Orkney and Shetland phonology

With the exception of the table showing the realizations of lexical sets, this presentation is not explicitly organized according to region; in other words, there are no specific Orkney and Shetland sections but the two speech communities are discussed jointly in connections with the various phonetic and phonological issues. Any known differences are of course indicated.

Orkney and Shetland may be small speech communities, but they are both characterized by considerable regional variation, not least evident from the LSS data. In his introduction, Jakobsen (1928–1932) claims that there are nine main dialect areas in Shetland, which, in turn, consist of several sub-areas; Fetlar, for example, which has an area of 39 sq. kilometres, is said to have several dialects, without further specification. In my opinion, such claims must be taken with a pinch of salt and may simply reflect idiosyncrasies.

The local accents mostly singled out as “deviant” by Shetlanders today are spoken in Whalsay and Out Skerries, two close-knit fishing communities east of Shetland Mainland. This view is corroborated by linguistic research, including my own fieldwork. Surprisingly, these particular localities were not investigated by LSS although they are mentioned in Catford’s pilot study (Catford 1957). In Orkney, the northernmost islands (Westray and North Ronaldsay) are held to be different, showing for example traces of palatalized consonants as regularly found in Shetland.

Some established regional variation is accounted for here, e.g. the front-back variation of PALM and START and the realization of initial <wh> as [M] or [kw], but the bulk of the data refers to Orkney and Shetland accents in general, as commonly heard in the “capitals”, Kirkwall and Lerwick.