The phonology of Faroese has an inventory similar to the closely related Icelandic language, but markedly different processes differentiate the two. Similarities include an aspiration contrast in stop consonants, the retention of front rounded vowels and vowel quality changes instead of vowel length distinctions.
Vowels[]
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | |||||||
| short | long | short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close | ɪ | iː | ʏ | (yː) | ʊ | uː | ||
| Mid | ɛ | eː | œ | øː | ɔ | oː | ||
| Open | a | (aː) | ||||||
- /yː/ and /aː/ appear only in loanwords.
- The long mid vowels /eː, øː, oː/ tend to be diphthongized to [eɛː ~ eəː, øœː ~ øəː, oɔː ~ oəː].
Consonants[]
| Labial | Dental/Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar/ Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Stop | plain | p | t | tʃ | k | ||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | tʃʰ | kʰ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ɬ | ʂ | ʃ | h |
| voiced | v | ||||||
| Approximant | ɹ | l | j | ||||
- /f, v/ are normally labiodental, but may sometimes be bilabial. Intervocalic /v/ is normally an approximant [ʋ], whereas word-initial /v/ varies between an approximant [ʋ] and a fricative [v].
- /n/ is dental [n̪], whereas /tʰ, t/ vary between being dental [t̪ʰ, t̪] and (less commonly) alveolar [tʰ, t].
- Initial /l/ is dental [l̪] or alveolar [l]. Postvocalic /l/ may be more of a postalveolar lateral [l̠], especially after back vowels.
- /tʃʰ, tʃ/ are palato-alveolar, and vary between stops [t̠ʲʰ, t̠ʲ] and affricates [tʃʰ, tʃ].
- /ŋ, kʰ, k/ are velar, whereas /h/ is glottal.