peel’; to̤m̥ə mʹə, ‘I shall dip’. m̥ = mth occurs in the past participles of these verbs and also in fʹαm̥inʹə, ‘a single stalk of anything pliable’, formed from Di. feam (‘wrack’ is fʹαmnαχ, Di. feamnach).
13. mʹ.
§ 296. mʹ like other palatal labials in Donegal is produced by drawing the lips back very tightly on to the teeth, thus giving a very sharp, clear m. The position of the tongue is immaterial, as in the majority of cases the j which accompanies the palatalised labials in other dialects is wanting (§ 192). mʹ, fʹ, v, pʹ, bʹ are very tense sounds and mʹ, pʹ, bʹ are sometimes heard from mincing speakers of English. In the English of many parts of the North of Ireland these tense labials are regular. At the end of monosyllables with short root-vowel mʹ is invariably long.
§ 297. Initially mʹ corresponds to O.Ir. m before e, i, e.g. mʹα`, ‘to fail’, M.Ir. meth; mʹα`, ‘scale’, M.Ir. med; mʹαkænʹ, ‘carrots’, O.Ir. mecon; mʹαLuw, ‘to decoy’, M.Ir. mellad; mʹα꞉n, ‘middle’, O.Ir. medón; mʹe꞉, ‘fat’, O.Ir. méith (gen. sing.); mʹɛəg, ‘whey’, M.Ir. medg; mʹiəl, ‘louse’, M.Ir. míl; mʹirʹigʹ, ‘rust’, O.Ir. meirg, meirc; mʹi꞉, ‘month’, O.Ir. mí; mʹïlʹiʃ, ‘sweet’, M.Ir. milis.
Medially and finally before original e, i, whether preserved or lost, mʹ represents O.Ir. mm, mb (also before another palatal consonant), e.g. αmʹʃirʹ, ‘weather’, O.Ir. amser; brïmʹ, ‘crepitus ventris’, Meyer broimm; drïmʹ, ‘back’, O.Ir. druimm; dʹrʹeimʹirʹə, ‘ladder’, Di. dréimire, < M.Ir. dréimm; fuəmʹ, ‘sound’, M.Ir. fuaimm; gruəmʹ, ‘dark look’, Di. gruaim; gʹrʹimʹ, ‘morsel, mouthful’, O.Ir. greim; ïmʹαχt, ‘to depart’, O.Ir. imthecht; ïmʹ, ‘butter’, O.Ir. imb.
mʹ also represents O.Ir. m after nʹ in enʹəmʹ, ‘name’, O.Ir. ainm.
§ 298. The oldest people seem to develope mʹ out of ṽ. I have never observed this in the speech of any of the younger generation but it cannot be ascribed to faulty articulation, as it seems pretty wide-spread, cp. Dinneen s. uimhir, and Larminie in his “West Irish Folktales” (p. 250) writes qiminæx for cuimhneach in a story taken down in Glencolumbkille. Molloy in his 33rd dialect-list quotes suimneach for suaimhneach for Sligo and Galway. With the older people v is exclusively bilabial and the breath escapes at the corners of the mouth, the middle part of the
