I think there is a serious deficit in meaning about the notion of lenition. On one hand it is called "softening"....I have never experienced that "softening"....

cófra

mo chófra....that "ch" sound is not softened but hardened, if you are a native English speaker...it's more gutteral.

The notion that the séimhiú is an aspiration of some sort is exactly that. It is not a breath now. The punctum is not a breath pause or a softening either. Where in the name of heavens does this stuff come from?

I agree with Lughaidh....a "t" before an "s" is not lenition either.

Stop thinking in letters....they do not exist! Think in sounds and heartbeats

I don't know...I experience "ch" (broad or slender) as "softened" relative to the hard "k" sound of the unlenited "c." Instead of the throat closing, it lets air through, which "softens" the sound.



Redwolf

Softening is rather transforming stops into fricatives. Normally, fricatives are "easier" (less "tiring" for the mouth) to pronounce between vowels, than stops. It's more relaxing. You let the air going through your mouth instead of stopping it.
That's why it's considered as a lenition ie. weakening.



yes but "to harden" in phonetics means that a voiced consonant becomes voiceless, it has nothing to see with what an English ear perceives as guttural or not. Btw there's no hardening mutation in Irish grammar. There is in Cornish and in Breton though.



and learn the names of the mutations as they are: lenition/séimhiú, eclipsis/urú, prefixing h, prefixing t.

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

I did not know that... Thanks Lughaidh, the King of the bleedin' obvious! You could do with a bit of lenition yourself.

That applies in the nominative, but in the genitive t is prefixed to masculine nouns beginning with s (and not to feminine nouns beginning with s, i.e., the rules are (almost) reversed in the genitive):

an sagart "the priest" => an tsagairt "of the priest"
an siopa "the shop" => an tsiopa "of the shop"

an scamall "the cloud" => an scamaill "of the cloud" (t(s)c is considered an impossible combination.)

an tseachtain "the week" => na seachtaine "of the week"

Best way to learn this is to read or listen to lots of examples ...

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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).

Which is why the Scots family name (and Glasgow Detective) is (Mac) Taggart. There's one who lives in the village where we go in the Summer in la Haute Provence and when I explain the meaning of it to our neighbours.........(There's another lady in the village whose name is Ross and that has even worse connotations in French - she used to teach English in the collège.)