Icelandic phonology

Unlike many languages, Icelandic has only very minor dialectal differences in sounds. The language has both monophthongs and diphthongs, and many consonants can be voiced or unvoiced.

Icelandic has an aspiration contrast between plosives, rather than a voicing contrast, similar to Standard Chinese. Preaspirated voiceless stops are also common. However, fricative and sonorant consonant phonemes exhibit regular contrasts in voice, including in nasals (rare in the world's languages). Additionally, length is contrastive for consonants, but not vowels. In Icelandic, the main stress is always on the first syllable.

Consonants

Consonant phones

		Labial		Coronal		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m̥	m	n̥	n	ɲ̊	ɲ	ŋ̊	ŋ
Stop		pʰ	p	tʰ	t	cʰ	c	kʰ	k
Continuant	sibilant			s
	non-sibilant	f	v	θ	ð	ç	j	x	ɣ	h
Lateral				l̥	l
Rhotic				r̥	r

Consonant phonemes

		Labial		Coronal		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal			m	(n̥)	n				(ŋ)
Stop		p	b	t	d	(c)	(ɟ)	k	ɡ
Continuant	sibilant			s
	non-sibilant	f	v	θ		(ç)	j			h
Lateral				(l̥)	l
Tap or trill				(r̥)	r

Vowels

Monophthongs

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded
Close	i		u
Near-close	ɪ	ʏ
Mid	ɛ	œ	ɔ
Open			a

External links

• Icelandic phonology