{ 59a} The combination _ao_ in Irish is pronounced _t_. Thus _caol_, narrow, is _cul_ in the Highlands and _kîl_ in Ireland.
{ 59b} The word _bewnans_, life, formed from the root _bew_, was often written _bownans_ in late Cornish and probably pronounced _boonans_. Similarly _bowjy_ (=_bewgh-chŷ_), cow-house, must have been _bewjy_. This last, which is one of the surviving Cornish words, has its _ow_ at present sounded as in _now_. This change has happened not infrequently in place-names.
{ 63} The word _en_, in, in quite late Cornish, was apparently sounded _et_, which is a solitary case of the disappearance of _n_ in a monosyllable.
{ 64} _Cf._ the _s_ or _z_ of _azure_, _treasure_, _sure_, _pleasure_, _sugar_, in English.
{ 65} Dr. Whitley Stokes, in a paper of additions to Williams’s Cornish Lexicon (Philol. Soc. 1868), gives it as his opinion that the _th_ of the MSS. should not be written _dh_ at the _end_ of a word, and that Williams, in doing so, was wrongly following Welsh analogy. But there is an evident tendency in _late_ Cornish to end words in _z_ for _s_, _v_ for _f_, _g_ for _k_, and a considerable number of words which Williams ends in _dh_ end in the corresponding z in Breton, so that one is more inclined to follow Williams in this matter, though there is a good deal to be said both ways.
{ 70a} _C_ before a broad vowel, _k_ before a thin vowel, and _q_ before a _w_.
{ 70b} The _ch_ and _j_ are used for an earlier _t_ and _d_ in a few words, through intensification of the thin sounds of the latter. See Chap. I. § 2.
{ 76} There is also a doubtful form _mescatter_, from _mescat_.
{ 78} The change of initial of the masculine plural is by no means universal in the MSS., but it is not infrequent, and is the rule in Breton (with a few exceptions), so it seems fair to conjecture that it was the Cornish rule also.
{ 80} Note how a masculine ending in _a_ affects the initial of the adjective as if it were a feminine.
{ 81} It sometimes happens (as Dr. Stokes points out) that if the first noun is feminine, the noun in the genitive has its initial in the second state, in fact it is treated as an adjective qualifying the preceding noun, e.g. _bennath Varya_, the blessing of Mary; _carek Veryasek_, the rock of Meriasek; _fynten woys_, a well of blood, but as this also happens at times when the first noun is masculine (e.g. _cledha dan_, Cr. 964), it probably only means that mutations were rather loosely used. The last two are “genitives of material.”