5
mannerism of individuals. Its use is governed by rules observed by all Waterford speakers. Ask anyone in Ring to say mo láṁ and do láir, and you will notice that in the first case lá is nasal, and in the second case it is not. The following rule takes in most of the cases:—The nasal sound is heard where ṁ occurs, as in aṁras, láṁa (láṁa, pl. of láṁ, except that it is nasal, is pronounced the same as lá, “a day”), and wherever the ah-oo diphthong is used, see (4).
(8) In Irish the letters a, o, u, e, i serve a double purpose. They represent vowel sounds, and they indicate the quality, broad or slender, of the consonant beside which they are placed. In the first-mentioned use they are deservedly called vowels, in the second they should be called “broad-signs” or “slender-signs.” In the word agus, a and u are vowels; in the word táimíd, the first i is only a slender-sign and is not pronounced as a vowel, for no one says thaw″ im-eed but thaw″ meed. The learner is, therefore, often puzzled to know when he is to treat the vowel as a vowel, and when as a broad or slender sign. To help him, we omit such sign-vowels and insert a hyphen in their place, as in tá-míd, gea-tín, gyah-teen. Furthermore, two vowels written together (a digraph) like oi may represent any one of several different sounds. Thus, e.g., in sé troiġṫe, “six feet,” the pronunciation of troiġṫe will embarrass the beginner, but can be satisfactorily represented by the spelling, tr-e-ṫe, threh″ heh. Here tr is separated by the hyphen from e; e is slender, therefore tr is broad. So, too, if we chose, we might replace the spelling caointeaċán, “lamenting,” by c-ínt-″aċán. Here í is slender, therefore c, which is separated from it by the hyphen, is broad. Similarly t is separated by a hyphen from a
