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Intrusive T or Why we're writing sròn nor *stròn

Ermm ... for the sake of all our sanity, I'll keep the explanation of *why* short.  Phonetically, [ɾ] and [d] are quite similar to each other - both are articulated at the same place using the tip of your tongue, the only difference really is the length of contact.  Plus, because Gaelic only does that in <sr> clusters, there's an added articultory reason.

Actually, just taking a quick trip round the world, languages often change [d] into [ɾ] and vice versa.  In American English for example the -tt- between vowels has become much like [ɾ] in words like matted, butter etc.  Anyway.

So Gaelic introduces a [d̪̊] sound in <sr> clusters (but doesn't replace the <r>).  The northern dialects anyway, as you can see on the map below.

This gives rise to a never ending stream of discussions about spelling.  Is it <sruth> or <struth> or even <*sdruth>?  In traditional orthography it is spelled <sr> because the orthography was first fixed South of the line.  But as the southern dialects have been declining for a long time the majority of Gaelic speakers speak dialects from North of that line, it is a) prominent in everyday pronunciation and b) creeping into the spelling.  A quick cross-check with Irish and Old Irish tells us that indeed there was no such sound many moons ago:

As you can see, the [sd̪̊ɾ] pronunciation has been dominant for so long, it has started to creep into the spelling bit by bit.  In 100 years time we'll probably write *stròn too.