17 April 2010
This name is really throwing the newscasters for a loop. Attempts to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull are all over the map, as seen in this video:
Mark Liberman over at Language Log has lots more audio clips of the pronunciation, including a nice slow and carefully articulated one by an Icelandic speaker.
The eruption of the Icelandic name in the news gave me a chance to pull out my Icelandic dictionary (actually, it’s a dictionary of Old Icelandic, but it will work for these purposes) to find the etymology of the name. Eyjafjallajökull is a triple compound and quite easy to pull apart. Eyja means “island,” fjalla is “mountains,” and jökull is “glacier.” So the name is, literally, “island-mountains glacier.”
I’ve heard at least one complaint about Eyjafjallajökull glacier, opining that it is redundant, literally Eyjafjalla-glacier glacier. But that complaint is a bit silly. Yes, jökull means glacier in Icelandic, and it would be redundant if you were speaking that language. But jökull is meaningless in English, and when speaking English it is sensible to add the glacier for clarity.
