Talk:Icelandic alphabet

I think the second-last paragraph of this article should be expanded and added to the Spelling reform article which is currently far too English-centric. &mdash; Hippietrail 03:00, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Former capitalisation of common nouns?
I've either read or heard that several Germanic languages besides German used to capitalise all common nouns. In Danish this practice was abolished in a spelling reform in the late 1940s. Can anybody tell me if this was ever practiced in Icelandic and if so when was it abolished? &mdash; Hippietrail 06:05, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Icelandic 'z'?
In relation to the last paragraph, the 'abolition of z being a mere etymological detail', was 'z' in the alphabet before this? And were there any Icelandic words actually with a 'z' in them?

Bird of paradox 20:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * See: Talk:Icelandic_language --Bjarki 13:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, 'z' was formerly used in many Icelandic words, for example: veizla "banquet, party" and beztur "best", now veisla and bestur. Originally, in the medieval period, it represented the combination [ts]. But by the time of its abolition, the letters 'z' had come to have the same pronunciation as 's' [s], so that the choice of which letter to use depended on a word's etymology, rather than the contemporary spoken language. E.g. veizla = the root veit + the noun-forming suffix -sla; and beztur is a contraction of Proto-Nordic *batistaR > Old Norse beztr, i.e. *betstr. Dependent Variable 17:57, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Wasn't it pronounced [st] rather than [ts]?; (just based on the modern pronunciation of the word veizla). 194.144.217.14 (talk) 16:17, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

More importantly is why the z was abolished in the first place? It would be good to know, even with a link to an appropriate article if this is outside the scope of this one. 84.101.36.24 (talk) 10:51, 14 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Basically, the idea was to simplify the spelling. Haukur (talk) 13:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Doesn’t really make sense, though. If Z was abolished to replace it with S to simplify spelling, then Y and Ý should be removed as well to be replaced with I and Í. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C2:4E01:9A0A:6D6E:F17C:2587:F16C (talk) 21:56, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

I & Y; Í & Ý
As far as I'm concerned, Icelanders call the letter i an i, and the name of the letter y is y (as with all the other vowels: the name of the a is a, the name of the á is á and so on). So, if the pronunciation of i and y are exactly the same, how do they distinguish between them? For example, lyf means "medicine", and lif is the shortened form of the imperative of the verb lifa, "to live". How do they distinguish these words when spelling? Ciacchi 16:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Y is commonly called ufsilon and ý is likewise called ufsilon í. Also, one might call i "einfalt i" (simple i) when there is need to clarify. --D. Webb 23:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Sometimes 'y' is actually called [y] or [i], at least in the school I went to. "Ufsuloni" is annoyingly long (four syllables) when talking about x and y coördinates. Haukur 22:39, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

"two runic letters"?
Ð, ð was adopted from Anglo-Saxon scribes, who in their turn got it from Irish. So unless the term "runic letters" is an established convention for describing Ð, ð and Þ, þ, the tally of "runic letters" ought to be amended to one: Þ, þ. Dependent Variable

"the astute grammarian
I suggest removing the words a language which the astute grammarian described as "more or less the same" as Old Norse. The inverted commas imply that this is an actual quote (in translation), but at best it's an extrapolation and simplification of something rather more astute that the First Grammarian wrote: alls vér erum einnar tungu, þó at görzk hafi mjök önnur tveggja eða nökkut báðar "since we [Icelandic and English speakers] are of one [and the same] tongue, although one of the two has changed a lot, or else both have changed a bit." But it's probably straying too far from the subject of the article to go into all that. Dependent Variable 20:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 06:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Not always "As in English"
Parts of this contradict the article on Icelandic phonology. There it says Icelandic plosives are characterised by an aspiration contrast rather than a voicing contrast. The only difference between p/t/k and b/d/g is that the former are aspirated at the beginning of a word however none are voicedso the Icelandic letters b, d and g do not represent the samne sounds as they do in English.Lost4eva (talk) 01:07, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
 * How about we just delete this "Typical sound value"? It seems to pretend that there is just a single dialect of English, for starters. Stefán (talk) 03:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
 * IPA should be enough. Written English is about the worst conceivable way to express phonetics, because of its low sound-letter correlation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.162.10.97 (talk) 21:31, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Is eth a runic letter?

 * ... in addition it includes the runic letter thorn Þþ ...
 * A handwriting extract; the runic letters ð and þ are visible.

In one place the article seems to think eth isn't a runic letter, but in another place it is. I must admit I thought it wasn't, but poking around with Google now I'm not so sure. There seem to be a number of authoritative-looking sources that do call it a "rune". If anyone is confident about this then ideally the article should be made consistent. 86.134.10.118 (talk) 00:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC).

Þorn is indeed a rune, but eð is not. It derives from a D with a stroke through it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.24.3.151 (talk) 04:54, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Letter frequency
The letter frequency must be wrong. I will be bold and replace it with information here:

http://practicalcryptography.com/cryptanalysis/letter-frequencies-various-languages/icelandic-letter-frequencies/

rather than:

http://www.sttmedia.com/characterfrequency-icelandic

I just don't know what/which source would be considered (more) reliable. In any case "The most common letters in Icelandic are n and a" is contradiced, probably only based on the linked source, which must me wrong or at least incomplete since the letters d, é, j, ó, p, ú, x, y, ý, æ, and ö are missing. Comp.arch (talk) 16:58, 4 April 2013 (UTC)