‘mind’, O.Ir. mebuir; ʃo꞉k, ‘hawk’, M.Ir. sebac; tʹrʹouw, ‘to plough’, pres. ind. tʹrʹo꞉jəm, M.Ir. trebaim; jo꞉ mʹə, fut. of jɛvəm, ‘I get’, Keating do-ghéabha, fut. pass. jo꞉hαr. (e) In dʹo꞉n, ‘demon’, O.Ir. demun o꞉ arises from O.Ir. em but the case is isolated, cp. ʃLʹα̃uwinʹ, ‘slippery’, M.Ir. slemon.
Two other forms containing o꞉ by contraction may be mentioned here, fõ꞉wər, ‘harvest, autumn’, O.Ir. fogamur; mʹjo꞉nʹ, ‘means’, which seems to go back to O.Ir. medón, though the latter generally appears as mʹα꞉n in mʹα꞉nĩ꞉çə, ‘midnight’, mʹα꞉NLe꞉, ‘mid-day’. This mʹjo꞉nʹ only occurs in the plural like Engl. ‘means’. Dinneen gives meodhan as a by-form of meadhón.
7. U.
§ 41. This is a sound which does not occur in many words, but there are several varieties, which makes analysis difficult. One form of the sound is certainly the high-back-wide-round vowel in standard Engl. ‘put’, only differing from it in having under-rounding. U is found most frequently in monosyllables before w̥.
§ 42. O.Ir. u in stressed monosyllables followed by b, g, th gives U, e.g. dUw̥, ‘black’, O.Ir. dub (also dŨw̥, ‘to me’, O.Ir. dom); grUw̥ (grU bwiə), ‘biestings’, Wi. gruth; gUw̥, ‘voice’, O.Ir. guth; krUw̥, ‘form, shape’, O.Ir. cruth; srUw̥, ‘stream’, srUw̥ əNuəs, ‘down-drops, rain coming through the roof’, O.Ir. sruth. In cases like tʹUw̥, ‘thick’, M.Ir. tiug (Craig Iasg. tiuth) and tʹrʹUw̥, ‘hooping-cough’, Di. triuch, the glide developed before ꬶ < O.Ir. g has ousted the original vowel.
It may be gathered from these examples that Donegal Irish shews a distinct tendency to make a short accented monosyllable ending in a vowel or w or j terminate in breath. Thus the w in the above instances is unvoiced and this is more clearly seen in əNʹUw̥, ‘to-day’, O.Ir. indiu. Cp. further deh, ‘from him’, O.Ir. de, Scotch Gaelic dheth and §§ 91, 202. When another syllable is added to these forms in w̥, we find h, e.g. krUhi꞉m, ‘I prove’, Di. cruthuighim; srUhαn, ‘a stream’ but also srUw̥αn.
§ 43. U occurs in some words where we might expect o̤ or ï, as in kUʃkʹrʹαχ, ‘reeds’, O’Don. Suppl. cuiscreach; ʃUgiNʹ < seo chugainn; bUksə, ‘box’; kUʃLʹə, ‘vein, pulse’, O.Ir. cuisle, kUʃLʹαn də hαluw, ‘a strip of land’; kUʃNʹαχ, ‘very rainy sleet’, Di. cuisne; LUhə, past part. of Louw, ‘to rot’, O.Ir.
