In the Highland Society's Gaelic Dictionary, and in the first quarto edition of the Gaelic Bible, initial aspiration of the three liquids is marked in the case of l by a cross line near the top of the letter, and in the case of n and r by a dot above the letter. Those markings occur also in portions of some of the current pocket editions of the Bible. A more consistent way would have been to distinguish the aspirated from the unaspirated sounds at the beginning of words by the same means as they are distinguished in the middle and at the end, that is, by writing the liquid double when unaspirated and single only when aspirated. This method has been followed in part of How to Learn Gaelic, by Dr. Alexander MacBain and Mr. John Whyte. Generally, however, in printed Gaelic there is no attempt to mark the initial aspiration of the three liquids.
l
The plain broad sound of l is represented, for example, in eallach, a load; mullach, top; call, loss; moll, chaff; and the plain slender sound in seillean, a bee; coille, wood; caill, lose; mill, destroy. The aspirated broad sound is represented e.g. in bealach, a pass; mulad, sadness; àl, brood; òl, drink; and the aspirated slender sound in seileach, willow; uile, all; bail, economy; mil, honey.
Initially broad and slender l are distinguished of course according as the next following vowel is broad or slender. The aspirated sounds are, or ought to be, heard when, for example, an adjective beginning with l—luath, swift; leathan, broad—follows a feminine noun, or a verb with initial l is used in the past indicative—labhair e, he spoke; leag e, he felled, and the unaspirated sounds when such adjectives follow masculine nouns, and when such verbs are used in the imperative or in the future indicative.
Initial aspiration has become unchangeably fixed in the preposition le, with, and its derivatives leam, with me, leat, leis, etc. In stereotyped phrases like a leas—Cha ruig iad a leas, they need not—and a lion—A lion chuid ’s a chuid, by
