Icelandic phonology

Common card · No. 406160

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 Faroese, Danish and Standard Mandarin. 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.

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