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§ 202. In monosyllables with short root-vowel followed by aspirated b, m, the w arising from the latter loses its voice in accordance with the Donegal fondness for breath-endings in short syllables, cp. § 12. At the same time the back of the tongue seems to be raised from the u-position towards the soft palate, thus producing in addition a slight χ sound. When the next word begins with a consonant, the w̥ usually disappears, thus row̥ = rabh, but lʹɛ ro lʹɛ dʹα꞉nuw ɛgʹə. Examples—brow̥, ‘blade’, Meyer brobb, brod; dα̃uw, ‘ox’, O.Ir. dam; dUw̥, ‘black’, O.Ir. dub; dŨw̥, ‘to me’, O.Ir. dom; kʹrʹα̃uw̥, ‘garlic’, Meyer crem; sklα̃uw̥, ‘snarl’, Di. sclamh; Nʹα̃uw̥, ‘heaven’, O.Ir. nem. Nʹα̃uw̥ is now rarely heard except in the Lord’s Prayer and in NʹɛəLti꞉ Nʹï̃və, ‘very high clouds’. Cp. ər Nʹα̃uw Nɔ ər tαluw Nʹi꞉ αkəs ə lʹehədʹ. Uw̥ is also the result of cons. + u + th in grUw̥ (grU bwiə), ‘biestings’, M.Ir. gruth; gUw̥, ‘voice’, O.Ir. guth; krUw̥, ‘form’, O.Ir. cruth; srUw̥, ‘stream’, O.Ir. sruth, also srUw̥αn. Similarly tʹrʹUw̥, ‘hooping-cough’, Di. triuch. In these cases w̥ passes sporadically into f, cp. the Scotch Gaelic spelling stuth < Engl. stuff, puth < puff, and duf, ‘black’, uf, ‘egg’, quoted for Sligo in Molloy’s 29th dialect-list. A few other words shew a dislike for the ending U`, e.g. tʹUw̥, ‘thick, frequent’, M.Ir. tiug; əNʹUw̥, ‘to-day’, O.Ir. indiu, Spir. Rose p. 8 anuth. The words for ‘horse-shoe’ and ‘dowry’, M.Ir. cró, have been influenced by cruth, ‘form’, as they are both krUw̥, krU kαpwilʹ, ‘horse-shoe’. The genitive of the word for ‘dowry’ I have heard as krïv. tlŨw̥, ‘tongs’, Di. tlúgh, has further joined this group.
(b) The liquids and nasals.
Note on l, m, n and r sounds.
§ 203. The first accurate description of the various l, n sounds in Irish was given by a writer in the Gaelic Journal for 1887 (p. 8), who styled himself Clann Chonchobair. More recently Pedersen in his ‘Aspirationen i Irsk’ contributed much to the elucidation of the puzzling r-sounds. Practically all writers of Irish Grammars with the exception of Neilson and O’Brien have based their observations on the dialects of Munster or Connaught, whilst the speech of Donegal might long ago have supplied the key to the most difficult problem of Irish phonetics. It is now well known that L and l, Lʹ and lʹ, N and n, Nʹ and nʹ differ from one another in the matter of articulation but in Donegal they also differ from one another in the matter of length.
