Icelandic -tl-

[Clayton, Mary L.]

Hello all,
     Following David's tip, I found a couple of sound clips online that 
purport to be by native speakers, and which sound very credible in that 
they are nothing that a foreigner would come up with based on the 
spelling. However, they are fairly different. Whether there are 
different dialects of Icelandic I have no idea.
     I've listened to the clearer (and somehow more convincing) of 
these until my ears have phonetic fatigue and I have to leave it alone 
for a while. (This is *great* fun for anyone in phonetics.) This one 
includes a phonetic transcription, but even it seems to be a bit 
influenced by spelling, in that the first consonant, spelled with f, 
sounds clearly like a v (i.e., the voiced counterpart of f). For his 
final syllable, I hear not tl but kl, that is, a laterally released 
somewhat fronted k. This would make a certain amount of sense, given 
the spelling -kull. There is clearly nothing voiced in that final 
syllable, and if the last vowel is a voiceless front-rounded u (the 
"French u" written in phonetics with a dieresis over it), then with a 
following voiceless l, the effect would be very similar. The other 
speaker, a woman, has what I hear as a clear tl.

This clip has a couple of repeats, nicely spaced.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqXc8i8CvNs

The same sound sample, with a phonetic transcription, followed by a 
number of foreign attempts.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jq-sMZtSww


Both of the above have the same sound sample as the wiki article:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallajokull

     Unfortunately, the Wikipedia phonetic chart doesn't discuss tl, 
and we *know* that it isn't just a combination of t and l, as many 
English speakers pronounce it. In addition, the wikipedia entry for 
Icelandic language is somewhat suspect in matters of 
phonetics/phonology. It lists voiceless and velar laterals (l-sounds) 
as separate phonemes, but then it also gives aspirated and unaspirated 
voiceless stops as phonemes even though the text describes them as 
allophones. There is no mention of a Nahuatl-type tl.

And if you aren't tired of Icelandic by now, scroll down to the very 
bottom of that last site to see the names of some of their other 
volcanoes!

     Cheers,
        Mary

Quoting "Frye, David" <dfrye at umich.edu>:

> 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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