Vowels

Here we’ll learn the pronunciation of the 8 basic vowels in Icelandic and the 8 double vowels.

Single vowels

The technical name for a single vowel sound is a monophthong🇮🇸 einhljóð. Why? Because linguists like to use Greek words to make things seem more complicated. Let’s start with how to pronounce these:

Spelling	Pronunciation	IPA transcription
a		[a]
e		[ɛ]
i/y		[ɪ]
í/ý		[i]
o		[ɔ]
u		[ʏ]
ú		[u]
ö		[œ]

Isn’t IPA a beer?

The IPA transcription is something you can ignore if you’re not familiar with it. IPA stands for “International Phonetic Alphabet” and it’s a system linguists use to write sounds in different languages in a uniform way.

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Double vowels

The name for a double vowel sound is a diphthong🇮🇸 tvíhljóð. These aren’t always written as two vowel sounds in the spelling, they could be represented by an accented letter for example.

These are the main diphthongs in the Icelandic language:

Spelling	Pronunciation	IPA transcription
á		[au]
é		[jɛ]
ó		[ou]
æ		[ai]
ei/ey		[ei]
au		[œi]
ogi		[oi]
ugi		[ʏi]

You’ll never see the same vowel twice

In Icelandic, seeing the same vowel twice in a row, e.g. aa or ii, isn’t really a thing. In fact, it’s pretty rare to see two vowels next to each other at all, other than those listed above, unless:

• One of the vowels is accented, e.g. áætlun, Ítalía;
• It’s a funky loanword, e.g. Ísrael, flauel “velvet”.

In compound words, it can sometimes happen that the same vowel is repeated, but in this case they are each pronounced separately. For example, hjartaaðgerð “heart operation” is pronounced as if it’s written hjarta‑aðgerð (🤓 IPA for nerds: /ˈçartaˌaðcɜrð/).

Before ng/nk

Certain vowels change pronunciation before ng or nk. This affects the following vowels:

Vowel	+ ng/nk →	Becomes	IPA	Examples
a		á	[au]	langur, blankur, banki
e		ei	[ei]	enginn, lengi
i		í	[i]	Ingi, flinkur
u		ú	[u]	pungur, punktur
ö		au	[œi]	söngur, blönk