Help:IPA/Icelandic
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 | This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of Icelandic on Wikipedia. It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Icelandic in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them. Integrity must be maintained between the key and the transcriptions that link here; do not change any symbol or value without establishing consensus on the talk page first. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. |
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Icelandic language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters. This key is allophonic which means that it encodes main allophones of the distinctive sounds.
See Icelandic phonology and Icelandic orthography § Spelling-to-sound correspondence for a more thorough look at the sounds of Icelandic.
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Notes
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Aspirated stops devoice adjacent consonants when part of the same morpheme as a form of post- or pre-aspiration but are, in standard varieties, themselves pronounced unaspirated other than word initially. However, preserving them post-aspirated intervocalically is a feature of northern dialects, compare flauta //ˈflœy.tʰa//, ⓘ/ ⓘ. Most speakers though alternate between the two favoring aspiration the more formal the context is.
In the Northeast, may additionally be kept post-aspirated : mp, nt, nk, lp, lk, ðk. - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Several sounds may be represented by graphical ⟨f⟩ ⟨p⟩ and ⟨g⟩, which alternate for historical reasons based on phonological environment. Paradigms and derivation may thus seem more opaque on the phonetical plan, e.g. segi [sɛijɪ], sagt [saxt], sagði [saɣðɪ], sagna [sakna] all derived from segja [sɛija].
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Utterance finally, voiced consonants loose their full voicing. After another consonant the devoicing can only be total, e.g. -son ⓘ ~ logn ⓘ, hafið ⓘ ~ -byggð ⓘ.[1] This is a prosodic process not an assimilatory one i.e it is triggered merely by the position of the word in a phrase not some following consonants. Hence the use of the voiced graphemes.
A similar process affects stops, rendering them somewhat aspirated.[2] - 1 2 The standard pronunciation for native words spelled with ⟨x⟩ used to be [xs] but since the 60' a mass adoption of [ks] is observed. E.g. vaxa 'to grow' older [ˈvaxsa] V.S. [ˈvaksa].[3]
- 1 2 3 4 Nasals may assimilate their articulation point to a following obstruent (almost universal for /n/), being realised as [m, n, ɲ, ŋ] before corresponding stops. Before voiceless fricative, there is often no complete oral closure and weak nasalised fricatives [ṽ, z̃, ɣ̃] or long nasalised vowels are heard. This key doesn't transcribe frication. Stress and phrase boundaries meddle in (cf. English: assimilated CO[Ŋ]gress V.S non-assimilated co[n]GRESsional). E.g Jón fór heim ⟦ˈjouṽfouˈr̥eiːm⟧ 'JOHN went HOME (default)', [jounˈfouːr̥eim] 'John WENT home (focus on what John did)'.[4][5]
- ↑ /r, v, ɣ/ assimilate in voicing to adjacent voiceless fricatives, /f, s, h/ (thus also [l̥, n̥, r̥, ç]), and do so even across word boundaries, e.g. Það er hálftómt [θað ɛr̥ ˌhaulˈtʰoum̥t] 'It is half empty', rafhlaða [ˈrafl̥aða] 'battery', lagfæra [ˈlaxfaira] 'to adjust'.[6]
- 1 2 The sequence ⟨sl⟩ invariably represents /stl/. A similar insertion often occurs in ⟨sn⟩ /stn/ and ⟨sm⟩ [spm] (weak and variable and as such, not indicated in the key's scheme).
- ↑ Sequences of coronal resonants (n, r, l \ rr, ln, nl) have historically had various t-epenthesis events. ⟨nn⟩ represents /tn/ after "broad" vowels, ⟨au, á, ei, ey, ó, ú, æ⟩, and ⟨ll⟩ often represents /tl/ in simplex, native words (mylla conflated with Danish mølle and heillegur bears the suffix -legur). Meanwhile ⟨rl⟩ /(r)tl/ and ⟨rn⟩ /(r)tn/ are invariably epenthesised but the /r/ is variably pronounced.
- ↑ Hver is usually pronounced as if spelled kver [kʰvɛːr]. [xʷ] or [x] is part of a dialect from the Southern Region and is rare nowadays. Audio: hvass : ⓘ V.S. ⓘ
- ↑ Stressed vowels are usually long if they are followed by no more than one consonant, double consonants counting as more than one. This applies across word boundaries and length attribution may thus vary between utterances. Internal clusters of /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, s/ + /v, j, r/ and individual words ending in /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, s/ always take a long vowel.[7] E.g. hem (á) ('ice (on)'), hesja ('hayrack'), hes til ('dewlap to'), vitgrannur pronounced [ˈvɪːtkranʏr] ('stupid') have long vowels. But the stressed one in hem til ('ice to'), hemja ('to manage') is short.
