Icelandic -tl-

[Sharon Peters]

Re:  phonetic fatigue ... alternatively, the sounds of the native Icelandic
speakers could be saved to a .wav or .aiff file and loaded on Praat ... you
could compare the sound waveforms and spectrograms of those speakers next to
some words containing the /tl/ segment from native speakers of Nahuatl.

Praat is public domain phonological analysis software, downloadable to many
platforms, and available at www.praat.org.  Great tool, and great fun to
play with.  Good tutorials available from the site a dn online, and a fairly
shallow learning curve.

Regards,

Sharon Peters

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Clayton, Mary L. <clayton at indiana.edu>wrote:

> 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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>



-- 
Sín Fronteras

Aquí estoy yo .... pero ya anda por México mi corazón
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