Consonants

The Icelandic language has a lot of consonants🇮🇸 samhljóð. In fact, there are more consonant sounds than there are consonant letters in the alphabet. This doesn’t mean that the spelling is irregular, but we just need to learn a few rules about consonant pronunciation.

It doesn’t necessarily make sense to go through them in alphabetical order. On this page, we’ve grouped the most important rules that you need to to know about Icelandic consonant pronunciation.

For an explanation of individual consonants that have more than one pronunciation, like f and g, see Tricky consonants.

Aspiration

A fancy way of saying “breathing” is 🌬 aspiration🇮🇸 fráblástur. When we talk about a consonant as being aspirated, that means we release a little puff of air right after the consonant sound.

You can think of the following consonants as pairs, with aspirated and unaspirated versions:

p t k	→ aspirated [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] pabbi taka kassi
b d g	→ unaspirated [p, t, k] bátur dalur gaman

The rule is essentially this:

• At the start of a word, p, t and k are aspirated, whereas b, d and g are not.

Another rule that we need to add here is:

• <sp, st, sk> are not aspirated:

  spaði
  stama
  skata

note

Icelandic doesn’t have true /b/, /d/ and /g/ sounds like English (these are the voiced versions of /p/, /t/ and /k/). In the spelling, we use <b>, <d> and <g> to indicate that the sounds are not aspirated, but other than that they are pronounced identically to <p>, <t> and <k>.

Preaspiration

As well as aspiration, which involves releasing a puff of air after a consonant, Icelandic has 🌬 preaspiration🇮🇸 aðblástur. As you might have guessed, this is where a puff of air is released before a consonant.

This is one of the most distinctive features of Icelandic pronunciation, and one of the main reasons that many people describe the Icelandic language as sounding “breathy”.

It affects the same three consonants as before. In the spelling, the aspiration is indicated by doubling the letter:

pp	kreppa, sleppa, upp
tt	detta, pottur, sléttur
kk	bekkur, ekki, þekkja

Preaspiration also happens when p(p), t(t) or k(k) come before l or n:

pl	depla, hnupl
tl	ætla, Katla, betl
kl	hekla, jökla

pn	vopn, keppni
tn	vatn, batna
kn	tákn, blikna

Devoicing

Some consonants in Icelandic can undergo a process known as devoicing🇮🇸 afröddun.

What are devoiced and voiced sounds?

When you pronounce a devoiced sound, this means that your vocal cords are not vibrating. With voiced sounds however, your vocal cords are vibrating. You can check whether a sound is voiced by placing two fingers on your voice box and feeling for a vibration when you pronounce the sound.

By definition, all vowels are voiced.

The consonants l, m, n and r are all voiced, unless they appear in the following environment:

• After <h>;
• Before p, t, k.

Let’s listen to some examples to hear the difference:

	Voiced	Devoiced
l	látur, listi, tólg	hlátur, hlusta, fólk
m	lambi, skemmdir	lampi, skemmta
n	né, nefa, vanda	hné, hnefa, vanta
r	raun, rifinn, björg	hraun, hrifinn, björk

Some notes on the above:

• In hl, hn and hr, no /h/ sound is pronounced, <h> is there simply to indicate that the next sound is devoiced;
• For devoiced m and n, close your mouth completely. The air should be leaving through your nostrils. Check you’re doing this right by placing a finger under your nostrils and feeling for the puff of air 👉👃

t-insertion

The double consonants ll and nn have two different pronunciations depending on the context.

ll	[tl] in native Icelandic words:     stóll, bolli, milli, tröll, Páll
	[lː] (long “l” sound) in loanwords and nicknames (gælunöfn):     bolla, mylla, grill, Palli
nn	[tn] after accented vowels, æ, ei/ey and au:     fínn, brúnn, einn
	[nː] (long “n” sound) after all other vowels:     finna, brunnur, enn, tönn

What’s happening here is that a /t/ sound is inserted before the /l/ or /n/. An additional thing to be aware of is if /l/ or /n/ follows /t/ at the end of a word, it gets devoiced. Play the examples above and listen for how the /l/ or /n/ is pronounced at the end of a word.

Another situation where we get t-insertion is in the consonant clusters rl and rn:

rl	[rtl]     karl, ferli, Erla
rn	[rtn]     barna, tjörn, Örn