Um øvutan framburð í tjørnuvíksmáli: On "reversed" pronunciation in the Faroese Tjørnuvík dialect

Abstract

This article explores a linguistic anomaly in Faroese that may be referred to as "reversed" pronunciation or a "hyper-correct" form. It is found in the dialect of Tjørnuvík, a small village situated in the north of the island of Streymoy. Faroese employs glide insertions between two adjacent vowels. The glide insertion depends on the phonetic environment. As a consequence of these glides, which are j , v, and w, a monophthong in the stem can be pronounced as a diphthong, e.g. hagar as [hei:jaj]. The result
of this pronunciation is a syncretism of words with original <ey> and original <a>, e.g. hagar and heygar in some Faroese dialects. This is the situation in Tjørnuvík. The inhabitants in Tjørnuvfk feel pressure from the surrounding dialects, which have the "right" pronunciation for these types of words. When one cannot hear any difference between these two categories of words, people begin to mingle pronunciations. The result is sometimes a false etymologization, and, thus, one can hear forms like [fle:a] forfleyga and [de:ajj for deyðar.