Page:The Celtic Review volume 4.djvu/286

Rh ancient area, and the consequent vanishing and obscuring of many of the place-names, it is not impossible that a diligent search into older records might still bring many more to view, and so remind us in Wales, who are the linguistic representatives of the Britons of the West, that our race, though it has lost in the North its ancient speech, has played, even into historic times, an honourable part in the development of one of the most active and progressive parts of the United Kingdom.

SCOTTISH GAELIC DIALECTS

(Continued from p. 183)

GUTTURALS

The gutturals c and g have broad and slender pronunciations both in their plain and in their aspirated forms. The slender pronunciations of both consonants, both plain and aspirated, are formed with the middle of the tongue against the hard palate. Broad c is much the same as in English, e.g. in ‘cat’ ‘cock.’ The slender sound of c is given provincially to that consonant in English in such words as cape, care, cube, cure, and to k in such words as key, king. In English words of Anglo-Saxon derivation the influence of the distinction between the broad and the slender sounds in question may be observed in the prevalence, at the beginning of words, of c before the broad vowels a, o and u, and of k before the slender vowels e and i. In cases like cape, where the sounded vowel is e though the written one is a, and cube where u represents a sound that is written iu in Gaelic, c, in such provincial pronunciations as have been referred to, has its slender sound in agreement with the slender vowel sounds in contact with it.

In the same manner slender g is heard provincially in English in association with slender vowels or slender sounds e.g. in gear, get, gild, give, game, gay, guess, guest, guild.  VOL. IV.