Think about it again. Lenition means "weakening". Weakening is a gradable process -- you can ask the question "How weak?" The Welsh call it softening -- you can ask the question "How soft?" And the Gaels call it smoothing -- again, you can ask "how smooth?"

The amount of weaking/softening/smoothing for a given lenited consonant varies according to the sounds on either side of it, and the individual speaker's dialect. But these two things are not entirely independent, and you will find quirks that are specific to a given word in a particular area that doesn't precisely follow the expected pattern.

If you want an example of lenition in other languages, I could write for ages on the difference in consonant quality in the Romance languages.... ;-)

Yes, there is a hard boundary between "lenited" and "not lenited", but there's a distinction between "stationary" and "moving". That distinction doesn't disprove the possibility to move at different speeds. When we encounter a lenited/weakened/softened/smoothed/calmed/reduced consonant, we can observe different levels of lenition/weakening/..........

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

give me examples please...

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

This conversation started with an example -- DH.

In Irish, final DH has lenited so far that it because effectively silent while giving an "oo"-like quality to the preceding vowel. In Scottish Gaelic, final DH gives an oo-like or schwa-like quality to a preceding A, but the consonant is still pronounced, whereas internally it may disappear and change the quality of the preceding vowel (eg adhbhar).

Or if you prefer, there's MH, which lenites an M down to a V-like or W-like sound, or in words like samhradh where it reduces to a mere W-glide diphthongisation, or in words like comhradh where the consonant disappears entirely. The secondary effect is nasalation of the previous vowel, which appears to increase as the consonant disappears. (It's perhaps unfortunate that the GOC eliminated many "silent" lenited Ms as there's now no indication that certain vowels should be nasalised, such as in the prefix co-, formerly comh-.)

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

I know all that but I still don't agree with your sentence:



there are different sounds but why would /(ə)ɣ/ be a more (or less) lenited sound than /u/ ?

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Because the latter has been lenited out of existence.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

in -adh, /əw/ has become /u/. If the dh had really disappeared, you'd only hear /ə/ (that's what you hear in Munster and Connachta in certain cases actually).

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Have a look at this [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenition#Sound_changes_associated_with_lenition"]chart of common lenition patterns[/url] on Wikipedia.

Lenition is well attested in a great many languages and it is a process of progressive reduction in consonant quality. You may be aware that lenition in the Goidelic language family started as a phonetic feature (consonants between vowels were historically lenited) but that many of the the vowels have since been lost by syncope. The fact that Irish and Gaelic have mostly the same vowel patterns, but some notable divergences in consonant lenition suggest very strongly that the classical lenition-as-language-change is still active in the languages.

Lenited consonants are in the process of being lost, the secondary effect of vowel changes notwithstanding.

Consider that most nasal vowels in Portuguese are the ghosts of a lenited-to-zero N after the vowel, and they're now specifically notated. The loss of the N is so complete that õ etc have to be considered new phonemes. In ScG, even where the consonant is lenited to zero and only present as a modification of the vowel (comhradh, adhbhar) that vowel modification is still present in words with a still-pronounced consonant (samhradh) so it makes no sense to view it as a separate phoneme. But if lenition continues, one day the DH will be lost entirely, and at that point we have to reanalyse it as a new vowel phoneme.

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

right, can you give me the steps of the reduction in consonant quality in the lenition in Irish?

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

I don't speak Irish yet!

If I am reading your implications right, what you seem to be saying is "unless you know absolutely everything ever known about the topic, I'm not going to believe you."

Which means this conversation is over. Never mind.

_________________
A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

It sounds to me as if ye are talking at cross-purpose, and grammar, phonology and mental visualisation are all being mixed together (by whom I won't say )

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