Sounds of the Faroese Letters (1/3)
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2022
- Hey! Today we're starting the first part of the new series "Sounds of the Faroese Letters." I hope this will be helpful for you English-speakers who want to learn Faroese. Enjoy!
Additional information:
- "Steðgur" (break/interruption/stop) is another example of the "maðkur" example. "Steðgur" is pronounced as if it should have two G's, so the Ð serves as a G there.
- "H" can be silent in words like "hjarta" and "hjørtur" (heart, deer)
- "G" serves as a ʤ sound in words like GEnta (girl) and GEva (give inf.)
- In 1st grade of school, I learned that the "real" pronunciation of the letter A was the same sound as the letter Æ (which will be covered in part 3). As the video "The Faroese Alphabet" explained from 5:00-5:45, the letter "A" is actually called "fyrra /ea/" = the first /ea/, whereas "Æ" is "seinna /ea/" = the second /ea/. But the way I pronounced the sound of "A" in this video is the way that most Faroese people pronounce it on its own. There are lots of words in addition to "ja" where the sound of "a" is /ea/.
Um tú ert føroyskur og hevur nøkur dømi og orð at leggja afturat, so skrivið tey í eina viðmerking her so at eg kann samla fleiri dømi og seta tey inn í hetta feltið. Soleiðis kunnu vit øll vera við til at frálæra føroyskt til heimin!
OMG my head just exploded! I have been to Faroe Islands 2 times now and i'm always fascinated how the language sounds. Great stuff You make. Keep going!
Glad you like it!
I am learning Icelandic. Faroese phonology is so different.
Faroese phonology sounds like a mix between western and northern Norwegian phonology.
Yeah, Faroese and Icelandic sound different, but look alike when written
I am advanced level in Icelandic and Norwegian and upper advanced level in Dutch and upper intermediate level in Norse etc, and in Faroese I am beginner level at the moment tho I can understand most Faroese words! These languages are so amazing and otherworldly and the words and the sounds are so pretty, so I highly recommend learning them 2gether! I cannot believe that I finally found some videos teaching Faroese which are not easy to find, and hopefully there will be lots of videos on yt such as vocab videos and grammar videos etc teaching the magical Faroese language in detail in the near future and that G translate and Duolingo include it (and also the other Norse languages and the other Celtic languages and the other pretty languages that haven’t been included yet) because Faroese is one of those heavenly languages that should be one of the most known and most learnt languages and it is also one of the languages of the future! 🇫🇴 🇳🇴 🇮🇸
I have learnt most of the Faroese pronunciation rules and am now revising, as I want to learn each pronunciation rule and each sound very well, and I just noticed that the word Iðran was pronounced with what appears to sound like the eth sound (the less obvious D sound in the Icelandic words maðurinn / aðferð / neðan etc, for example, or the th in the English words then / the / this etc, or the D in the Spanish word nada etc) or at least that’s what it sounded like to me, so I wanted to ask if I heard that correctly in this word or if it’s a different sound? From what I have read on the Net, Faroese doesn’t have the eth sound, but I’m thinking that the word Iðran might be one of the exceptions where the ð sound is actually pronounced, because I know that all languages can have exceptions sometimes... Or is it a normal D sound? (I heard idhan / iðan when iðran was pronounced - so I heard the i sound and then I heard an eth sound and the a and n at the end, so I heard eth and no r sound, so I was thinking that maybe this word would be an exception where the eth sound would be used, but the r would be silent instead, even though in general it is the ð that’s silent in most Faroese words, though it could also be the j in the French word je, so I cannot tell exactly, because sometimes an eth sound can actually sound a lot like the j in je, so I am 100% sure which sound it is!)
The ð in iðran is silent :)
You teach well - and with a pleasant voice.
Thank you so much!
The Faroese í sounds like the ы sound in Slavic languages.
That's interesting!
In the word Írland, and in some other that beggin with í. In the middle it's [ui]
Not really. As a russian learning faroese, I find russian ы (like in ты 'you') most close to faroese i in ending position or between consonants (like in abbi 'grandfather' and minni 'less'). In terms of IPA russian ы is called close central unrounded vowel and its symbol is [ɨ], whereas faroese i is called near-close front unrounded vowel and its symbol is [ɪ]. But russian [ɨ] is more stressed. A lot of people say it sounds like you are being hit in stomach :)
Btw, the [ɪ] one can also be found in russian (for instance, дерево 'tree'), where it (surprise-surprise) sounds more like eh-sound, just like in faroese 🙃
Very nice video, clear teaching and a lovely voice. I'm Irish learning Faroese, so was nice to see Írland have a mention at the end :D
Yay that's great! Thanks for much for watching :)
This is highley interesting in the unexpected sounds certain letter combinations make,which in my native language not occur,there words are written more phonetically.
