Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Page 101

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Phonological Variation in 20th Century Icelandic
c [xv] vs. [khv] for initial hv-\
hvalur [xva:lvr] vs. [khva:lvr] ‘whale’3
d Monophthongal vs. diphthongal pronunciation of certain
vowels before /gi/:4
lagið [la:jið] vs. [laj:ið] ‘the tune’
hugi [hv:ji] vs. [hvj:i] ‘mind’
lögin [lœ:jin] vs. [lœj:in] ‘the tunes’
veginn [ve:jin] vs. [vej:m] ‘the road’
e Monophthongal vs. diphthongal pronunciation of the vowels /a,ö,e,i/ before /ng,nk/:
svangur [svarjkyr] vs. [svaurjkYr] ‘hungry’ (m)
svöng [svœijk] vs. [svœhjk] ‘hungry’ (f)
drengur [tregkyr] vs. [treirjkYr] ‘boy’
f [rn, rl] vs. [rtn, rtl] in /m,rl/ contexts:
Ámi [aurni] vs. [aurtni] (a name)
Sturla [stYrla] vs. [stYrtla] (a name)
g “correct” vs. “confused” pronunciation of the non-high front
vowels /i,e,u,ö/ (with lowering of long /i,u/ apparently being
the most common variant of “confused” pronunciation in the
1940s):
^Ve^Tgnoring here the variants [xw] and [x] of the “hv-pronunciation” since that
^stinction is not important for us (cf. Ámason & Þráinsson 1983:93-94; Pálmason
1983:4l-44)
4 What happens here is that the /g/ is palatalized and tums into something like [j] in
everybody’s pronunciation. The phonetic transcriptions of the examples would seem
!° lndieate that the basic difference involved is whether we have long monophthongs
^fore this [j] 0r whether the [j] itself is long. Since the Icelandic /j/ should probably
, classified as a glide rather than a fricative (it has virtually no fnction at all), the
atler pronunciation sounds like a long diphthong. Hence words like bæinn ‘the town
e farm (A)* (pronounced with the long diphthong [ai:] in everybody s speec ) an
aglnn ‘the trouble’ become homophones for those who have the so-called diphthongal
Pronunciation of vowels before /gi/. It could thus be argued that the second component
° lhe sound in question (and /j/ in general) should be transcribed as [i] rather than [j],
th°ugh we have not done that here.