be made by their insertion a cause of increased confusion in the orthography. They have no place in the old language; they may be absent in particular cases or in classes of words in one dialect though present in other dialects, and in any case they are merely parasitic. They are exactly of the same kind as the intercalated vowels in pronunciations of English such as ‘warum’ for warm, ‘woruld’ for world, and ‘kerub’ for kerb, and are doubtfully euphonious and certainly incorrect.

When liquids are short before other consonants, e.g., the tenues, the svarabhakti is not heard, as in Ailpean, alp, olc, corp, torc. A seeming exception is calpa, calf of the leg, but this, besides being a borrowed word, is more often perhaps calba in the spoken language.

In general the svarabhakti is most frequent in the north-west, and least frequent in East Perthshire and Strathspey. In Glenlyon it may be heard from some natives—by no means from all or perhaps even from the majority—in forms quite as exaggerated, though not in so many instances, as in West Ross-shire. In Sutherland it is at least not more frequent than in the southern dialect (exclusive of East Perth).