Page:The Celtic Review volume 4.djvu/358

Rh dh slender.

Slender dh, pronounced slender gh initially, is silent in other positions in many districts. When final in monosyllables it sometimes sounds like y in North Argyll. In several of the islands, including far St. Kilda, it has the sound, when final, of slender gh, rising in cases to slender ch. MacAlpine represents it sometimes by yh, as in fàidh, prophet, cruaidh, hard, and sometimes by y, as in laoidh, a lay, luaidh, lead. In nasgaidh, gratis, slabhraidh, chain, and tuilidh, more, he pronounces, and, in the two latter words, even writes in alternative forms ch for dh. ‘Slabhraich,’ chain, has been noted also from Kintyre.

s

Initial sv is represented usually in Gaelic by s, but sometimes by t, p, or f; as piuthar, sister, Early Irish siur and fiur, Sanskrit svâsar. Thus seal, a while; fiolan, an earwig, and fealan, itch; pill, till, and fill, return, and seillean, a bee, are all apparently from the same root. Various pronunciations of seillean as teillean in Perth and Lewis; tainnleag, etc., in Sutherland, have been given already in the Review (vol. ii. p. 35). Other instances of t for s, or vice versa, are sabaid and tabaid, a brawl; and tìde and sìde, time, weather. Séist or séis and téis, melody, air, are both from the root of seinn, whence Latin sonare, sonus, English sound.

Iosal, low, which has broad s in Perth, Badenoch and Strathspey, West Ross and Sutherland, has slender s ‘ìseal’ in Arran, Argyll, and Skye. So also treasa, stronger, ‘treise’; dìleas, faithful, ‘dìlis,’ and others in Arran and Argyll.

The insertion of the sound of s in the group rt in accented syllables prevails both in the northern and in the greater part of the southern area: as mart, a cow, ‘marst’; ceart, right, ‘cearst’; ort, on you; furtachd, help; cairt, bark, ‘cairst’; beairt, loom; goirt, sour, etc. In unaccented