Letter from Iceland #88
The "mystery of the missing dialects" edition
Sæl og blessuð!
This post is a section from The Little Book of Icelandic. Once a week I post a part of that book, accompanied by a sound file, for paid subscribers. The idea behind the sound file is to demonstrate the pronunciation of the Icelandic words that are in the text.
The mystery of the missing dialects
One thing that has long puzzled scholars and language nerds about the Icelandic language is the conspicuous absence of dialects. There is not a great difference in the way Icelanders speak from one part of Iceland to another, and what difference there is mainly has to do with pronunciation. Most noticeable is the variation in speech between north and south Iceland - northern Icelanders tend to articulate certain consonants more harshly than their southern countryfolk, in particular p, t and k. They also elongate some of the vowels more than the southerners do.
Now, you might be tempted to assume that dialects did not form because Iceland is small(ish) and sparsely populated. However …
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