Talk:Icelandic phonology

message: I’ve moved the phonological content from the main Icelandic language article to here, leaving copies of the tables and a brief summary there. I’ve moved the old content of this page to Icelandic orthography, where it is better suited. Max Naylor 18:16, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Content change

message: Is there a phonemic contrast between the "plain" laterals  and the velarized laterals ? None of my (admittedly very scanty) resources indicates that L is ever velarized in Icelandic, let alone phonemically so. —Angr 15:43, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I was also surprised to see it but it seems that for some Icelanders "veldi" ((I would) choose) and "velgdi" ((I would) make warmer) are not homophones. I believe the reference comes from the book "Íslensk tunga"  but I don't have it. Perhaps someone who has the book close by will come and quote the relevant passage. Stefán 19:14, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Laterals 

message: The current text says:
:Icelandic has an aspiration contrast between plosives, rather than a voicing contrast, something relatively rare among European languages
Is it really? I'm pretty sure it's the exact same in Danish. The difference between Danish /p/ and /b/ is not one of voicing, it's one of aspiration. --Pinnerup 23:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it says relatively rare. Danish certainly is another example, Faroese probably another. Those are the only ones I am aware of. If there are more then we should consider rewording the statement. Stefán 03:52, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Scottish Gaelic is another one; it's actually not rare in Northwestern Europe. —Angr 04:52, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, I've removed it, and another paragraph which seemed to be confusing the written and the spoken language. We still say that a voicing contrast in nasals is rare among the languages of the world. Is that an accurate statement? Also, we say that length is contrastive for consonants, but not vowels. Am I correct in saying that length is only contrastive for [m], [n], [r] and [s]? I cannot think of any others. Also this may not be terribly accurate, the research of Pind suggests that it is the relative length of the vowel compared to the following consonant rather than the absolute length of either one which is the important factor. There is also eyddra vs eitra in which either the vowel length is contrastive or my statement above about which consonants can be contrastive is wrong. Comments? Stefán 16:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voicing contrast 

message: This page has a lot of example words with no translation.  It would be a good thing to translate the example words.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 04:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Translation

message: j is an approximant in the IPA. Why is it put in the fricative bit here? Also, j is included as being one of the fricatives which veer towards being an approximant here but in 'Icelandic language' it is not included. Munci (talk) 18:46, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  J in the phonology 

message: Are the unusual diphthongs rising or falling? That is, where should we put the <  ̯> diacritic, and how does that fit the length diacritic? kwami (talk) 20:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  diphthongs 

message: This abstract seems to be saying that the difference between aspirated and unaspirated consonants in Icelandic involves the glottis being open (or closed) during articulation of the consonant.  This would suggest that at least some unaspirated Icelandic stops are in fact glottalized or ejective.  I don't speak Icelandic, but I occasionally see Icelandic shows on my cable TV (the SCOLA channel), and I can definitely hear some glottalized /k'/ sounds (which have a distinctive "click" or "pop" sound).  Thoughts or comments on this from anyone who does speak Icelandic?  Richwales (talk) 05:13, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If the ejective quality were that strong and clear I'm sure it'd have been noticed already. I rather suspect that it is more like in Eastern Armenian, where the unaspirated voiceless stops have a quality that almost sounds like ejectives but not quite, and I've heard they're better described as tense. That would make them similar to the Korean tense stops, though phoneticians don't seem to be quite sure if tenseness, stiff voice or faucalized voice is the best way to describe their distinctive quality. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:13, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Glottalization of non-aspirated stops? 

message: I see many sorces representing these as fricativs rather than voiceless approximants (eg. John Wells here: ). Which is right, or is there variation? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:54, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voiceless laterals 

message: Is it really possible to distinguish [m̥ n̥ ɲ̊ ŋ̊] out of context? Wisapi (talk) 15:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you mean to distinguish them from each other or to distinguish them from their voiced counterparts? Either way, I think the answer is yes, why wouldn't it be? +Angr 15:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I meant distinguishing them from each other because in my attempts to pronounce them they only sounded like an air release through the nose. Or should air also come out through the mouth in [n̥ ɲ̊ ŋ̊]? Wisapi (talk) 19:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No, like all nasal stops air should come out through the nose only. I guess the difference between them is really hard to hear if you just say them in isolation without any vowels next to them. +Angr 20:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

