Icelandic -tl-

[Jesse Lovegren]

The wikipedia page for the volcano gives the IPA transcription as
[ˈɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl̥] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA>,
Without being familiar with the phonetic details of either language, I
claim:

They are probably the same sound.

A word final [t] followed by a voiceless [l] (as in the transcription of the
name of the volcano) would not be different in realization from a word final
dental lateral affricate, as Classical Nahuatl is reported to have.  A
voiceless [l] is only perceived through the disturbances it creates in the
formants of adjacent vowels, so a word final voiceless [l] (lacking
neighboring vocalic segments) is most likely to be realized as a lateral
fricative if it is to be perceived.  So the sounds should sound
approximately the same, I am guessing.  There are probably differences due
to the particular places of articulation (e.g. dental/alveolar,
apical/laminal) for each language.

I have not heard the volcano word spoken before nor have I heard a native
speaker of a Nahuatl dialect having the segment in question, so I am only
speculating.

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Frye, David <dfrye at umich.edu> wrote:

>  Hello all,
>
>
>
> This is very off-topic, but I just heard a report on the volcano in
> Iceland, Eyjafjallajokull, the one that is causing such aeronautic trouble
> in Europe, and it sounded to my untrained ears that the Icelandic
> pronunciation of their "ll" is precisely the same as Nahuatl "tl."
>
>
>
> I also noticed that non-Icelandic reporters find it impossible to say.
>
>
>
> The New York Times pronunciation guide,
> http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/iceland-volcano-spews-consonants-and-vowels/,
> turns the middle "ll" into two sounds, "t" followed by "l" (keeping the "t"
> with the preceding syllable and annexing the "l" to the following one), and
> then has this about that tricky final -tl sound:
>
> "the 't' at the end kind of sticks for a second and pulls away with a hint
> of a glottal 'l.'"
>
> Guess that's the best you can do if you only have American English phonemes
> to work with.
>
>
>
> David
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>


-- 
Jesse Lovegren
Department of Linguistics
645 Baldy Hall
office +1 716 645 0136
cell +1 512 584 5468
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