Eyjafjallajokull from an icelander

[Geoffrey Nathan]

For those who haven't had 'enough already' on the pronunciation of that Icelandic glacier, the tricky sound is the last one, which is a voiceless lateral affricate, a relatively common sound in the world's languages (it occurs in Nahuatl, Chippewyan, Tlingit and others). It's basically a combination of a t-sound (voiceless alveolar stop) with a lateral release (an l-like sound, but voiceless). Since the combination of t-l is impossible in English, native speakers find it hard to deal with, especially at the beginning or ending of a word.
Since Icelandic is a different language, with different phonemes, Truspel can't describe front rounded vowels [y]as in German Hütte and [œ] as in French peur, not to mention preaspirated stops (p,t,k preceded by a real h-sound).

Geoff

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)

----- "Tom Zurinskas" <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

> From: "Tom Zurinskas" <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 11:20:12 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Eyjafjallajokull from an icelander
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Eyjafjallajokull from an icelander
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Eyjafjallajokull
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSo_ND41-6g&feature=player_embedded
>
> How to pronounce Eyjafjallajokull (a message from an Icelander) on
> youtube.
>
> I hear him say:  ~Aeyaafyetlaayoekookh  (in truespel)
>
> With
> ~ae as in Mae,
> ~aa as in �ah�,
> ~yet as in �yet�,
> ~oe as in �toe�
> ~kookh as in �cook� but with the ~kh as an aspirated ~k.
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
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