text: I tried with my wife (we're both native speakers) and she couldn't distinguish between my production of voiceless m and voiceless n  out of context (I turned my face away from her). There are not many minimal pairs - I had to search for ten minutes before finding one - 'reimt' ("haunted") vs. 'reynt' ("tried"). Interesting question, I hadn't really thought about this before. Haukur (talk) 21:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried a sentence pair with my wife - "Það hefur verið reimt þarna" vs. "Það hefur verið reynt þarna" - and we agreed that there was no particular problem in distinguishing them. I've thought of another minimal pair - 'lengt' ("extended") vs. 'leynt' ("secret") and I think the difference here is very slight. But that's not specific to the voiceless pairs, I think the distinction between 'lengd' ("length") and 'leynd' ("secrecy") is not made by all speakers and I'm not sure I make it myself. Haukur (talk) 22:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've tried the words "reimt" and "reynt" alone (not in a phrase) and I think I could tell them apart by the release after [m] (which sound as a very weak [b̥]). What do you think? Could saying them in a whole sentence give other clues? And what about [ɲ̊ ŋ̊]? Can you guys tell them apart (isolated or within a word)? From what I got in this article, 'lengt' and 'leynt' aren't exactly a minimal pair: 'leynt' has a <y> ([i(ː)]) which 'lengt' hasn't. Wisapi (talk) 23:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You may be right about the release. The word 'lengt' is pronounced as if written 'leingt'- Icelandic orthography has a quirk about vowels before ng/nk ('banki' is pronounced as 'bánki', 'vinka' as 'vínka' etc.) I can't think of a minimal pair between [ɲ̊ ŋ̊]  and I doubt one exists, but I think the same goes for the voiced variants. Haukur (talk) 00:14, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

text: I just wanted to add that we have a three way minimal pair since "Það hefur verið rengt þarna" (from the verb 'rengja') is a valid sentence with ŋ̊. I sometimes listen for the pronunciation of 'lygnt' and I think it is a bit off and on whether people have the ŋ̊ or whether it becomes n̥. In the latter case it sounds the same as 'lint', but I think there is an audible difference between the ŋ̊ and n̥ versions. Without any context I can believe that it is difficult to distinguish between these sounds. Stefán (talk) 11:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent point! Indeed, reynt-reimt-rengt is a three-way minimal pair (and of course clearly distinct from reynd-*reimd-rengd). Haukur (talk) 12:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the term "minimal triplet" is more common than the oxymoron "three-way minimal pair". +Angr 12:44, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Duh, yes, thanks. Haukur (talk) 13:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

text: I believe here too one can distinguish between 'lyngt' and 'lint' by the release of [ŋ̊], which sound as weak [ɡ̊] (or perhaps even a ligual egressive click) No vowel-before-/ng/ quirk here?. Should this be the case, I'd be interested in hearing of a minimal pair between [ɲ̊ n̥], for then, I imagine, the tongue would glide from [ɲ̊] to the alveolar ridge making no audible release, like [n̥]. Wisapi (talk) 16:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The word is 'lygnt' (it is the nominative neuter form of the adjective 'lygn'), still the pronuciation is [lɪŋ̊t]. I could also believe that there is something at the onset of ŋ̊ which would help distinguish it from n̥ but that is speculation. As for a minimal pair between [ɲ̊ n̥] they don't exist as far as I believe. Certainly not in this environment. The highest peak in Iceland is called either Hvannadalshnjúkur og Hvannadalshnúkur but I think that the second component (hn(j)úkur) is [n̥(j)ukʏr]. Stefán (talk) 17:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you mean that the pronunciation of 'Hvannadalshnjúkur' could be with a [ɲ̊] owing to the <j>? That's an important question because we will have to add this enviroment (<nj>) to the table then. It is also important to revise the vowels table because of the lyngt's pronunciation; I know it's not a big difference between [i] and [ɪ], but, as it stands now, it claims that the pronunciation should be [liŋ̊t]. Wisapi (talk) 00:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Like I said, I think 'hnjúkur' is [n̥jukʏr], I was just wondering whether it could be [ɲ̊ukʏr] but I don't think it is. We don't need to modify the table because the word is 'lygnt'. It is *not* lyngt and the spelling does not contain the cluster ng, but rather the cluster gn. Compare 'hringt' [r̥iŋ̊t] from the verb 'hringja' (to call) with 'hrygnt' [r̥ɪŋ̊t] from the verb 'hrygna' (to spawn). Stefán (talk) 01:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I understood that you were just wondering if the pronunciation of 'hnjúkur' could be something else, but as you left the question open, I was willing to draw attention to its importance, so more people may give their opinion. As to 'lygnt', I'm sincerely sorry that I bothered you again; I still hadn't noticed the different clusters. Wisapi (talk) 12:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differing voiceless nasals 

