A book I want: Pronunciation of many languages

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A book I want: Pronunciation of many languages

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1timspalding
Apr. 19, 2010, 11:50 pm

The odd way that Eyjafjallajokull is pronounced with a final "t" has made me wish I had a certain book—a book that presents the pronunciation for many languages. It would be equivalent to first few pages of hundreds of grammars.

Anyone ever seen such a book?

2Pepys
Apr. 20, 2010, 3:38 am

Can anybody give here the phonetic translitteration of this so-called Icelandic volcano? (BTW, this is anyway not a volcano since jökull IMHO means glacier; said in another way, air traffic is blocked by an anonymous volcano...)

3Mr.Durick
Apr. 20, 2010, 3:38 am

Bernard Comrie and Anatole Lyovin have each published surveys of the world's languages. Either would probably serve you in some cases and not so much in others.

Robert

4Pepys
Bearbeitet: Apr. 22, 2010, 6:10 am

Finally found elsewhere the anwer to my post #2. This is:
ˈɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl
I knew that the double l at the end was pronounced tl in Icelandic, but I didn't know it was systematic (ie: fjalla makes fjatla).

The volcano itself is properly the Eyjafjöll, the Eyjafjallajökull being the name of the ice dome which caps it.

Edited PS: I corrected Eyjafjalla to Eyjafjöll in the sentence just above, Eyjafjalla seeming to be a kind of genitive. Am I right?

6Pepys
Apr. 22, 2010, 6:07 am

#5: A good one! I like yogurts.

7thorold
Apr. 22, 2010, 7:22 am

Not quite the answer to Tim's original problem, but probably a useful second best, by the look of it: the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation. Of course, what you really need are the experts from the BBC Pronunciation Research Unit on tap...

8timspalding
Apr. 22, 2010, 8:35 am

Ah, that's nice. Does it have language chapters?

9thorold
Apr. 22, 2010, 9:23 am

I haven't actually seen it, but it sounds as though it's probably just an alphabetical list of "difficult" words. Which won't help much when faced with an arbitrary volcano that hasn't been in the news before.

The real answer is probably to collect a few kilos of abandoned Teach Yourself books from charity shops and discard everything but the opening pages. Or rely on Wikipedia.