Icelandic alphabet
Encyclopedia
The modern Icelandic
alphabet
consists of the following 32 letters:
It is a Latin alphabet with diacritic
s, in addition it includes the character eth
Ðð and the runic letter thorn
Þþ (pictured to the right). Ææ and Öö are considered letters in their own right and not a ligature or diacritic
al version of their respective letters.
Often the glyph
s are simplified when handwritten, for example the ligature æ (considered a separate letter) may be written as ae, which can make it easier to write cursive
ly.
alphabet
has developed from a standard established in the 19th century, by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask primarily. It is ultimately based heavily on an orthographic standard created in the early 12th century by a document referred to as The First Grammatical Treatise
, author unknown. The standard was intended for the common language of Scandinavia, alias Old Norse
. It did not have much influence, however, at the time.
The most defining characteristics of the alphabet were established in the old treatise:
The later Rasmus Rask standard was basically a re-enactment of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent North Germanic
conventions, such as the exclusive use of k rather than c. Various old features, like ð, had actually not seen much use in the later centuries, so Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice.
Later 20th century changes are most notably the adoption of é, which had previously been written as je (reflecting the modern pronunciation), and the abolition of z
in 1973.
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
consists of the following 32 letters:
| Majuscule Forms (also called uppercase or capital letters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :... |
Á Á is a letter of the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Slovak and Sámi languages. This letter also appears in Dutch, Galician, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Lakota, Navajo, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter “a”. Some writers use á incorrectly to denote a quantity, often used on... |
B B B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds , most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.-History:... |
D D D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the... |
Ð Eth Eth is a letter used in Old English, Icelandic, Faroese , and Elfdalian. It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with dh and later d. The capital eth resembles a D with a line through the vertical stroke... |
E E E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:... |
É É is a letter of the Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Luxembourgish, Slovak, and Catalan, Danish, English, French, Galician, Irish, Italian, Occitan, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese language as a variant of the letter “e”... |
F F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club... |
G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,... |
H H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.... |
I I I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound... |
Í Í is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Czech, Slovak, and Tatar languages. This letter also appears in Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Galician, Leonese, Navajo, and Vietnamese language as a variant of letter “i”.... |
J J Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic... |
K K K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA.... |
L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet... |
M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water... |
N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet... |
O O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a... |
Ó Ó is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian languages. This letter also appears in the Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Vietnamese languages as a variant of letter “o”. It is also used in English for other purposes... |
P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words... |
R R R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R... |
S S S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent... |
T T T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets... |
U U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.... |
Ú Ú Ú or ú is a Latin letter used in the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, and Slovak writing systems. This letter also appears in Dutch, Irish, Occitan, Pinyin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter "U".... |
V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.... |
X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic... |
Y Y Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound... |
Ý Y Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound... |
Þ | Æ Æ Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic... |
Ö Ö "Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut... |
|
| Minuscule Forms (also called lowercase or small letters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | á | b | d | ð | e | é | f | g | h | i | í | j | k | l | m | n | o | ó | p | r | s | t | u | ú | v | x | y | ý | þ | æ | ö | |
 |
|
It is a Latin alphabet with diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s, in addition it includes the character eth
Eth
Eth is a letter used in Old English, Icelandic, Faroese , and Elfdalian. It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with dh and later d. The capital eth resembles a D with a line through the vertical stroke...
Ðð and the runic letter thorn
Thorn (letter)
Thorn or þorn , is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, and Icelandic alphabets, as well as some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th. The letter originated from the rune in the Elder Fuþark, called thorn in the...
Þþ (pictured to the right). Ææ and Öö are considered letters in their own right and not a ligature or diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
al version of their respective letters.
Often the glyph
Glyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s are simplified when handwritten, for example the ligature æ (considered a separate letter) may be written as ae, which can make it easier to write cursive
Cursive
Cursive, also known as joined-up writing, joint writing, or running writing, is any style of handwriting in which the symbols of the language are written in a simplified and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing easier or faster...
ly.
History
The modern IcelandicIcelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
has developed from a standard established in the 19th century, by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask primarily. It is ultimately based heavily on an orthographic standard created in the early 12th century by a document referred to as The First Grammatical Treatise
First Grammatical Treatise
The First Grammatical Treatise is a 12th-century work on the phonology of the Old Norse or Old Icelandic language. It was given this name because it is the first of four grammatical works bound in the Icelandic manuscript Codex Wormianus...
