Irish Initial Mutations

Irish Initial Mutations

Irish, like all modern Celtic languages, is characterized by its initial consonant mutations. These mutations affect the initial consonant of a word under specific morphological and syntactic conditions. The mutations are an important tool in understanding the relationship between two words and can differentiate various meanings.

Irish uses two mutations on consonants: lenition (Irish: séimhiú) and eclipsis (urú). (The alternative names, aspiration for lenition and nasalisation for eclipsis, are also used, but the terms are a bit misleading.)

Originally these mutations were phonologically governed external sandhi effects: lenition was caused by a consonant between two vowels, and eclipsis by a sequence of nasal stop + obstruent, also at the beginning of a word.

There are also two mutations, t-prothesis and h-prothesis, found on vowel-initial words.

See Irish phonology for a discussion of the symbols used on this page.