Blair Collection > Elements of Gaelic grammar

ELEMENTS
GAELIC GRAMMAR
PART I.
OF PRONUNCIATION AND ORTHOGRAPHV.
X HE Gaelic alphabet confifts of eighteen letters : a, b, c,
d^ e, f, g, h, i, Ì, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u. Of thefe, five are
vowels, a, e, i, o, u ; the reft confonants.
In explaining the powers of the letters, and of their fe-
veral combinations, fuch obftacles lie in the way, that
complete fuccefs is not to be expected. In order to ex-
plain, in writing, the founds of a particular language, the
only obvious method is to reprefent them by the letters
commonly employed to exhibit llmilar founds in fome
well-known living language. But there are founds in the
Gaelic, to which there are none perfectly llmilar in Eng-
lifh, nor perhaps in any modern European tongue. Be-
fides, the fame combination of letters does not invariably
reprefent the fame found, in one age, that it did in a for-
mer, or that it may do in the next. And this may
be equally true of the letters of the Gaelic alphabet,
A whofe