Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Blaðsíða 220
228
Norse Steinn in Hebridean Place-Names
parts of the area (mainly Lewis, Benbecula, and South Uist),
and (c) of information from other sources, notably C. Hj.
Borgstrøm’s dialect descriptions (particularly The Dialect of
Barra and The Dialects of the Outer Hebrides) and his
unpublished field notes, some of which he has kindly al-
lowed me to copy for my own use.
The Ordnance Survey spellings should, whenever possible,
be checked against the actual Gaelic pronunciation, as they
are very unreliable. Only in some instances do they reflect
early spellings which, in their turn, may be more or less
successful attempts at rendering the contemporary pronun-
ciation. Ordnance Survey spellings will, in the following,
be given between double quotes. Spellings from early
written sources are not plentiful, and such as are found are
often unreliable because the documents where they occur
are nearly always written in English, with corrupted spel-
lings of the Gaelic names.
A hill at Shader on the north-west coast of Lewis is
called “Steinacleit” [s't'e:nagl'aht, s't'ema-kl'eht']1). The place
is characterized by the remains of a stone circle. “Clachan
Mora Steinacleit” or ‘the big stones of S.’. This name must
necessarily represent O. N. Steina-klettr ‘hill of the stones’.
') The transcription given between square brackets is a simplified
phonetic/phonemic one. A colon after a vowel indicates that the vowel
is long. An acute accent after a consonant denotes palatal pronuncia-
tion of the consonant. The symbol [s'] should be read approximately
as English sh. Capital letters [N L R] indicate velarization except when
followed by the acute accent [N' L'], in which case they denote strongly
palatal pronunciation. [y] and [0] are back or central vowels, unroun-
ded (not front rounded), the former high, the latter mid. The stops
[p 11' k k'] are postaspirated (as in the Scandinavian languages and most
varieties of English) when word-initial or preceded by a hyphen in the
transcription. The letter [h] before such a consonant and after a vowel
đenotes preaspiration (a breathed continuation of the vowel). [b d d' g g']
are voiceless unaspirated stops as in Icelandic and Danish. [x] is the
voiceless velar fricative of German ach; [y] is its voiced counterpart
(“spirant g”).