Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Page 119

Phonological Variation in 20th Century Icelandic
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that the [rn, rl]-pronunciation (the opposite of the majority feature [rtn,
rtl], cf. (13f) above) is considered “ugly and even ridiculous” by the
young generation in South-Eastem Iceland, where it was still alive
ar>d kicking in the 1940s but has now almost disappeared. It is for
some reason a feature that is easily noticed but it does tally with the
orthography. Since it is also undoubtedly a preservation rather than an
mnovation, there is no confusion or elimination of phonemic contrasts
involved in it.
Another minority dialect that appears to be about to disappear is the
monophthongal pronunciation of the vowels /a,ö,e,i/ before /ng,nk/ (the
opposite of the feature listed in (13e) above). When we were travelling
nt the Westem Fjords (the home of this dialectal feature in the 1940s) we
would sometimes ask adults about this feature after we had interviewed
(or tested) them. Many of them said that they had been ridiculed because
°f this dialectal feature as adolescents or young men/women when they
had moved to a different part of the country to go to school, for instance.
Interestingly, however, it seemed that people had mainly noticed the
naonophthongal pronunciation of [a] in this context and not of [œ], for
instance. Hence these people had sometimes preserved the latter but
not the former, without knowing it themselves or without other people
noticing it. This is obviously evidence for the role of awareness in the
change of dialectal features. But why the monophthongal pronunciation
w°uld be looked down upon by other speakers is less clear. Again, it
does tally with the orthography whereas the diphthongal pronunciation
hoes not. In addition, since it is the diphthongal pronunciation that is
the innovation here, no confusion or elimination of phonemic contrasts
!s involved in keeping the monophthongal pronunciation.
In this context it should perhaps also be mentioned that speakers are
aPparently not clearly aware of the [rjl]/[rjkl]-variable. We have noticed
this when asking speakers directly about it. This may contribute to the
fact that the [ijkl]-pronunciation does not seem to be disappearing
as fast as many other minority dialects (cf. (13i) above). The stop
Pronunciation [pð, kð] (as opposed to the fricative [vð, yð] — cf.
(13h) above) is apparently much more noticeable and it is disappearing.