Page:The Celtic Review volume 4.djvu/84

 perhaps of most such changes, is ease of utterance. When one sound gives place to another the displacing sound is generally the easier to enunciate.

Aspiration is not unknown of course in other languages. In English, for example, father shows what we call aspiration in f and th of the original p and t seen in the Latin pater, only th in this as in some other instances has the sound of dh—not that of th as in 'thin'—and is the aspiration of d which took the place of t as seen in the Anglo-Saxon form fæder, Gothic fadar, etc. In our Gaelic athair p as usual has been lost and t has become th now either sounded as h or altogether silent.

Perhaps the most curious apparent parallel to this treatment of the particular consonant t is fonmd in the Glasgow vernacular, as when such a word as 'water' is pronounced 'wa’er' or 'waher.' Though the process of change in this case is hardly to be called aspiration, the result certainly is oddly similar.

Gaelic orthography, strange though it looks when first examined by those familiar with English and other languages, is in reality highly phonetic and well fitted to distinguish simply and effectively the sounds of the language. MacAlpine did not speak without knowledge when he uttered such an encomium as—'The orthography of the Gaelic shows more acuteness and ingenuity in its structure than any other language the author knows  of.' In that orthography it is possible to distinguish simply and effectively four different sounds of each consonant in the event of its having so many. First there are the broad and the narrow or slender sounds. These are distinguished in spelling according as the flanking vowels are broad or narrow. If the vowel nearest to the consonant is broad, that is, if it is a or o or u, the consonant has what is called its broad sound. If the vowel is a narrow one, that is e or i, the consonant has its narrow or slender sound. This distinction in the sounds of the consonants is the foundation for the rule in Gaelic spelling that the vowels on either side of a consonant or group of consonants must