The Spelling of Lenited Consonants in Gaelic
Formerly Published as "Lenition in Gaelic Orthography"

Last updated 19 Mar 2003

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Grammatical lenition involves a "softening" of the initial consonant sound of words and is required by Gaelic grammar in certain situations.[Note 1] For example, the Gaelic word for "big", <mór>, is pronounced roughly \moar\ (like the English word "more"); when <mór> is lenited, it is pronounced roughly \voar\.[Note 2] This pronunciation change in Gaelic is sometimes indicated by a changed spelling as well, depending on specific period and the letter being lenited. This article explains the spelling changes involved in lenition, but it is beyond the scope of this article to explain when lenition occurs and exactly how it affects pronunciation. (See Lenition in Gaelic Naming Step by Step for such information in the context of names.)

All Gaelic consonantal letters can be lenited.[Note 3] Some letters have shown lenition in spelling from the early medieval period (c, f, p, s, and t), some have shown lenition in spelling only from the late medieval period (b, d, g, and m), and a few have never shown grammatical lenition in spelling (l, n, and r).

When Roman letters were first adapted for writing Gaelic (by the 6th century A.D.), lenition was shown for <f> and <s> by writing a dot (called a punctum delens in Latin) over the letter. In the Latin writing tradition, a punctum delens over a letter indicated that it was a mistake and should be considered erased.[Note 4] Since <f> and <s> are respectively silent and nearly silent in Gaelic when lenited, the punctum delens convention was adapted into Gaelic writing to indicate that these letters were lenited. Similarly, because Latin used the letter combinations <ch>, <ph>, and <th> for sounds that were close to the lenited consonants in question, they were adapted into Gaelic writing to indicate lenited <c>, <p>, and <t>, respectively.[Note 5] Later, both these conventions (a punctum delens over a letter and an <h> after a letter) were extrapolated to most of the other Gaelic consonants to show lenition. Some clerks preferred the punctum delens while others preferred using <h>; some clerks used them interchangeably. Eventually, sometime after the 16th century, the Irish standardized to always using the punctum delens to show lenition while the Scottish Gaels standardized to always using <h>. Finally, in the 20th century, the Irish switched to using only <h> as well.[Note 6]

Because most modern computer fonts do not have an easy way to show a dot over a letter, the punctum delens is sometimes represented in electronic texts by using a period after the letter. So, for example, <m.> would represent the letter <m> with a punctum delens over it, as in the lenited word <m.ór>. A more common modern editorial convention is simply to use an <h> after the letter even when the original manuscript used a punctum delens over the letter.

The table below illustrates the standard normalized spelling conventions for showing lenition in Gaelic. Note that the transition date of A.D. 1200 is only a rough guide; some clerks continued to omit lenition markers into the later medieval period.

Letter	Lenited Spelling before roughly A.D. 1200	Lenited Spelling after roughly A.D. 1200
b	b	bh or b.
c	ch	ch or c.
d	d	dh or d.
f	f. [Note 7]	fh or f.
g	g	gh or g.
l	l	l
m	m	mh or m.
n	n	n
p	p or ph [Note 5]	ph or p.
r	r	r
s	s. [Note 7]	sh or s.
t	th	th or t.

The next table gives examples of grammatical lenition using the standard normalized spelling conventions illustrated above. Again, the transition date of A.D. 1200 is only a rough guide; some clerks continued to omit lenition markers into the later medieval period.