Groeten! 👋
Færøysk er et veldig kult språk med mange artige lyder
Ja!
I am from Vesterålen in Northern Norway, and I am so confused because I can understand everything despite understanding nothing. Like, the intonation is the exact same, the rolling R's, and just generally many words are pretty close. Send a person from Myre over there, and both parties would be totally confused
Im glad that at least Icelandic, faroes and alongside elfdalian are taken care of with respect unlike the continental scandinavian languages which are heavily influenced by non-traditional change
面白い。他のゲルマン語派の言語と比べても文字の発音が独特すぎる。
Tusnid tak 🌹🌷🌺
You're welcome!
@@faroeseinamerica 🌹🌷🌺
Is this "kv" in question words an innovation (hv changed back to kv) or an extremely ancient pronunciation?
Good question! Honestly, I don't know the history of it but I would love to learn too!
As far as I know, this feature of faroese language is extremely ancient and didn't change through ages. We can find traces of same processes in English too. 'Hvær' is Old English form of the word 'where'. Now compare it with modern faroese 'hvar'. Familiar, right? :)
@@not_faroese I am asking not about "hv", but about the pronunciation of this "hv" as "kv".
It’s pronounced kv in both Icelandic and Faroese because it’s easier to pronounce the hv letter combination as kv - the creator of Faroese and the creator of Icelandic sort of tried to simplify these newer languages, thus the pronunciation of certain letter combinations and letters etc has also been simplified, so they are like a simplified version of Norse, especially Faroese which has been oversimplified even when it comes to verb conjugations, but, in Norse the hv was mostly pronounced hv and v with silent h, depending on where the word would be in the sentence, while in some words it was pronounced kv, though there may have been some speakers pronouncing the hv as kv in all words even in Norse because it’s just naturally easier to say it that way, so in Norse one can pronounce the hv as hv and v and kv because all three are logical Norse pronunciations, and some words sound better with kv (hvassir and hvass and some other words, for example) and some words are easier to say without the h when they are preceded and followed by certain words (so, especially in the middle of the sentence) and some words can be pronounced hv as they are spellt (especially when at the beginning of the sentence) etc, and, even though Norse still has the best format and forms, Icelandic and Faroese are also two of the prettiest languages and have their own unique elements which bing something new and different to the Norse language family, so I highly recommend learning them all, and the pronunciation rules are amazing and heavenly and cool in each Norse language!
By the way, I am upper intermediate level in Norse and advanced level in Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound!
For example...
- hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat
- mæra sounds like mera
- ávast sounds like avast
- nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r
- líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr
- frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda
- þat sounds like that
- ræðir sounds like reidhir
- hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr)
- gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr
- hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used)
Also...
- hæll sounds like heyl
- saltr sounds like solt:r
- mæla sounds like mala
- drápa sounds like drapa or dropa
- kæra sounds like kaera or kaira
- ferr sounds like fer:r
- jafna sounds like yavna
- hœgri sounds like heoyri
- girðing sounds like girdhing
- hádegi sounds like haodegi
- ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust
The word...
- verr sounds like ver
- ekki sounds like eki or ehki
- þverra sounds like thverra
- gegna sounds like gekna
- vefja sounds like vevya
- yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic
- ætla sounds like etla
- ofn sounds like ovn
- náliga sounds like naoliga
- sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written
- ofleti sounds like ofleti
The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word...
I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse...
The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined...
By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
To anyone wanting to learn Faroese I feel so sorry for you I’ve lived in the Faroe Islands my whole life and the grammar still doesn’t make sense we have ten “orðaflokkar” or word groups and we bend basically all of them for nouns or “navnorð” there are four called “Hvørfall, Hvønnfall, Hvørjumfall and Hvørsfall” it’s pretty much impossible to translate these but when i have to bend them i use:
Hvør er har?/who is there?
Hvønn sást tú?/who did you see?
Hvørjum møtti tú?/who did you meet?
Hvørs vegna?/whos fault?
