Sibilants

Here are the English sibilants:

s in 'bus'
z in 'buzz'
in 'hush'
in 'leisure'
in 'church'
in 'judge'

Sibilants are the "s"-like sounds, the whistling fricatives . In Icelandic there's only one - s, which is alveolar and unvoiced. This means that Icelanders are not used to pronouncing postalveolar sibilants, and no voiced sibilants at all.

This is problematic, because the differences between the 4 English sibilants is very distinctive in English, and Icelanders tend to pronounce them all the same.

Problem 1: lack of voicing
In the Language Lab, listen to see whether you make these distinctions:

Sue - zoo -

price - prize -

base - bays -

busing - buzzing -

It's common in 'Icelandic English' to pronounce these pairs of words the same - as homophones. In order not to do this, you should remember

that z is VOICED, especially at the beginning of words (zoo) and between syllables (buzzing)
that if the vowel is tense (or a diphthong) it will be LONGER before z than before s - in prize and bays.

Problem 2: articulation
In the Language Lab, listen to hear whether you make these distinctions:

save shave -

gas gash -

presser pressure -

Here it's important to make an articulatory distinction between s and sh. Try not to use the Icelandic method of putting j (as in yellow) after the s, and saying sjopp for shop. THIS IS ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT when "i" occurs in the spelling:

mission, nation -- ,
NOT:
miss-i-on, nat-i-on

Problem 2: Voicing.
In the Language Lab listen to hear if you make these distinctions:

racer razor -

mission vision -

batch badge -

How can we tell whether s (in spelling) is s or z in pronunciation?

There are 2 answers to this question, depending on whether the written s is an inflectional ending or not. By inflection, we mean -s or -es or -'s in words like:

loves( 3rd. person singular present of the verb:'She loves Selfoss' )

cats (plural)

John's (possessive)
the girls' (plural possessive)

's = is (Mary's leaving)
's = has (Mary's gone)
If the s in the word is one of these inflections, the answer is easy: just follow this link
But if it's part of the word (base, house, phase, basis possess) there are fewer clear rules to follow. Follow this link for some pointers

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If you have any questions mail me at peturk@hi.is.