Vowel length is fully predicable and thus not phonemic. - ↑ Closer to fat in most British and Irish accents; closer to fart in most North American, Australian and New Zealand accents
- ↑ Closer to fad in most British and Irish accents; closer to father in most North American, Australian and New Zealand accents
- 1 2 3 Long [ɛː, ɔː, œː] are most typically realized as smooth transitions from [ɪ, ʊ, ʏ] to [ɛː, ɔː, œː]. Thus, they are monophthongs phonologically and diphthongs phonetically.[8][9]
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Vowels before ⟨gj, gi⟩ are pronounced as their i-"broad" equivalent : /ɪ, ɛ, a, ɔ, ʏ/ < /i, ei, ai, ɔi, ʏi/. This environement is short inducing, as is ⟨ey, au, æ⟩ + ⟨j, i⟩. Thus, within the sole paradigm of ey [ˈeiː] 'island' we can get eyjar [ˈeiːar] 'GEN', eyin [ˈeiːɪn] 'DEF', and æi 'ugh' is [ˈaiːɪ] but (þið) þvoið [ˈθvɔːɪθ] '(you.PL) wash', moj [ˈmɔiː] 'tedious task', kújón [ˈkʰuːjɔun] 'coward'.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Vowels before ⟨ng, nk⟩ within a single morpheme are pronounced as their "broad" equivalent : /ɪ, ɛ, a, ɔ, ʏ/ < /i, ei, au, ou, u/.
- ↑ The word Ísland can be parsed as a (semi)compound word (pronounced with a long vowel) or as simplex (pronounced with a short vowel).[10]
- ↑ Between a u-glide (orthographic ú, ó, á) and a historically back vowel (u, o, a), /ɣ/ is regularly elided; rendering kúa 'cows dat', kúga 'to suppress' homophonous as [ˈkʰuːa] (and often also kúfa 'heaps').
- ↑ /v/ can, just as /ɣ/, be elided between /Vu̯/ and /ʏ, ɔ, a/. This is less frequent than with /ɣ/ but nontheless common. Some words can't take the elided pronunciation; as Hávamál.
- ↑ Icelandic has a wide array of consonnant cluster simplifications. Some of them are optional, other aren't (like above mentioned ⟨fnd, fnt⟩ [m, m̥]). A list thereof can be found in Rögnvaldsson (2020:22–24).
References
[edit]Citations
[edit]- ↑ Rögnvaldsson (2017), pp. 36, 60.
- ↑ Rögnvaldsson (2017), p. 33.
- ↑ Rögnvaldsson (2017), p. 90.
- ↑ Rögnvaldsson (2017), pp. 41, 78.
- ↑ Árnason (2011), pp. 293–4.
- ↑ Másdóttir et al. (2023), p. 6.
- ↑ Árnason (2011), pp. 148–9, 205–7.
- ↑ Árnason (2011), p. 60.
- ↑ Gussmann (2011), pp. 71, 88.
- ↑ Rögnvaldsson (2017), p. 54.
Sources
[edit]- Árnason, Kristján (2011). The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese. The Phonology of the World's Languages. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-922931-4.
- Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur (2017). Hljóðkerfi og orðhlutakerfi íslensku [The phonology and morphology of Icelandic] (PDF) (in Icelandic) (2nd ed.). Reykjavík. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2024-09-18.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - —— (2020). A Short Overview of the Icelandic Sound System Pronunciation Variants and Phonetic Transcription (PDF) (IPA ed.). Reykjavík: SÍM. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2025-11-12.
- Gussmann, Edmund (2011). "Getting your head around: the vowel system of Modern Icelandic" (PDF). Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia. 12: 71–90. ISBN 978-83-232-2296-5.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link) - Másdóttir, T.; Bernhardt, B. M; Stemberger, J. P.; Hansson, G. Ó (2023). "Acquisition of the feature [+spread glottis] in Icelandic" (PDF). Journal of Child Language. 51 (3): 573–595. doi:10.1017/S0305000923000582.
- Haugen, Einar (1958). "The Phonemics of Modern Icelandic". Language. 34 (1): 55–88. doi:10.2307/411276. JSTOR 411276.
- Volhardt, Marc Daniel Skibsted (2011). Islændinges udtale af dansk. En sammenlignende analyse af lydsystemerne i islandsk og dansk, og islandske studerendes danskudtale (Bachelor's degree essay) (in Danish). Reykjavík: University of Iceland.