So you almost never use “Hvørsfall” and I’ve had many discussions with my Faroese teachers about if it’s necessary but its old and you use them for last names like “Sjúrðardóttir/son” wich translates to “Sjúrðar daughter or son” depending on if you’re a male or female nouns also have genders like in german they are “kvennkyn/female, kallkyn/male and hvørkikyn/nonbinary” names are also nouns and are bent the same way as the others i wont be getting into every word group but there’s a little bit about nouns
Takk fyri viðmerkingina! Faroese grammar can be tricky. The four cases (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive) are not used in English, so it can definitely be hard to get fluent in them! I do like the older English pronoun "whom" for hvønn or hvørjum :)
Norse languages have the most logical grammar, and it makes perfect sense - each form should be different for each case and pronoun, and all languages use the four main cases, even the ones that have the same forms, and very few languages work without different forms, including English and Norwegian etc which have very different word endings such as neutral word endings and er word endings which go well with all pronouns and cases etc, but most languages have strong word endings and they need to have different forms for the sentences to sound right, and, nominative is the case of the subject (i is the nominative form) and accusative is the case of the direct object (me is the accusative form) and dative is the case of the indirect object or the third party (to me would be the dative form / mær / mir / mér etc) and genitive is the case that always implies possession, so it’s very easy to understand how cases work and their importance in the sentence, for example, in English one wouldn’t say ‘he give i a book’ because it sounds off and one knows that it must be ‘he gives (to) me a book’ which sounds right, so it’s the same with Faroese and Icelandic and Norse, so, the different forms are very important for the sentences to sound right, and, without cases there would be no sentences, because every time there is a subject and a direct object and a third party etc in the sentence the cases nominative and accusative and dative etc are automatically used! (By the way, words such as pine / cone / butter / cookie / with etc cannot be in yt names!)
The word hvørs = whose (of who) and hvørjum = to who / with who etc, so it is more like, with who did your meet, and the verbs to be / to become / to be called always take the nominative as there is no direct object and no third party involved, while to see always takes the accusative as it involves a direct object aka the thing that is being seen by the subject of the sentence, and verbs like to help / to meet / to say something to etc take the dative because they involve a third party aka the indirect object, while the object or help that’s being given to and the things that are said to the third party etc are in the accusative case because they are the direct objects aka the things that the subject of the sentence says or gives away etc - these are very gorgeous forms and they are very necessary for the sentences to sound right, and languages with proper grammar like Norse languages are a lot better and more logical and have a lot of diversity and variety and beautiful poetic forms, so there is less repetition of the same form in lyrics and sentences etc, and logically each form should be different because they are different things and different actions and different cases etc, and the i ending is the dative ending for singular nouns that are indefinite, so I use this ending for all nouns that don’t end in i in nominative and an u ending in dative for nouns that end in i in nominative tho I also use the i ending interchangeably because both i and u go well with the dative case, and the definite ones are always inum / num / anum / ini / ani / uni / inu and the plural ones are (j)um when indefinite and unum when definite and it’s the same in Norse and Icelandic, in fact, the endings are the same for each group of nouns, so they are very easy to get used to!)
English does use the four cases, by the way, as do all other languages, because the cases themselves are automatically used when there is a subject / direct object etc in the sentence, it’s just that the nouns don’t have different forms in accusative and dative in English, while the genitive forms in English have an ‘s or ‘ at the end (for instance, words’ power = power of words / the word’s power = power of the word, where words’ and word’s are the genitive forms of words and word) just like in Danish, as s is the typical Germanic form for genitives, and the pronouns have different forms in accusative (me / him / her / us / them) and in genitive (my / his / our / their) and, the reason why English works with less forms is, because it was modified into a very neutral language with neutral word endings, so because of this, it doesn’t need grammatical genders and different noun forms in accusative and dative when it comes to regular nouns and names, though pronouns have different accusative forms as well, and they also have another set of genitive forms like mine / hers / ours / theirs like when saying ‘this object is mine’ which is different from saying ‘my object is this’ etc, so English has two sets of genitive forms for pronouns, but no dative form, so the dative form would be to me / with me etc, but it isn’t one different word as in Faroese or German etc!
I think it would be easier to explain the sounds if you use the IPA
That would definitely have been the easiest if all of the Faroese sounds were in the IPA. To my knowledge, I don't think they are - if they are, I might do an updated video in the future
@@faroeseinamerica but there's no sound in the human language that is not in the IPA
Did you check the wiki?
And what sound are you referring to?
