|
Although Icelandic is written with standard roman characters for the most part there are a few characters that are unusual, for English speaking users at the least, for others the accented characters are not much of a problem but the 2 English characters might be something new. And yes these are really English, when English monks started writing in their native tounge at around the 12th or 13th centuries they noted that the roman characters lacked certain sounds that where present in English, as a stopgap measure they introduced one character from the runic alphabet the thorn = þ (þorn, called thurs in the runic alphabet) for the hard th like sound and adopted a d like character called eth = ð (eð) for soft th like sounds. Icelanders started using the 2 Engilsh characters at around the same time as the English dropped them.
It shuld also be noted that the characers C and W are not used in Icelandic but are included in the alphabet to allow for writing foreign names, ditto Z it is not used but it´s OK to use Z for historical reasons (up until the 80´s Z was used in cases when Old German root words had them).
Character Big - Small; English Name ; Similarly pronounced sounds in English.
Á - á ; A acute ; Like the a in Auto
Ð - ð ; Eth ; Th in the
É - é ; E acute ; No sound 100% the same but the ye in yes is similar
Í - í ; I acute ; Like the y in Tiny
Ó - ó ; O acute ; Like the O in open
Ý - ý ; Y acute ; Like the y in Tiny
Þ - þ ; Thorn ; Like the th in thing or that
Æ - æ ; AE ligerature ; Like the is in Island
Ö - Ö ; O umlaut ; Similar to the i in thirsty
|