Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

66%
+2 −0
Q&A Icelandic patronymic pronunciation

I find the pronunciation of Icelandic highly regular and predictable on the whole, but male patronymics continue to puzzle me. The suffix "-son" is consistently pronounced with an initial /ʃ/ rath...

1 answer  ·  posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by Lundin‭

Question Icelandic
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Jirka Hanika‭ · 2020-10-18T08:28:28Z (about 4 years ago)
Icelandic patronymic pronunciation
I find the pronunciation of Icelandic highly regular and predictable on the whole, but male patronymics continue to puzzle me.  The suffix "-son" is consistently pronounced with an initial /ʃ/ rather than /s/, for example [here](https://forvo.com/word/haf%C3%BE%C3%B3r_bj%C3%B6rnsson/).  Also, and possibly related, I'm unable to tell why the "son of Jón" would be written as "Jónsson" rather just "Jónson".

What rules govern the spelling and pronunciation of the initial sound in the "-son" suffix?

Parallels in other North Germanic languages might be interesting, too, as long as they throw some light on modern Icelandic.