message: Examining the vowels table, I found something that may be a typo, or, if not, deserves more explanation: 'lögin' was transliterated as [ˈløːjɪn] without the expected <ɪ> after <ø>. Wisapi (talk) 00:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a typo. Stefán (talk) 01:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed, it now stands as [ˈløɪːjɪn]. Wisapi (talk) 12:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  <ö> before <gi>, 'lögin' [ˈløːjɪn] 

message: I think it would be clarifying to add a row for that in the consonants table. It seems to be pronounced in both ways, but further down in the vowels table hræsni was only given the pronunciation [ˈr̥aistnɪ]. Is there a prefered pronunciation? By the way, what about <hv>? I've read in a grammar (Colloquial Icelandic, p.7 http://books.google.com/books?id=MD7m_cV6KrIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=colloquial+icelandic&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false) that some Icelanders consider the pronunciation [xv] to be better Icelandic. Is that outdated? Wisapi (talk) 01:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it is fair to say that the consensus is that the initial clusters hr as in 'hrota', hn as in 'hneta' and hl as in 'hljóð' signify unvoiced sounds and not some cluster of an aspiration followed by a voiced sound. So, there are not two ways of pronouncing these words and the table should be modified accordingly. As for initial hv people pronounce it differently, either [kv] or [xv]. In the middle of the 20th century 3/4 of the population had the [kv] pronuciation and that fraction has been increasing rapidly. Some influencial people have claimed that [xv] is preferable. It is clear that they have lost this battle. Let me strongly recommend to anyone learning Icelandic to choose the [kv] since it is so much more popular. Stefán (talk) 01:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Initial <h> before consonant, aspiration or devoicing? 

message: Both archetypical pronunciations, amongst others, are given:
*for <g>
#[gʲ] -> gef -> [gʲe:v]
#[c:] -> leggja -> ['lehg’ʲ:a]
:but only [gʲ] is used:
::gæta [`g’ʲai:t’a]
::gætti [`g’ʲaiʰd’ɪ]
*for <k>
#[k’ʲ] -> kæla -> [`kʲai:la]
#[c] -> reki -> [`re:kʲI]
:but only [kʲ] is used:
::kæla [`kʲai:la]
::reki [`re:kʲI]
::kempa [`kʲem’b’a]
::poki [`pʰo:kʲI]
::skipti [`skʲIb’d’I]
Further examples including the cluster <ng>/<nk>:
:anga [`auηg’a]
:Ingi [`iηjg’jI]
:löng [löiη’k’]
:enginn [`éiηjgʲIn]
:ungur [`uηg’ür]
:þyngð [θiηɣð]
:banka[`b’auη’g’a]
And another surprising phonetic value for <g> that I hadn't found here:
*[g’v] -> Guð -> [g’vüð]
:--Wisapi (talk) 17:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure if [v] is the correct transcription, but I definitely do recognise a pronunciation along those lines in this word ([k_wY:T]?), and I also seem to hear a different /l/ than the usual one between á and v in words like hálfur and álfur. I'd like some confirmation here. Oh, and the /a/ part of the á diphthong doesn't sound like the /a/ in a normal a to me, either. Skomakar'n (talk) 22:46, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  [kʲ g’ʲ] instead of [cʰ c] 

message: *o -> [o] [wo:] kom [kho:m] [khwo:m]
*e -> [e(:)] [ei] er [e:r], ferð [ferð]
*é -> [je] él [je:l]
:--Wisapi (talk) 17:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowels 