, author unknown. The standard was intended for the common language of Scandinavia, alias Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
. It did not have much influence, however, at the time.
The most defining characteristics of the alphabet were established in the old treatise:
- Use of the acute accentAcute accentThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
(originally to signify vowel lengthVowel lengthIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
). - Use of þ, also used in the Old EnglishOld English languageOld English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
alphabet as the letter thorn.
The later Rasmus Rask standard was basically a re-enactment of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent North Germanic
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...
conventions, such as the exclusive use of k rather than c. Various old features, like ð, had actually not seen much use in the later centuries, so Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice.
Later 20th century changes are most notably the adoption of é, which had previously been written as je (reflecting the modern pronunciation), and the abolition of z
Z
Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal...
in 1973.
Letter names
The names of the letters are:| Letter | Name | IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... |
Typical sound value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aa | a | [a] | between English 'father' and 'cat' |
| Áá | á | [au̯] | the "ow" in "cow" |
| Bb | bé | [pjɛ] | 'p' with no puff of air. |
| Dd | dé | [tjɛ] | 't' with no puff of air. |
| Ðð | eð | [ɛð̠] | the "th" in "the" (always inside a word, not at the front). |
| Ee | e | [ɛ] | "eh" like the "e" in "end" |
| Éé | é | [jɛ] | a shorter sounding "yeah" |
| Ff | eff | [ɛfː] | (same as in English sometimes, see notes) |
| Gg | gé | [cɛ] | (same as in English sometimes, see notes) |
| Hh | há | [hau̯] | (same as English) |
| Ii | i | [ɪ] | the "i" in "win" |
| Íí | í | [i] | the "e" in "we" |
| Jj | joð | [jɔð̠] | said as a "y" or an aspirated "y" (see notes) |
| Kk | ká | [kʰau̯] | 'k' with a puff of air. |
| Ll | ell | [ɛtl̥] | (same as in English) |
| Mm | emm | [ɛmː] | (same as in English) |
| Nn | enn | [ɛnː] | (same as in English) |
| Oo | o | [ɔ] | the "our" in "four" (British English British English British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere... ) |
| Óó | ó | [ou̯] | "oh" |
| Pp | pé | [pʰjɛ] | 'p' with a puff of air. |
| Rr | err | [ɛr] | rolled, as in Spanish, but slightly more delicately |
| Ss | ess | [ɛs] | always an unvoiced "s" never a voiced "z" sound |
| Tt | té | [tʰjɛ] | 't' with a puff of air. |
| Uu | u | [ʏ] | 'i' in 'in' but rounded. |
| Úú | ú | [u] | like the "ou" in "you" |
| Vv | vaff | [vafː] | similar to English 'v' |
| Xx | ex | [ɛxs] | like the hard German "ch" followed by an s |
| Yy | ypsilon y | [ʏfsɪlɔn ɪ] | same as 'i' |
| Ýý | ypsilon ý | [ʏfsɪlɔn i] | same as 'í' |
| Þþ | þorn | [θ̠ɔrn̥] | "th" as in "thing" (always at the front of a word, with some exceptions) |
| Ææ | æ | [ai̯] | "eye" |
| Öö | ö | [œ] | "e" in "end" but rounded, from the middle of the mouth |
Deleted letter
| Letter | Name | IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... |
Typical sound value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zz | seta | [sɛta] | like English s, but never like z |
Letter frequencies
The most common letters in Icelandic are n and a. The list below shows the letter frequencies for more letters in order of descending frequency.| Letter | Frequency |
|---|---|
| n | 9.395% |
| a | 9.395% |
| i | 8.563% |
| r | 8.543% |
| e | 6.369% |
| s | 5.434% |
| ð | 5.013% |
| t | 4.872% |
| u | 4.766% |
| g | 4.299% |
| l | 3.891% |
| m | 3.365% |
| k | 3.115% |
| f | 2.582% |
| h | 2.266% |
| v | 2.223% |
| o | 2.019% |
| þ | 1.592% |
| á | 1.549% |
| b | 1.365% |
| í | 1.338% |