Talk:Icelandic language

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Archives Archive 1 (Mar 2004–Mar 2006) Archive 2 (Mar 2006–August 2006)

Contents 1 æ and Latin 2 Splitting up 3 West Scandinavian? 4 velar approximant 5 o as a diphthong? 6 Icelandic orthography 7 Transliteration of Icelandic words 7.1 Phrases 8 Icelandic grammar

[edit] æ and Latin

Is it just a coincidence that æ is pronounced like ae in classic Latin, ie. [ai]? Samulili 20:39, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes. When people began writing Icelandic (Old Norse) with latin script the letter æ stood for the vowel [æ] (as it did in Old English writing and, as far as I know, in Vulgar latin æ represented a monophthong in that region as well). Later the Icelandic vowel system underwent a radical change and æ ended up as [ai]. I daresay that the speakers of Icelandic in the 15. century or so who introduced this shift were not motivated by the pronounciation of Classical Latin. Stefán 21:30, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting up

I added a lot of empty references as an invitation. As it is, the article is little but phonology, which should be on a page of its own. Please fill in according to time and abilities. We might even divide the task. Cheers Io 19:46, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

To clarify. One might take the nouns, another the adverbs etc. The format would have to be uniform. Participants might present their ideas in their sandboxes. Given my spotty record I don't know, how reliable I myself might be. But my suggestion would be to describe the grammar in the historical fashion, i.e. divide nouns into a-, ô-, i- and u-classes plus the irregulars etc. Cheers Io 19:59, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] West Scandinavian?

It is stated here that the classification of icelandic language goes as follows:

• Indo-European
  • Germanic
    • North Germanic
      • West Scandinavian
        • Icelandic

but in the North Germanic languages article there is no "West Scandinavian" subdivision... Guirro 16:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes there is, see: North_Germanic_languages#Family_tree --Bjarki 17:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] velar approximant

Does that mean the Icelandic g is more accurately transcribed as [ɰ] or [ɣ̞], i.e. lowered (phonetics)?--Sonjaaa 04:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The Icelandic letter g can stand for many different sounds, see above for a partial discussion. Icelandic only has one velar fricative phoneme which can either be voiced or unvoiced depending on context (I think there is a fancy linguistic word for context in this context). If you wanted to compare the Icelandic voiced velar fricative to the one in some other languages then, yes, the Icelandic one would be more accurately described as [ɣ̞] but note that we have no source which uses that symbol so probably the table should not be changed. Stefán 17:34, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused. You mean that you have no outside source expressing g as [ɣ̞]? Even my TeachYourself progam course on Icelandic describes g as [ɣ̞] when placed between vowels, but maybe you mean something else? Jxn 18:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Now I am confused. We have a source with a table of the Icelandic consonant system which has the voiced velar fricative given as [ɣ] (g between vowels and a couple of other contexts). Then we have this note saying that actually the voiced fricatives are not completely constrictive but rather can approach being approximants. The question is, whether this last statement means that we should use [ɣ̞] rather than [ɣ] to transcribe Icelandic and my reply was that probably we should not since the sources we have use the plain [ɣ] for their transcriptions. Are you now saying that the TeachYourself book uses the symbol [ɣ̞] with the lowering diacritic to describe the Icelandic voiced velar fricative? Stefán 19:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the lowering mark is hard to read on many screens and he didn't notice it.--Sonjaaa 19:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Ooops, yo've hit the nail on the head Sonjaaa, thanks! Actually, for some reason the lowering mark isn't visible at all until I copy the character into another buffer... It seems to be a font issue. (Incidentally, it's so difficult to find an aesthetically pleasing, readable font with broad enough character support--I need indic scripts and others as well. Well, I guess it's back to the drawing board.) Thanks, though! Jxn 23:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] o as a diphthong?

