Words with an initial vowel are not separated from the preceding word by a glottal stop.

However, phonetic alphabets seem to rarely use initial long vowels.

The loss of the initial vowel can result in a difficult consonant cluster.

The variation in the value of the initial open unstressed vowel is old.

A vowel at the end of a word was represented by a dot in the appropriate position, while there were additional symbols for initial vowels.

For instance, final vowels can merge with the initial vowel of the following word.

There is no initial vowel if the stem begins with one consonant.

In County Dublin itself the general rule was to place the stress on the initial vowel of words.

There are special letters for initial vowels, and many vowel combinations.

Other initial vowels use the a character modified by diacritics.