Pronouncing the Icelandic Alphabet

Another video in my unofficial layman's series about the Icelandic language. Here I go through each letter in the Icelandic alphabet, give pronunciation tips and discuss some nuances and peculiarities.
I hope this helps anyone studying up on and/or practicing the language.
0:00 Intro
1:00 Disclaimer
1:33 Overview
2:15 Quick runthrough
2:59 Omitted letters
3:57 Unique characters
6:15 In-depth
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Wanna buy me a cup of coffee? Check out my page on ko-fi: ko-fi.com/ivargu.

[@Anterak11]

Takk takk! As a French and English speaker learning German, it’s fascinating to hear both the similarities and differences with íslensku.

[@eivindkaisen6838]

Fascination stuff, especially from the POV of a ‘sister’ or ‘first cousin’ continental Scandinavian language [Scaninavian for short, below]. Á was of course a long A which in Scandinavia became an å - the diagraph is from an a and an o. There is at least one Norwegian dialect wthere å is pronounced ao. The ð and Þ are the voiced and unvoiced "dental fricatives". Once they were in the English alphabet with the same sound qualities as in Icelandic/Norse. The ð disappeared first, and with the priniting press the Þ [which then covered both sounds] was first rendered as y; the was written ye but pronounced ðe, now th is used for both sounds. In modern Sandinavian languager they are now written as d and t. É wich started out as a long e, was palatalized into ye arouind 1,000 years ago. That is why ég is now written jeg/jag (with varyting stress on the g; the Swedish je-ja sound shift is from roughly bthe same period). In Western Norwegian dialects and nynorsk it is written and pronounced eg - with a long e sound. The Hv combination started out in Old Norse almost a gv - with the g as in Icelandic flag or ég. The languages that developed from Old East Norse, Danish and Swedish, soon dropped the hv in favour of a v sound [Danish retained the hv spelling; Swedish went for a straight v). In Norwegian the v sound took over in the Eastern and Southern dialects and is witten hv in bokmål; in the west and nynorsk the hv sound became kv [like kva = what] or in some dialects simply k [ka for kva, hva]. There are a few dialects in Norwegian where ll also has developed (independently) into a dl, as in fjell [icelandic fjall] being proonounced fjedl. The ú is sometimes written like an o but pronounced the same way. In other cases, at least in Norwegian, it can be pronounced like a long and/or stressed sharp u, like ur and lus [watch/clock and louse in English] - this is nototiously difficult for non-natives to say and/or differentiate from y and i. The loss of distinction between i and y is almost an exclusive Icelandic particular. The other Scandi languages have kept the distinction. (Although I know of one dialect in Norway that has also lost the i/y sound differnce). In the other Sandinavian languaged the æ is just a monophthong - sometimes withhen a, æ or ä - the sound quality vares, though. The icelandic sound would be written using two vowels, e.g. ai, aj. Ô iw of course the same as the Dano-Norwegian ø and the Swedisg ö.

[@bgorely]

I'd love to see you post more educational Icelandic language videos. This was great.

[@ivargu]

Thanks. Glad to hear you liked it :)

[@icarogois5268]

I think this was the most complete video I have ever found on Icelandic alphabet. Takk Ívar!

[@beckyguinn1331]

I’m so glad you did another educational video! We watched the basic ones a lot before we went to Iceland last year and it was very helpful, and less formal than other videos we found. Continuing to follow along. Takk!

[@ivargu]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@MelLovesIceland]

This is fantastic! Thank you! Right before I went to Iceland for the first time last year, your videos about common phrases helped me prepare. This just continues the linguistic journey! I really enjoy how you describe the sounds and provide examples. Thank you for doing this and I look forward to more! 😊

[@ivargu]

Glad you liked it! :)

[@DoughBrain]

Thank you so much!

[@ivargu]

You're welcome!

[@LaEurovisionQueen]

Before I visited Iceland, I decided to learn a little Icelandic, just to be polite, and I started with your videos and that is how I got hooked on your excellent videos. I felt confident about my pronunciation of basic sounds. The double LL is a female dog, however.

[@ivargu]

"is a female dog"... this took me awhile 😂

[@melissahdawn]

This is soooooo helpful. Thank you! Can you please pronounce magi, I am still struggling with it, and dagur... I guess the g is very subtle or something.

[@ivargu]

Listen to Magi-dagur.m4a by Ívar Gunnarsson on #SoundCloud on.soundcloud.com/Xw6iG

[@davidhjortnaes2000]

@@ivargu You look so much like tape face, but you have the wrong tape.