They often transcribe the o sound as /ɔ/ but to me it sounds like /ɔə/. Is there some truth in this?--Sonjaaa 19:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I have not heard of this. I know that the long and the short versions of the vowels have slightly different pronunciations, long [ɛ:] is slightly closer than short [ɛ] (if I remember correctly) and maybe the same applies to /ɔ/. Do you hear diphthongisation in both the long and short o? Stefán 20:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

You don't hear diphthongs here? http://www.kisa.ca/icelandic-e-o.mp3 One of the instances of o sounds almost like /U@/ to me! You're right. These are all in "long and stressed" position. For the Icelandic orthography article, I would like to distinguish these, because I definitely hear a different sound, maybe a dipthong, in the long versions of o and e.--Sonjaaa 18:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I cannot listen to mp3 from where I am at the moment. As for the discussion at [1] if you just wanted my guess (trying to listen to my own pronuncation) then I would agree with one of the posts there that kona is with an [oO] diphthong or [UO] or something like that. I cannot hear any diphthongisation in the long e but perhaps there is. In any case we need to find sources before we can start putting claims like these into articles. Stefán 21:22, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Icelandic orthography

I've started working on this article. I am especially interested in the grapheme-to-phoneme conversion using narrow transcription, to help a student know exactly how to pronounce a word.--Sonjaaa 20:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Transliteration of Icelandic words

We should try and stick to a single scheme when we transliterate Icelandic words in IPA. What I have done is to use the symbols in the phonology section of this article. That also corresponds well with the recommendations given in this pdf. I realise that these symbols are not the end of the story about Icelandic phonology, [θ] is alveolar, the voiced fricatives may approach approximants, the long vowels may be somewhat diphthongised (we need a proper source for that claim still) etc. etc. However, the point of these transcriptions is not to give every single possible detail and it is well accepted that the IPA symbols may have a slightly different meaning from one language to another while the over all scheme is the same. Any thoughts? Stefán 23:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I am not suggesting we completely gloss over these issues, rather I think that the details of the phonology should be put into an Icelandic phonology article, compare for example the effort at Irish phonology (which is probably on a grander scale than we can hope for). Also, with this as our model, in the article on Icelandic orthography I feel we should use the symbols in the table we currently have, compare Irish orthography which actually uses phonems in the table. Stefán 00:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I agree that we should stick to a single scheme but my opinion is that the scheme should be as accurate as possible. Since there is much debate as to whether þ and ð are a phoneme or two distinct ones, and /cʰ/ and /kʰ/ and /c/ and /k/, likewise, I think we should be doing this on the phonetic scale. If not, then we should at least use correct vowel symbols for vowels such as a which is pronounced [ɑ] and not [a] except in the diphthong æ [ai]. I'm not sure about the representation of the diphthongisation of long e and o, though. Vegfarandi 00:38, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Marking that diphthongisation may be overkill, one rarely sees it marked. Haukur 00:55, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that we should not try an stick with phonems, and these examples are the ones I would have taken to support that. I agree we should use the correct symobls for the vowels, do you have a source which says that the pronunciation of /a/ is [ɑ]? Stefán 00:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

For the icelandic orthography article, I'm trying to use very narrow transcription to really describe how to pronounce it to a linguist who wants to learn the language. I think that is very useful. I think having a broad transcription that doesn't show the /E/ diphthongization is cool too, but wasn't the scope I was aiming for in the orthography article. Should I rename the orthography article to something else like icelandic pronunciation?--Sonjaaa 01:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Phrases

I added the phrases section today, and worked out the IPA pronunciations the best I could using Colloquial Icelandic, Daisy L. Neijmann, Routledge, 2001. I think I’ve got it pretty accurate, but I would like it if someone could check over my transliterations, I mean with my limited knowledge of Icelandic pronunciation and IPA symbols I’m bound to have made a few mistakes. Max Naylor 11:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Icelandic grammar

I have greatly expanded this section, and, as a result, I have moved it to its own page. I would be grateful if someone could write a brief summary of grammatical concepts in Icelandic to fill out the grammar section here that basically summarises the Icelandic grammar article. Thanks. Max Naylor 10:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)