Richard,
Looking back (post #2), I noticed that I had typed "feilleadh beg" (now corrected) which would certainly give an "off-glide" and I am not saying that there are no speakers who use this pronunciation. This underlines the difficulty of deriving pronunciation from spelling when the spelling was developed to reflect non-standard pronunciation. (The same problem exists in Scots.) Added to this, there are "styles" of Gaelic - biblical/religious, official/journalistic, poetic, the pidjin Gaelic of the playground ("really math"!)* etc. Although it doesn't help with pronunciation, this might interest you
http://www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/SQA-...tions-En-e.pdf
Alan
*So we may eventually have the new Gaelic word "riallaidh"!