message: It looks like this book has some idiosyncratic transcriptions that don't follow IPA exactly. That's not unusual; most works describing the phonology of a single language have their own conventions that deviate in some way or another from IPA principles. For example, does the author ever explicitly call his "[b' d' g']" ejective? It's far more likely that he's just following a convention that the apostrophe indicates voicelessness in that book. The same goes for not indicating stress: many authors omit stress marks on monosyllabic words because it's obvious where the stress goes. Whether one uses the symbols for palatalized velars ( etc.) or the symbols for palatals (c etc.) is also a matter of convention; as long as the language you're describing doesn't contrast the two, it doesn't much matter which set of symbols you use. (Over at Scottish Gaelic phonology, we use the symbol ç to stand for a voiceless postpalatal or prevelar fricative but the symbols  and  to stand for a postalveolar or prepalatal lateral and nasal, even though ç,  and  are all in the same "Palatal" column of the IPA.) +Angr 18:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Finally having some time to read a bit further in that grammar, I found out that what was meant by these apostrophes after [b d g] is that they are desonorizzate (dessounded), i.e. the vocal cords do not cease their vibrations before the onset of the articulation, but after. The author mentioned that he could could also have reprisented them by [b̥ d̥ g̊], but preferred the apostrophy. I think it would be a good idea to have this last set of symbols used here with the proper explanation of how they differ to simply voiceless consonants. Wisapi (talk) 02:47, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

text: However, I just read, in final positions or after certain consonantal clusters, these desonorizzate consonants will be truly voiceless, i.e. the vocal cords will stop vibrating before their onset. These are marked in this grammar by [pʼ tʼ kʼ]. Wisapi (talk) 12:39, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on the above 

message: I highly recommend mallyskur.is for pronunciation samples. Haukur (talk) 12:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Are the recordings freely licensed? If so, we can copy them to Commons and use them directly. +Angr 13:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The site doesn't really say. I know the people behind it and I could try to brooch the subject but I would expect the usual hemming and hawing, discomfort and incomprehension. In any case, licencing would be complicated by the fact that some of the recordings are of people reading recent works of literature aloud. Some of it is just spontaneous talk which wouldn't be subject to copyright - but neighboring rights would come into play. Haukur (talk) 13:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

text: P.S. I assume you mean "dialectal variation", not "dialectical variation". +Angr 13:03, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: When I see Angr writing in  tags I know I've made a boo-boo. Haukur (talk) 13:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you rather I point out your mistakes in great big letters? +Angr 17:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dialect
ic
al variation 

message: Hi! I found in the Icelandic grammar "Kennslubók í Nútíma Íslensku handa Ítölum by Riccardo Venturi (Rikarður V. Albertsson)" that  is pronounced like an <o>. Unfortunately, the author uses the same character for both [o] and [ɔ], so I don't to which he's actually referring. The examples he gives are "dölum" ([ˈdʼöːlom]) and "himnunum" ([ˈhimno:nom]). Here, however, we have that this sound ([ɔ]) is only found in in the first  of the ending "-unum", as in "augunum" [ˈøɪːɣɔnʏm]. Wisapi (talk) 22:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  <nowiki><u></nowiki> in "-num" 

message: Shouldn't this be pronounced [ˈcœːtva], since <k> is followed by a front vowel [œ]? Wisapi (talk) 23:44, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No, that rule only applies to unrounded front vowels. – Krun (talk) 10:35, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

text: As it turns out, the "rounded front" vowels are actually rounded central vowels anyway. - Gilgamesh (talk) 06:36, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  götva [ˈkœːtva] 

message: I've just hit upon this particularity: according to this Kennslubók, 'hver, 'einhver' and 'sérhver' "should actually be pronounced -[kʰvʏr] ([kwʏr])" (actually the author uses [ü] instead of [ʏ]). Suspecting this would be a prescripted —and not descriptive— pronunciation, I was also puzzled by the fact that the auther didn't then prescript the [xvʏr] pronunciation. Wisapi (talk) 00:37, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''hver'' and compounds 

message: Still according to this grammar there actually are aspirated [k p t] in middle and final positions. Examples vaka [ˈvaːkʰa], vík [viːkʰ], skapa [ˈsgʼaːpʰa], glöp [gʼlœːpʰ], gráta [ˈgʼraːtʰa] (I guess there was a typo here with the diphthong), net [neːtʰ]. There is even a whole topic about this in the grammar and before that the author had already used transcriptions with aspirated in other positions. Wisapi (talk) 02:19, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  aspirated consonants in non initial positions 

message: I've set up WP:IPA for Icelandic to go along with the  template. Needs to be reviewed, esp. the L's. 
Also, I changed the transcription of long diphthongs. I assume what was meant was that the entire diphthong was lengthened, but [ai:] makes it look as though it's the off-glide that's lengthened. It's pretty standard to put the length mark on the peak of sonority. — kwami (talk) 05:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA table 

message: The glottal stop is listed in the consonant table but is not commented in the text.  I'd like to see a source on that and examples of word containing it.  Icelandic being a Germanic language, my gut instinct is to be very doubtful about its phonemicity. - Dingbats (talk) 10:35, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Glottal stop? 

