Talk:Icelandic phrasebook

Article restart
This article is a wee bit all over the place, would anyone mind if I maybe restarted it? (WT-en) SKC 16:05 UTC 31-Jan-2007


 * "Restarted"? It would be great if you could fix the formatting and adopt the standard Project:Phrasebook template though. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:33, 31 January 2007 (EST)

Article "restart" update
Reworked down to mid-section of "lodging". Further work will continue. (WT-en) SKC 20:02, 7 February 2007 (EST)

Woah
I'm sorry to inform you as a native speaker that there's a bunch of mistakes in this phrasebook. Are you yet to learn declensions?
 * I'm rough with declensions, sorry :-S at least I tried though (if that's any consolation).

Mistakes
There are many mistakes here in this phrasebook, I advise people not to use it until it has been revised by a native. I also didn't think we had a dual in Icelandic, actually, I think I can be 100% sure we don't have tvötal in Icelandic because I am studying Saami and we have to say "við tvö" to be equivelant to "moai" and such. So I removed that part of the introduction.

"a" in "land" and as in "car"?
I don't know Icelandic, but I'm wondering if these vowels are being thought of as pronounced in England, because for most Americans, the A in "land" and in "car" are entirely different vowels that could never be construed as being shorter or longer versions of each other. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:51, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I also wonder about "ur" in "fur" for the ö: Is a schwa intended? Because many Americans use the same "u" in "fur" that we use in "butter"; however, if you use the "ir" in "fir" to represent a schwa, I think that's safe. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:55, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What? Land and car have the same vowels? Has to be the way pronounced in the UK but I'm not sure. I don't know anyone here who speaks Icelandic, but, or  may know much more about it than we do. SHB2000 (talk &#124; contribs &#124; meta.wikimedia) 00:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No-one is saying "land" and "car" have the same vowels; I'm saying the vowels for the two words are entirely different in most American pronunciations. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:07, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In Singapore, "land" and "car" also have different vowels. Our official pronunciation is mostly based on British pronunciation, but there might be dialects in England where the two words use the same vowel. The dog2 (talk) 01:53, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing the point being made is that in a non-rhotic British pronunciation, "kaaah" has a longer "a as in father" sound than "lahnd." Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:02, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't speak Icelandic, but I have heard some, and have an Icelandic-Swedish dictionary in my bookshelf. The Icelandic "a" is said to be like the "European a"; that would be like in French and Spanish ([a]). I suppose father comes close. For "ö" it says "open ö" (in Swedish we have two ös: [ø] and [œ]), thus it should be [œ] like French "eu". –LPfi (talk) 08:39, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * (The last should be French "eu" in heure. –LPfi (talk) 08:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC))
 * Makes sense. SHB2000 (talk &#124; contribs &#124; meta.wikimedia) 08:41, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Right, as I suspected. So the English equivalents should be changed, but I'm not sure what would represent a longer "aaah" in American English, other than what we're told to say for a doctor to look down our throats. Or we could use "A" as in "father" for the shorter one and "a" as in British pronunciations of "car" for the second one, understanding that some Americans might not know British pronunciation. And I think we should use "i" in "fir" for a schwa, if we want to keep that kind of example, not "u" in "fur," which is an "uh" sound for some Americans. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:32, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * A is either spoken like the IPA code [aː] or [a], depending on the surrounding letters. Since that is similar to what others have been saying, I am leaving it as is. Snævar (talk) 07:08, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know IPA, so I don't know what those codes represent, but you see what I posted above. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:50, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * This is a good IPA chart if you're not familiar with what the codes represent. I can understand IPA, but I'm not well-versed in linguistics to be able to participate in this thread. -- SHB2000  (talk &#124; contribs &#124; meta) 08:01, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Pseudo-pronunciations
The Wikivoyage-style pseudo-pronunciations were removed ("fixing pronounciation, this one is based on Icelandic IPA, kept those that are close enough"). There has been quite some discussion on the merits of IPA, but consensus seems to be that IPA is good for those who know it, but too arcane for most of our audience. And these IPA-based pronunciations are well and good for people speaking non-English European languages where letters usually correspond to sounds in some reasonable manner, but I doubt they are good for most native English speakers. That's why we use our pseudo-pronunciation. –LPfi (talk) 14:35, 4 August 2022 (UTC)


 * @LPfi: I do not think you read the comment of that edit correctly. I do not appreciate you claiming that "based on Icelandic IPA" is IPA itself, that is not what I wrote. The additions I made are not IPA themselves, but rather use IPA as an helping tool (I used an paper by an Icelandic professor in linguistics). I was in fact aware of this non-reliance on IPA and did already take it into account. I did use ":" where emphasis should be used, but that is the extent of IPA code in my edit. If you have a better way of marking emphasis other than ":", then by all means replace those, but other than that, your comment does not apply. Snævar (talk) 07:27, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * There were other changes than the ":". For that change, do you mean length rather than emphasis/stress?
 * The main problem is that the pseudo-pronunciations in this phrasebook are different from those used in other phrasebooks, so Pseudo-phoneticization guide does not apply and there is no other guidance.
 * This version is not intuitive for an English speaker. E.g. Sæl "Sigh-l", which would be pronounced something like [saɪl], was changed to "Sail", where the first part would be pronounced like the English word, close to [seɪl]. According to, æ should indeed be pronounced [aɪ]. The problem is that in English, letters aren't pronounced in any logical way, so you need to add a lot of "h"s and the like to get a sane pronunciation – and those were now removed.
 * –LPfi (talk) 10:01, 4 April 2024 (UTC)