Middle Irish retained the Old Irish consonant inventory,[5] though some assimilation and simplification of consonant clusters occurred. Stops were dropped when adjacent to /l/ or /n/, e.g. Old Irish cland ("progeny") > Middle Irish clann /klaN/. /ṽ/ lost its nasalisation before a vowel, e.g. Old Irish memaid (s/he broke) /meṽaðʲ/ > Middle Irish mebaid /mevaðʲ/, while /v/ was nasalised after nV, e.g. Old Irish noeb ("saint") /noiv/ > Middle Irish náem /noiṽ/. Initial /m/ was additionally fortified to /b/ before liquids /r/ and /l/, e.g. Old Irish mrath ̈(treachery) /mraθ/ > Middle Irish brath /braθ/.[6]
During the Middle Irish Period, the nuclei of multisyllabic vowels shifted from those of Old Irish to the initial secondary articulations of the succeeding syllable, e.g. Old Irish duine ("person") /ˈdu.nʲe/ > */ˈduʲ.nʲe/ > Middle Irish /ˈdʷi.nʲe/. In interconsonantal /e/, this also involved a post-vocalic /ᵃ/ ephentesis, which briefly resulted in /CeᵃC/ before shifting to /CʲaC/, e.g. Old Irish fer ("man") /fʲer/ > */fʲeᵃr/ > Middle Irish fear /fʲar/.[6] Disyllabic proclitics also lost their initial vowels, e.g. Old Irish inna ("of the" [fem.]) > Middle Irish na,[7]. Unstressed vowels were reduced to /ə/,[7] while the Old Irish diphthongs /ai/, /oi/, and /ui/ first shifted to */əi/, and were then monophongised to /əː/.[8] In Ireland, a process of simplifying two vowels in hiatus to a single long vowel occurred except for the late /ia(ː)/ and /ua(ː)/. In Scottish Gaelic, hiatus were retained to the present.[6] These processes created the following inventory of vowels and diphthongs:
At the end of the Middle Irish period around 1200, scribes began using digraphs bh, gh, mh to indicate the fricatives /v/, /ɣ/, and /ṽ/ (lenited versions of /b/, /g/, and /m) by analogy with the lenited ch, th, ph. Lenition of these respective stops went unmarked.[9] Diacritics derived fround the Ancient Greekrough breathing mark (◌̔) could also be used to represent lenition.[note 1] However, both methods remained sporadic and irregular until at least the 16th century, in the Early Modern Irish period.[10]
In addition to the previously described diphthongs, digraphs could also stand for a vowel followed by an off-glide, which then shifted to a non-palatalised back vowel or a palatalised front vowel:[6]
↑In this article, the early modern ponc séimhithe, or overdot, is used to represent diacritical lenition representations.
References
↑Mittleman, Josh. "Concerning the name Deirdre". Medieval Scotland. Retrieved 13 February 2013. Early Gaelic (a.k.a. Old Irish) is the form of Gaelic used in Ireland and parts of Scotland from roughly 600–900 AD. Middle Gaelic (a.k.a. Middle Irish) was used from roughly 900–1200 AD, while Common Classical Gaelic (a.k.a. Early Modern Irish, Common Literary Gaelic, etc.) was used from roughly 1200–1700 AD
↑Breatnach, Liam (1994). "An Mheán-Ghaeilge". In K. McCone; D. McManus; C. Ó Háinle; N. Williams; L. Breatnach (eds.). Stair na Gaeilge in ómós do Pádraig Ó Fiannachta (in Irish). Maynooth: Department of Old Irish, St. Patrick's College. pp.221–333. ISBN0-901519-90-1.
12345McCone, Kim (1996). Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change. Maynooth, Ireland: St. Patrick's College. pp.140–3.
MacManus, Damian (1983). "A chronology of the Latin loan words in early Irish". Ériu. 34: 21–71.
McCone, Kim (1978). "The dative singular of Old Irish consonant stems". Ériu. 29: 26–38.
McCone, Kim (1981). "Final /t/ to /d/ after unstressed vowels, and an Old Irish sound law". Ériu. 31: 29–44.
McCone, Kim (1996). "Prehistoric, Old and Middle Irish". Progress in medieval Irish studies. pp.7–53.
McCone, Kim (2005). A First Old Irish Grammar and Reader, Including an Introduction to Middle Irish. Maynooth Medieval Irish Texts 3. Maynooth.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
