Note 4 — PART I.

Writers, who have touched on this part of Gaelic Grammar, following the Irish grammarians, have divided the consonants further into mutable and immutable. The former name has been given to consonants which, in writing, have been occasionally combined with the letter h; and the latter name to those consonants which have not, in writing, been combined with h. But, in fact, both classes of consonants are alike mutable in their pronunciation; and their mutation ought to have been marked in the orthography, though it has not. This defect in Gaelic orthography has been often observed and regretted, though it has never been corrected. Rather than continue a distinction which has no foundation in the structure of the language, I venture to discard the division of mutable and immutable consonants, as not merely useless, but as tending to mislead the learner.