Irish Initial Mutations - Changes To Vowel-initial Words

Changes To Vowel-initial Words

A vowel-initial word does not change where lenition is expected:

• an oíche "the night" (feminine singular nominative noun after definite article)
• an uisce "of the water" (masculine singular genitive noun after definite article)
• ó Albain "from Scotland" (noun after leniting preposition)
• seanathair "grandfather" (noun after preposed adjective: sean "old" + athair "father")

But where neither eclipsis nor lenition is expected, an initial vowel may acquire a prothetic onset consonant. For example, a vowel-initial masculine singular nominative noun requires a t- after the definite article:

• an t-uisce "the water" (masculine singular nominative)

Otherwise, there is the prothetic onset h, which comes only when both the following conditions are met:

1. a proclitic causes neither lenition nor eclipsis of consonants
2. a proclitic itself ends in a vowel

Examples of h-prothesis

• a haois "her age" (after possessive pronoun a "her")
• go hÉirinn "to Ireland" (after preposition go "to, towards")
• le hAntaine "with Antaine" (after preposition le "with")
• na hoíche "of the night" (on feminine singular genitive noun after definite article)
• na héin "the birds" (on plural nominative/dative noun after definite article)
• chomh hard le caisleán "as high as a castle" (after chomh "as")
• go hálainn "beautifully" (after adverb-forming particle go)
• Ná himigh uaim "Don't leave me!" (after negative imperative particle ná "don't")
• an dara háit "the second place" (after an ordinal numeral)