Before Roughly A.D. 1200			After Roughly A.D. 1200
English	Gaelic Unlenited	Gaelic Lenited	English	Gaelic Unlenited	Gaelic Lenited
of Bran	Brain	Brain	of Bran	Brain	Bhrain or B.rain
of Cormac	Cormaic	Chormaic	of Cormac	Cormaic	Chormaic or C.ormaic
of Domnall	Domnaill	Domnaill	of Domhnall	Domhnaill	Dhomhnaill or D.omhnaill
of Fergus	Fergusa	F.ergusa [Note 7]	of Fearghus	Fearghuis	Fhearghuis or F.earghuis
of Gilla Ísu	Gilla Ísu	Gilla Ísu	of Giolla Íosa	Giolla Íosa	Ghiolla Íosa or G.iolla Íosa
of Lochlann	Lochlainn	Lochlainn	of Lochlann	Lochlainn	Lochlainn
of Máel Coluim	Maíl Coluim	Maíl Coluim	of Maol Coluim	Maoil Choluim	Mhaoil Choluim or M.aoil Choluim
of Niall	Néill	Néill	of Niall	Néill	Néill
of Pilip	Pilip	Pilip or Philip [Note 5]	of Pilip	Pilip	Philip or P.ilip
of Ruaidrí	Ruaidrí	Ruaidrí	of Ruaidhrí	Ruaidhrí	Ruaidhrí
of Suibne	Suibne	S.uibne [Note 7]	of Suibhne	Suibhne	Shuibhne or S.uibhne
of Tadg	Taidg	Thaidg	of Tadhg	Taidhg	Thaidhg or T.aidhg

Notes

¹	Older books often refer to lenition as "aspiration". This terminology is misleading and outdated. (In modern linguistics, "aspiration" is a term that refers to something very different from lenition.)
²	Pronunciation guides appear between backslash brackets, \ \, and are intended to be read as if they were modern standard American English (except where noted) with the emphasis placed on the capitalized syllables.
³	Gaelic orthography uses eighteen letters. Twelve of them -- b, c, d, f, g, l, m, n, p, r, s, and t -- are used to represent consonant sounds; all of these can be lenited in pronunciation, whether this lenition is indicated in writing or not. Five more -- a, e, i, o, and u -- are used to represent vowel sounds. The remaining letter, <h>, is used only as an indication that the preceding consonant is lenited and as a prefix to a word beginning with a vowel in certain contexts when required by Gaelic grammar. (The English letters j, k, q, v, w, x, y, and z are not used in Gaelic.)
⁴	This convention developed in Latin writing because actually erasing the letter would have been difficult.
⁵	Lenition was often not shown in spelling for <p> in the early medieval period. This may have been because the letter <p> was not native to Gaelic, but only used in words and names borrowed into Gaelic.
⁶	This switch to <h> was part of the Irish adoption of standard Roman typefaces and abandonment of Irish minuscule.
⁷	A common modern editorial convention is simply to use an <h> after a letter even when the original manuscript used a punctum delens over the letter. For example, to use <fh> rather than <f.> and <sh> rather than <s.> to represent the punctum delens over <f> and <s>.

Bibliography

CELT Corpus of Electronic Texts [WWW]. University College Cork, [cited 2000]. Available from http://www.ucc.ie/celt/.

Jones, Heather Rose. "100 Most Popular Men's Names in Early Medieval Ireland" [WWW]. Medieval Names Archive, 1998 [cited 2000]. Available from http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/irish100/.

Jones, Heather Rose. "Feminine Names from the Index to O'Brien's Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae" (2nd edition) [WWW]. Medieval Names Archive, 2 Dec 1999 [cited 2000]. Available from http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/obrien/.

Krossa, Sharon L. A Simple Guide to Constructing 12th Century Scottish Gaelic Names [WWW]. Medieval Scotland, 18 Jun 1997 [cited 14 Aug 2000]. Available from http://www.MedievalScotland.org/scotnames/simplescotgaelicnames12.shtml.

Ó Corráin, Donnchadh, and Fidelma Maguire. Irish Names, 2nd ed. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990. [Another edition has the title Gaelic Names.]

Ó Cuív, Brian, editor. A View of the Irish Language. Dublin: Stationery Office, 1969.

Thurneysen.

Woulfe, Patrick. Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish Names and Surnames. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd, 1923.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the members of The Academy of Saint Gabriel for their assistance with the preparation of this article, especially Brian M. Scott, Heather Rose Jones, Josh Mittleman, Julie Stampnitzky, Jim Trigg, Kathleen O'Brien and Brian Speer. Any errors are my own and despite their best efforts!

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The Spelling of Lenited Consonants in Gaelic Formerly Published as "Lenition in Gaelic Orthography"

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

The Spelling of Lenited Consonants in Gaelic
Formerly Published as "Lenition in Gaelic Orthography"