Since news of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption hit the international press, it has been pretty clear that Icelandic is quite the tongue twister. Many of its sounds probably had to be picked up during that critical language acquisition stage if you’re going to have a fighting chance at getting it right.
That is, unless you are Daniel Tammet, who learned the Icelandic language in all of seven days. Of course, he can also recite the number pi to 22,500 decimal places.
Anyways, for most people it’s not that simple. If you haven’t already seen this collection of very creative pronunciations of Eyjafjallajökull, I highly recommend watching it and then watching it again.
Although Icelanders have had a good laugh at this, for those of you who struggle with Eyjafjallajökull, I’ll let you in on a little secret: most Icelanders can’t make the “v” sound. Yep, they’re descendents of the mighty wikings. They also eat wine berries and draw with wood colors. (psst, that’s grapes and coloured pencils).
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