message: Why is there a separate section "Vowel length" now when the issue is already explained in a much more detailed way in the preceding section? The section "Vowel length" would seem redundant then. Not to mention that the detailed explanation names a source, while the "Vowel length" section is completely unsourced. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:08, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: This whole article is a mess.  If you want to fix it, go for it.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 03:40, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowel length 

message: I'm very surprised to find that the description in the article not only ignores but implicitly denies the obligatory phrase-final voiceless pronunciation of the fricatives ([v],[ð],[ɣ]), even though the recorded pronunciation examples clearly display it. Árnason (2011) certainly does mention final devoicing of fricatives, and, less consistenly, of sonorants (p.237), as a "pervasive postlexical effect that takes place before a pause", using the example of dag pronounced as [ta:x].--91.148.130.233 (talk) 02:13, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Final devoicing, anyone? (re-post from orthography talk page) 

message: It seems to me that this is most often realized as [s̠], even perhaps [ʂ]/[ʃ] when followed by [k] or [j] respectively:
* skulu [ˈs̠kʏ.lʏ] ~ [ˈʂkʏ.lʏ]
* sjálfur [ˈs̠jau̯ɬ.fʏr] ~ [ˈʃjau̯ɬ.fʏr]
* skilja [ˈs̠cɪlʲ.ja]
* sál [s̠au̯ɬ]
* lexía [ˈlɛk.s̠i.a]
Are there any thoughts on this? Thadh (talk) 14:02, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  [s] 

message: I recently added a lot of new material to this article, sourced from at least two different newer references.  But I am not an expert on the subject, so it only seems responsible to generally ask for my edits to be looked over and perhaps details corrected, etc.  I did footnote the references by document, but not by page or using citation templates.  (I am so out of practice with that.)  Fortunately the references themselves aren't that massive, the longest being perhaps a couple dozen pages. - Gilgamesh (talk) 20:36, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edits 

message: I appreciate that many of the source references use this same notation, but using  as-is has always seemed like a barrier to quick reading, as the symbol  is generally used for only the immediately preceding symbol.  We know that the notation actually means , where a unitary diphthong is phonetically longer than it otherwise would be expected to be.  But superficially, to those not familiar with Icelandic broad IPA, the mind is thinking the monosyllabic equivalent of a lopsided , or worse, parsing it as implied hiatus .  I've also seen the sporadic usage of  instead, but this isn't necessarily better because the mind will still tend to see it as either lopsided monosyllabic , or still imply hiatus  because it's not common in IPA conventions to use  between vowels where hiatus isn't implied.  We know what it actually means is that the whole diphthong as a unitary phone is pronounced audibly longer than not, and where potentially ambiguous, it is conventional to indicate unitary articulations with a tie bar anyway.  I know it is common on Wikipedia to do away with tie bars to simplify the transcription, but in this case omitting the tie bar only increases the potential for confusion.  Compare conventions for Polish IPA, where cz  and trz  are not strictly homophonous phoneme sequences and the tie bar (or lack thereof) makes a difference both in reading and in imparting the crucial phonological information.  And though I appreciate that sequences of vowel syllables without a consonant between them appear to be relatively uncommon in Icelandic, they can still occur, like in Skógafoss .  Someone with a more well-read understanding of the phonology can still infer where the hiatus is and isn't in that transcription, but to someone less familiar with it, it can seem to imply .  A hiatus symbol  could still be used , but it just seems clearer to use a tie bar where adjacent vowel symbols form a diphthong, whether long or short .  I propose making this tie bar for Icelandic diphthongs conventional practice on Wikipedia in the interests of clarity, especially for those who want to try to pronounce individual Icelandic terms at a glance with generic IPA knowledge, but haven't (at least yet) fully read any more in-depth articles on Icelandic phonology.  This is not a simple matter of trivia, either, because Icelandic terms can be very difficult to pronounce untrained, and most articles with Icelandic IPA don't have corresponding English-specific pronunciations (IPA or otherwise), and the Icelandic IPA should ideally serve to aid rather than hinder attempts to pronounce it. - Gilgamesh (talk) 13:01, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problematic IPA for diphthongs, especially long diphthongs