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Tag Archives: pronunciation

You say hello, I say excuse me I’m a woman. Posted by on May 8, 2013

Greetings and goodbyes – the simplest form of any language? Not always and definitely not in Icelandic! To begin with Icelandic has roughly speaking three different levels of formality in greetings. These overlap generously and often the level you should be using may be difficult to figure out, so let’s look at them and the…

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Getting understood in Iceland: pre-aspiration. Posted by on Apr 23, 2013

One way of describing spoken Icelandic is that Icelanders breathe it out. Take this literally: there are many “hidden” extra h-sounds in the language that aren’t written down but nevertheless are there, which give Icelandic its trademark whisper-like sound that’s unlike all the other Nordic languages. I already wrote about some of them in the…

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Gleðilega páska! Happy Easter! Posted by on Mar 31, 2013

It’s not a bad deal at all to be in Iceland during the Easter, especially if judged by the chocolate eggs! Ranging from huge to gigantic to ridiculous in size and done in many flavours (my boyfriend’s egg is dark chocolate, mine’s milk chocolate with bits of licorice in it), they have been dominating most grocery stores…

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Traveling by bus in Iceland. Posted by on Mar 24, 2013

Remember how just two weeks ago we got so much snow we ended up stuck in our house? It’s all gone now. Spring seems to have arrived to Iceland all of a sudden. Days are growing longer, ravens are gathering in large groups (I hear it’s called “unkindness of ravens” in English) before they head…

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A 5 step guide to rhythm. Posted by on Feb 6, 2013

Like I promised last month, here’s the entry on the length of vowels and what determines whether a vowel is long or short. For example, why is the name Vala pronounced with a long first “a” but the name Valla with a short one? Why do the words gata (= street) and hús (= house)…

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Getting understood in Iceland, part 2. Posted by on Jan 16, 2013

“It didn’t sound anything like Icelandic.” “What didn’t?” “Well, for example Thorin’s name isn’t really pronounced like that.” Roughly a week ago we went to see Hobbit, or There and Back Again and the discussion above happened right after the movie was over. We agreed that the movie itself was awesome, but the Icelandic viewers…

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Getting understood in Iceland, part 1. Posted by on Jan 9, 2013

A typical problem, when trying to use Icelandic to speak with the locals, is that for some reason they look at you quizzically and go “ha”* and you end up repeating yourself over and over again. Yet in the classroom or when talking with your teachers you never run into this same problem. Why is…

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