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Slightly Geeky Guide to

Pronouncing Icelandic

Without Knowing Any Icelandic

(Generally More Than You Actually Need To Know)

Overview

The Icelandic language is the most conservative descendent of Old Norse, which makes it, in theory, a Germanic language. It is spoken by about 300,000 Icelanders, two thirds of whom live in Reykjavik. In total number of speakers, it is almost certainly less widely spoken than Esperanto, although it is more often (and more fluently) spoken.

Germanic or not, written Icelandic looks quite distinctive, partly because it makes use of three letters not found in other Germanic languages. Pronunciation is, to an English ear, also quite distinctive.

• Þ (þ) is called “thorn” and sounds like TH in “thin.” It is usually at the beginning of a word.
• Ð (ð) is called “eth” and sounds like TH in “gather.” It is rarely at the beginning of a word.
• Æ (æ) rhymes with “spy.”
• AU is pronounced “öy.”
• Á sounds like “au,” i.e., ikt rhymes with English “cow.”
• U is pronounced like a combination of English “ee” as in “see” and ou as in “you,” in other words like German “Ü.”
• Ú rhymes with “boo.”
• E is as in “let.”
• É is like YE in “yet.”
• J is pronounced like Y.
• G between vowels gets swallowed.
• H is pronounced K when it comes before V.
• F is like P sometimes.
• LL becomes TL in locations which are not easily predicted.

In the old-old days, before they began using the Latin alphabet (as supplemented), Scandinavians who wrote did so with symbols known as runes. In Iceland today these are limited to decorative contexts, like baseball hats (which sometimes say ᛁᛇᛚᚫᚾᛞ —Iceland— on them) and beer (ᛒᛁᚮᚱ) labels.

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