Audio File

Hello! If you have found your way to this page you have probably been reading The Little Book of Icelandic and are curious to know how the Icelandic words and phrases are pronounced.

Well, voilá. I have read just the Icelandic phrases, and they are grouped according to the chapters in which they appear. If the chapters had no Icelandic phrases, they are not included.

But before we get to that I would like to say that it has been brought to my attention that there are a couple of small errors in the hard cover version of the book.

First, on pages 25 and 26 I talk about the letters ð and þ, and say that the letter ð is like a silent “th” sound, and the letter þ is like a voiced “th” sound. That is the way I have often heard it explained; linguistically, however, the reverse is apparently true, i.e. þ is like a silent “th” and ð like a voiced “th”. I have made the correction in the eBook and paperback versions of the book; however, I will not be able to correct the hard cover book until the current print run is finished. My apologies!

The other error is on page 18, where I talk about the inflection of the noun hestur. In the translation of the plural, the last two lines are reversed. Instead of “To horses / From horses” it should be “From horses / To horses”. Again, I have made the correction in the ebook and the paperback, but won’t be able to do so in the hard cover just yet.

Again, I am sorry for these mistakes. I crowdsourced the editing, hired a proofreader at the end, and had an excellent team of readers; however, no one picked up on the former mistake – probably because there were no linguists in the crowd. The proofreader who read over at the end did not pick up on the second mistake probably because it is a translation from the Icelandic, and she is a native speaker of English. And none of the beta readers – Icelandic or non-Icelandic – picked up on the latter mistake.

Anyway, I hope this does not distract too much from your enjoyment of the book. Everything else is correct – I promise!

And now, on to the audio files:

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