the singular (except , , and , which trigger lenition) "by the man" "on the tree" After certain preverbal particles "the hole that the rabbits come out of" "Does he come every day?" "Where are my glasses?" "He said that he would come." "if I had known that" Changes to vowel-initial words A vowel-initial word does not change if a lenition is expected: "the night" (feminine singular nominative noun after definite article) "of the water" (masculine singular genitive noun after definite article) "from Scotland" (noun after leniting preposition) "grandfather" (noun after preposed adjective: "old" + "father") However, if neither eclipsis nor lenition is expected, an initial vowel may acquire a prothetic onset consonant. For example, a vowel-initial masculine singular nominative noun requires a t- (a voiceless coronal plosive) after the definite article: "the water" (masculine singular nominative) Otherwise, there is the prothetic onset h (a voiceless glottal fricative), which comes only when both the following conditions are met: a proclitic causes neither lenition nor eclipsis of consonants. a proclitic itself ends in a vowel. Examples of h-prothesis "her age" (after possessive pronoun "her"; compare with , "his age" and , "their age" with regular urú) "to Ireland" (after preposition "to, towards") "with Antaine" (after preposition "with") "of the night" (on feminine singular genitive noun after definite article) "the birds" (on plural nominative/dative noun after definite article) "as high as a castle" (after chomh "as") "beautifully" (after adverb-forming particle ) "Don't leave me!" (after negative imperative particle "don't") "the second place" (after an ordinal numeral) References Mutations Morphophonology