1499: Irish Elision Jan 19, 2019

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The Irish language is not difficult to learn on the basis of grammar for another speaker of an Indo-European language speaker at least, but on the matter of pronunciation it is a different story. In terms of spelling there will likely be some confusions, but more than that, Irish Gaelic contains a considerable amount of elisions: when two sounds merge into one, or certain vowels get dropped. This is true in English in contractions like 'I'm', or how 'in-' changes depending upon the preceding consonant [1]. In Irish however, this can occur with vowels before a stressed vowel, with any initial vowel, or following a pause. There are also instances of elision occurring for the indicators of certain features like grammar, which makes each utterance faster to say, but harder to get a grasp of for the sake of learners.

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