8
SELF-INSTRUCTION
IN IRISH.
day is
not long.
7.
Have you a berry
?
8. I
liave
not a
berry.
9. Is the steward alive
? 10.
The steward
is
not
alive.
11. The steward was alive yesterday. 12.
He
was
not alive
yesterday. 13.
He
was sick
yesterday.
14.
Are
you sick?
15. No
; I
am not. 16. Time is like a vapour.
17.
Is
music melodious?
18.
Yes
;
music is melodious.
19. He
tore
a
string of tlie
harp
(c]tuic).
20.
Music is
cheap.
21.
He
tore the sail
with
the top of the
arrow.
Obs.
1.
—There
are at present very few
words spelled
with the
diphthong
Ae,
in fact only one or two more
besides
those given here
;
as, pAeéeAÓ,
smiling : in modern
Irish,
AC
is used
for
Ae,
so
commonly
found
in the ancient written
language.
Obs.
2.
—The diphthong
ao
is not
found in the English
language save
in
the
w'ord gaol,
a prison
;
in
which
it is
pronounced
like
é in there
—agreeing exactly with
the
sound
given
this diphthong in
Irish
by
the
natives of INlunster
Tliis analogy,
and the fact that words now spelled with
ao
were, by
ancient Irish
writers, spelled with
Ae
—which, as
we have
shown, has the sound of the first
e
in
the word
there
—
leads
us
to
believe that the sound
of
this diphthong,
as
pronounced in
Munster, is the correct one. Add to this,
that if
AC
be
pronounced
ce,
it is not easy
to distinguish
between it
and the
sound of the
triphthong
ao], which is
formed from
it, nor from
that of the diphthong
^a.
Obs.
3.
—
Following the
authority
of Dr. O'Donovan,
eo
is placed by us
among those
diphthongs which
are long
by
nature.
For,
as
there are
only five words in
the
language
in which
the
sound
of eo is found to be short,
it is useless
to
mark it
long. Hence, though hitherto this
dij)hthong
has been,
by
many Irish
writers, marked
with the accent
('),
yet
in
our
Lessons w^e
shall
avoid using this notation.
It
is
plainly not only
useless, but
calculated
even
to
lead
astray.
Objection.—
In what does the
sound
of
the diphthong
60
differ
from that of the simple
vowel
o
?
—
Answer
—
e,
in
the
diphthong
eo
adds to the
sound of the simple
o
in
a
twofold way
: first the sound of e
in the diphthong
eo
is so
blended
with that
of
o
as
to
make, as far
as
possible,
only
one whole
sound—
thus differing in their unison
from the