Consonant Mutation - Celtic Languages

Celtic Languages

The Celtic languages are well known for their initial consonant mutations. The individual languages vary on the number of mutations available: the Goidelic languages — Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Irish — have two, Welsh and Cornish (both Brythonic languages) each have three (but not the same three) and Breton (also a Brythonic language) has four. Additionally, Irish and the Brythonic languages have so-called "mixed mutations", where a trigger causes one mutation to some sounds and another to other sounds. The languages vary on the environments for the mutations, though some generalizations can be made. In all the languages, feminine singular nouns are mutated after the definite article, and adjectives are mutated after feminine singular nouns. In most of the languages, the possessive adjectives trigger various mutations. Following are some examples from Breton, Irish, and Welsh:

Older textbooks on Gaelic sometimes refer to the c → ch mutation as "aspiration", but it is not aspiration in the sense of the word used by modern phoneticians, and linguists prefer to speak of lenition here.

Historically, the Celtic initial mutations originated from progressive assimilation and sandhi phenomena between adjacent words. For example, the mutating effect of the conjunction a 'and' is due to the fact that it used to have the form *ak, and the final consonant influenced the following sounds.

For details see the articles on the individual languages:

• Breton mutations
• Cornish language: grammar
• Irish initial mutations
• Manx language: initial consonant mutations
• Scottish Gaelic: Lenition
• Welsh morphology

Another type of consonant mutation found in the Celtic languages is affection.