es the
nasal mutation has been partly restored and in some places there are
even parallels to the Welsh nasal mutation of c, p, t to _ngh, mh,
nh._ Secondly, post-vocalic c, p, t are commonly preceded by a
breathed sound not represented in writing, thus _mac_ "son," is
pronounced _mahk_; _slat_, "rod," as _slaht_. Again there is a
tendency to insert a sibilant in the group rt, thus _ceart_, "right,"
is sounded _kearst_, and the distinction between palatalized and
non-palatalized sounds is not so rigidly observed as in Irish. The
group _cht_ is in Scotland pronounced as if _chk_. We may also mention
that Scottish Gaelic preserves an old e in a number of words where
Irish now has a, thus, Old Ir. _fer_, Scottish G. _fer_, Irish _far_,
but in both cases the spelling is _fear_ (in this respect Scottish
Gaelic goes hand in hand with Manx and the almost extinct Irish of
Down). Similarly, we find that in Scottish Gaelic and Manx stressed
vowels preceding a palatalized consonant have not undergone
palatalization to the same extent as in Irish, e.g. in Ireland
_duine_, "man," < _*dunjo-_, is pronounced _din'd_, but in Scotland
_dun'd_ (in Manx written _dooinney_). A further peculiarity of
Scottish Gaelic is that it substitutes lenes or voiceless mediae for
the voiced stops, and even l, r, n sounds show a great tendency to
give up the voice. Scottish Gaelic goes farther even than Irish in the
confusion of vowel-sounds, e.g. Lat. _coxa_, Ir. _cos_, "foot," Sc.
_cas_; Ir. _codal_, Sc. _cadal_. When we turn to the inflections we
find that analogy has here played a much greater part than in Irish.
There is a tendency to make the plural of all substantives except
masculine monosyllables end in -an. In the conjugation the synthetic
forms have with one or two exceptions entirely disappeared and the
present forms have become momentary in force. Hence in ordinary
grammars it is stated that the present has become a future, thus _ni
mi_ means "I shall do." The past participle chiefly ends in -te as
against Irish -the, -te, or -tha, -ta, according to the quality of the
preceding sound. The present (future) and past subjunctive
(conditional, representing both the imperfect indic. and secondary
future of Irish) supply the place of the Irish consuetudinal forms. In
idiom also Scottish has diverged very considerably from Irish, e.g. in
the use of _tha_ (Ir. ta) for is.

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