Are Icelandic unstressed diphthongs in loanwords supposed to be reduced?
In Icelandic, certain accented vowel letters (especially ó, á) are consistently explained as diphthongs ([ou] and [au], respectively) in pronunciation guides.
Accented vowel letters are also encountered in many loanwords, perhaps to emphasize the foreign origin of a particular vowel. This frequently includes "ó". For example:
- "apótek" (pharmacy; the loanword competes with a domestic synonym)
- "sólkóróna" (sun corona)
- "Indónesía"
The source languages, as far as I can tell, did not supply those accents in any way that would be obvious to me. It´s something to do with Icelandic itself.
Wherever such a foreign "ó" occurs in an unstressed syllable, I find it reduced from [ou] to [o] in native pronunciation. For example, "sólkóróna" would be pronounced [soulkorona], while "kóróna" would be pronounced "kourona".
I often even find the same online resource giving the pronunciation transcribed as [ou], accompanied with a recorded careful native pronunciation that has a monophthongal [o]. (Example - hvalur.org for apótek.)
- Is the monophthong just in my own ears, or is this reduction a well-documented phenomenon?
- Is the reduction obligatory? And when exactly?
- Can anyone provide examples or counter-examples for any other diphthongs, such as á, æ, au, ei or é?
(Note: such examples are somewhat hard to come by. Only unstressed syllables in foreign morphemes would qualify. The closest I was able to find was "Kristján", which is a very common first name within Iceland, is surely pronounced with the due diphthong. Likewise - "milljón" gets its corresponding diphthong, at least in dictionary-like contexts. Perhaps neither of those is perceived as a foreign word in Icelandic, or perhaps there are other factors at play.) - Why are so many loanwords receiving Icelandic-specific accents (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý) anyway? How are those accent marks supposed to interact with the pronunciation?
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