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Faroese phonology
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Faroese phonology
The phonology of Faroese has an inventory similar to the closely related Icelandic language, but markedly different processes differentiate the two. Similarities include an aspiration contrast in stop consonants, the retention of front rounded vowels and vowel quality changes instead of vowel length distinctions.
Faroese is not remotely close to having a standard and difference between dialects are very marked. When diving into the specifics, this article primarily discuss Tórshavn varieties, as it is the biggest city on the islands and where most academics have a pied-à-terre.
As with other Germanic languages, Faroese has a large number of vowel phonemes; by one analysis, long and short vowels may be considered separate phonemes, with 26 in total. Vowel distribution is similar to other North Germanic languages in that short vowels appear in closed syllables (those ending in consonant clusters or long consonants) and long vowels appearing in open syllables.
There is considerable variation among dialects in the pronunciation of vowels.
Vowel length in Faroese is determined by the syllable structure of the simplex word such that the stressed vowel in:
During its history Faroese has deployed an array of processes to mend for hiatus. Inherited hiatus were handled by the process of skerping (and as such have a short stressed vowels). Meanwhile, those created by the loss of medial voiced fricatives and morphological analogy (thus with long vowels) received the following treatment:
Being still present in the consonant system, /v/ is able to break the regularities described above. Firstly, it has a privileged position in not having taken part in the deletion before /a/. Secondly, -a being a common nominative ending and -u a common accusative desinence, there is a lot of room for analogies to take place and borrowing the glide from one form to another. /v/ doesn't hold the monopoly on analogies e.g. veðrið [ˈvɛkɹɪ] 'weather def' from veður 'idef' [ˈvɛaːvʊɹ] like fagrir [ˈfɛkɹɪɹ] 'beautiful fem.pl' is from fagur [ˈfɛaːvʊɹ].
Árnason considers the hiatus to be non-phonemic in forms like 1) and 3) but the numerous analogies prevent saying the same about situations in 2).
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Faroese phonology
The phonology of Faroese has an inventory similar to the closely related Icelandic language, but markedly different processes differentiate the two. Similarities include an aspiration contrast in stop consonants, the retention of front rounded vowels and vowel quality changes instead of vowel length distinctions.
Faroese is not remotely close to having a standard and difference between dialects are very marked. When diving into the specifics, this article primarily discuss Tórshavn varieties, as it is the biggest city on the islands and where most academics have a pied-à-terre.
As with other Germanic languages, Faroese has a large number of vowel phonemes; by one analysis, long and short vowels may be considered separate phonemes, with 26 in total. Vowel distribution is similar to other North Germanic languages in that short vowels appear in closed syllables (those ending in consonant clusters or long consonants) and long vowels appearing in open syllables.
There is considerable variation among dialects in the pronunciation of vowels.
Vowel length in Faroese is determined by the syllable structure of the simplex word such that the stressed vowel in:
During its history Faroese has deployed an array of processes to mend for hiatus. Inherited hiatus were handled by the process of skerping (and as such have a short stressed vowels). Meanwhile, those created by the loss of medial voiced fricatives and morphological analogy (thus with long vowels) received the following treatment:
Being still present in the consonant system, /v/ is able to break the regularities described above. Firstly, it has a privileged position in not having taken part in the deletion before /a/. Secondly, -a being a common nominative ending and -u a common accusative desinence, there is a lot of room for analogies to take place and borrowing the glide from one form to another. /v/ doesn't hold the monopoly on analogies e.g. veðrið [ˈvɛkɹɪ] 'weather def' from veður 'idef' [ˈvɛaːvʊɹ] like fagrir [ˈfɛkɹɪɹ] 'beautiful fem.pl' is from fagur [ˈfɛaːvʊɹ].
Árnason considers the hiatus to be non-phonemic in forms like 1) and 3) but the numerous analogies prevent saying the same about situations in 2).