I cannot read the ipa to save my life, so I feel it’s easier to understand a sound if an example of a word from known languages that contain that sound is used instead of the ipa, because not everyone knows the ipa symbols, and many of them are so confusing, for example, the letter J is used as a symbol for an i / y sound when it’s technically the J sound like in the English word pleasure (pleja with schwa sound at the end) and the French word je (pronounced jeo / jö) and, the j sound is referred to as some type of z sound or s sound etc in the ipa tho it isn’t similar to a z or s sound, and the y which is an i sound is used for an yu sound or u sound or something like that, and I don’t hear any difference between y and i as both are a normal i sound tho in spelling y is used more at the end of the word, idk, it’s very confusing, and I couldn’t find videos teaching the ipa symbols slowly by saying each sound multiple times loudly, so I cannot really hear or understand most of the sounds that are used in the ipa videos which are narrated so fast and the sounds are made fast and without pause between each sound, so it’s impossible to hear them well or learn which ipa symbol is used for most sounds - I feel like the best way to understand and learn some of the less known sounds would be by hearing examples of words that contain those sounds and examples of words from known languages that may have the same sounds and especially if they are repeated multiple times loudly and first just the sound and then the sound in combination with the vowel a or e and then the full word, as hearing the sounds a lot might help figuring out what sounds they are and how to make them!
Does the unique vowel sound that’s between a normal A sound and a normal E sound (like in the Dutch words pijn and trein and fijn etc) exist in the ipa and if it does what is its ipa symbol?
Like it
The slashed D & G though. I hate those 2 letters! xD
Yes! Faroese Đ and G are so triky!
Færøyskt ljodar som ei blanding millom nordnorskt og vestnorskt.
That's cool!
A og Æ (fyrra [ɛaː] og seinna [ɛaː], men ofta kallar man tey [aː] og [ɛaː]) hava eginliga akkurát sama ljóð, men akkurátsum Y eisini kann brúkast um [yː] í tøkuorðum, so verður A eisini brúkt soleiðis, og har eru rættiliga nógv dømi um A [aː] í vanligum orðum, so tað er nokk av tí at nógv halda at A vanliga sigur [aː]. Orsøkin til at vit hava hesar báðar bókstavirnar er at suðuroyingar ikki sigur Æ sum A, men sum E í staðin. Æ er altso bara eitt A sum verður sagt sum E í Suðuroy; tað var pointin.
Hetta var bara ein lítil rætting :) tú gert eitt gott arbeiði við hesum videoo'unum og halt endiliga fram við tí! Eg haldi tað er best at læra at A og Æ hava tey somu ljóðini; akkurát sum I og Y og Í og Ý, men so brúka vit eisini A og Y fyri tey fremmandu ljóðunum [aː] og [yː] í tøkuorðum. Men eg veit at tað ikki er tann fatan sum flestu hava av hesum bókstøvunum.
Takk fyri! Ja, mín føroysktlærari frá 1-9. flokki segði [ɛaː] fyri "a" og "æ", og eg haldi eisini at tað er "rættari føroyskt", men kanska eitt sindur kompliserað fyri útlendingar. Men "i" og "y" er jú sama ljóð (hóast nógv brúka danska "y" ljóðið), so kanska tað ikki er so kompliserað kortini, eg veit ikki.
@@faroeseinamerica problemið er bara at vit eiga tvey sløg av A og bæði eru rættiliga vanlig. tað krevur venjing at duga óansæð hvussu vit lýsa tað. tað kundi man kanska gjørt eitt eyka video um. sjálvur havi eg roynt at skriva eina grein um tað til tey ið eru Lær Føroyskt-discordin.
eg gleði meg til fylgja við í hvussu tú undirvísir :)
Faroese sounds like an American trying to speak Icelandic
That's one way of seeing it :)
Hey! Is it possible to reach out to you via email? Thanks
Yes! faroeseinamerica@gmail.com
wow eth in faroese is crazyy
A little bit, yeah!
@@faroeseinamerica im trying to learn faroese and i've been struggling to translate the idiom "down the drain" to faroese. could you give a hand?
@@ferivertid My initial first thought is that people would say that something is going "niður á bakka" which I guess is just a translation of the Danish "ned på bakken" or something like that
@@faroeseinamerica would "fer í vaskið" be fine?
@@ferivertid Well, that would be the literal translation (fer niður í vaskið), but I have never heard that as a Faroese idiom, and I'm not sure if people would understand the meaning behind it unless they'd heard the English idiom before
My new goal is to learn Faroese
Amazing!!
This language is literally Icelandic, I'm from Iceland and I can understand 90% of the text😂
That's great! And yeah, the languages from Old Norse are very similar!