Icelandic Phonology

Icelandic phonology is the study of the phonology of the Icelandic language. Unlike many languages, Icelandic has only very minor dialectal differences in sounds, due to the relatively small number of speakers and the concentration of these speakers in mostly one area. The language has both monophthongs and diphthongs, and many consonants can be voiced or unvoiced.

Icelandic has an aspiration contrast between plosives, rather than a voicing contrast. Preaspirated voiceless stops are also common. However fricative and sonorant consonant phonemes exhibit regular contrasts in voice, including in nasals (rare in the world's languages). Additionally, length is contrastive for consonants, but not vowels. In Icelandic, the main stress is always on the first syllable.