The name of this website includes the word Clwàideac, which is Ardnamurchan Gaelic for "snowflake". The words for "snowflake" in Scottish Gaelic dialects are particularly interesting. On this page/in this article, I will present the suggestion that words for "snowflake" in Scottish Gaelic dialects may provide some kind of evidence for a pre-Gaelic or pre-Indo-European language. 

Firstly, these words for "snowflake" are not exactly etymological equivalents of each other, and from dialect to dialect, there are some changes in the meaning of these different words. The Ardnamurchan Gaelic form, clwàideac contains the broad velerised L ([l̪ˠ]) sound followed by a [w], the whole sound can be written [l̪ˠw] in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The words for "snowflake" on the Isle of Skye, An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, closely match the standard Gaelic spelling form lòineag. In these two examples, the Ardnamurchan clw is equivalent to the initial broad velerised L in the Skye form lòineag. 

These two forms are not all that different from each other, but we can already see that the sound differences do not match the ordinary sound differences between words in Gaelic dialects. For example, it is normal for the Skye broad velerised L to be equivalent to the broad velerised Lw sound of Ardnamurchan Gaelic, but it is not a normal sound difference for the broad velerised L of Skye Gaelic is equivalent to the Ardnamurchan [kʰl̪ˠw], where there is an extra [kʰ] at the beginning of this word. The main point being that the broad verelised L does not typically yield any [kʰl̪ˠ] sounds, and yet the Ardnamurchan form clwàideac does show a [kʰl̪ˠw] rather than just a [l̪ˠw] as being equivalent to the [l̪ˠ] in the Skye form.

Identifying the underlying syllabic pattern

An etymological connection between some of these forms and Proto-Finnic *lumi, Finnish lumi - "snow" etc

Certainly some of the forms of these words, such as the Skye forms lòineag and lòindeag, bare some similarity to a root found in Finnish as lumi - "snow". If this suggestion holds merit, then it could be possible that the Skye forms lòineag and lòindeag contain this same root, with the liquid L, followed by a vowel and then a nasal. In the case of lòineag and lòindeag the -eag may be a suffix, perhaps with lòin- having an original meaning of "snow", and the -eag suffix deriving a thing or piece of snow, i.e. a snowflake. However, connecting the entirely of these Scottish Gaelic words for "snowflake" to the Finnish word lumi is unrealistic, and so it might be suggested that many of these words for "snowflake" actually could contain multiple, separate root words, albeit often sharing an underlying two-syllable structure and rhythm. 

The South Uist Gaelic word flinneadh - "sleet" as well as the more general Gaelic word flinne both seem to show a similarity to Finnish lumi as well, albeit perhaps with the addition of a migratory initial [f].