[@chadmensa]

Our English /g/ is what is called a "plosive", because it stops the air and then lets it explode forth. The Icelandic/g/ is the other main type of consonant, a "fricative" - you squeeze the air just enough to create friction, which makes the sound. It can be thought of as a "softening" of the sound. When you pronounce their /g/ it should feel almost normal, except that it never "grabs on" - the tongue doesn't actually touch the roof of the mouth. I study Old Norse(which sounds different from Icelandic, but it's similar) as a native English speaker.

[@tonyf9984]

Beautiful, crystal-clear modelling of sounds, Ívar. You may not be a teacher but you certainly could (have) be(en)! I ended up studying German at university purely because I liked the noises that came out of my teacher's mouth, so these things change the course of people's lives. A query about the letter L, though. No problems with the distinction between /l/ and /dl/ (or /tl/), but you use a third pronunciation which seems to apply to words ending in vowel + L. In your examples, él, tól, sól and vél all have what I'd describe as a voiceless or whispered /l/ sound. It occurs in English only where the letter L follows another voiceless consonant. So if we say a word such as 'please' in a desperately pleading way - 'plllllllease!' - we use the same fricative sound as you do in those words. When on the other hand you say hvalur, ilur, halur and æla, the sound is just a normal voiced /l/. So it looks as though it's the end position in the word that causes this, but it may not be. A test: f you say any of the last four without the grammatical ending, does the /l/ sound change?

[@tonyf9984]

Got it, Ívar. L behaves like R - loses its voicing at the end of words. When you say the earlier example word Ilur, for instance, there's enough wind to blow out a candle ... but no voicing! A real challenge for learners, English-speaking ones especially.

[@davidhjortnaes2000]

Do you have an alphabet song you teach the children?

[@ivargu]

Yeah we do. It's just a translation though that uses the international alphabet 😉

[@michael0.770]

Thank God you can say "bless" without knowing the alphabet ;-)

[@ivargu]

🤣

[@martinblumel2637]

Takk fyrir. Kveðja frá Téklandi.

[@ivargu]

Nemáš zač!

[@joshuamenner6404]

You are very kind and generous. Thank you. My daughter in Icelandic and this helps me a lot. ❤

[@ree572]

2+ yrs ago my tongue twisted with ö. Haha

[@markdpricemusic1574]

Many thanks for this helpful video. But you seem to have missed out an important sound. It is the noise which all native speakers make when I try to talk in Icelandic, a bit like suppressed laughter :). Also, if all the Z Z Z 's have gone, what noise do Icelanders make when sleeping ?

[@Urspo]

I want to know what Is the Icelandic word for pizza 🍕? Maybe it isn’t eaten in Iceland or it has a unique name other than pizza ?

[@davidhjortnaes2000]

@@Urspo Do they put pineapple on pizza?

[@ivargu]

Well "pizza" as a borrowed word is most commonly used 😉. But the truly icelandic word for it is "flatbaka"

[@ivargu]

We judge nobody 😉

[@Urspo]

@@ivargu I'm guessing the word flatbaka isn't used much. :-) I have another question about "Z" in Iceland. I once heard the is either discouraged or even not allowed in Icelandic writing and signs. If this is true, what do pizza places use? Mr. G: any clarity on this topic?

[@davidhjortnaes2000]

I wonder how my name is pronounced in Icelandic. I know it in Danish. At least Icelandic has all the correct letters including the æ, and the d at the end of david, but I do not think that is on my keyboard anywhere. Did you ever learn any old Norse or futhark

[@ivargu]

Never learned either, no. I use the icelandic version of your name actually as an example for the letter D in the video 😉

[@ivargu]

No I learned neither. I did use the icelandic version of your name as an example for D in the video 😊

[@davidhjortnaes2000]

Another question comes up. I assume you were taught British English, so you say Zett. But you speak in American English, so you say Z. Which is correct?

[@ivargu]

Yes, I was taught British English in school, but I guess my actual practical english is some international amalgamation of all kinds of influences from media and working with other non-native speakers from different nations ;)

[@jakchoe7183]

Both are correct, depending on which country you are in. Most former British colonies ( US aside) say Zedd.

[@MikeGreenwood51]

Zett is not the British English version as far as I know. Sett is the Deutsch version where as Zed is English. But depending on where you learnt Zett was correct may explain why you have a more eastern variant. Many English speople lived there in Germany for many years and some may even have spoken zett as if it was natural to them. But really both are the same using the intervolcal interchangable form. The Greek Zeta is one of the for runners from which both originate. It most likly also existed in Phonician.

[@hemoalmaster3014]

so the icelandic alphabet is really just the roman or latin alphabet? before the romanization of northern europe, the concept of written language didn’t really exist