Heill Ragnarr!

> I don't know if you've read or heard this, or not, but 'v' is voiced
> and 'f' is unvoiced.
>
> To my sensibilities, at least, that is a non-subtle distinction.

But that was the whole point! To you the difference between voiced and
unvoiced 'f' is clear but to me it is subtle. That's why linguists don't
talk that much about 'subtle' and 'non-subtle' but rather 'phonemic' and
'non-phonemic'. If a given difference in sounds makes a difference
in meaning for speakers of a given language then that difference is
PHONEMIC in that language - and it doesn't matter how 'subtle' or
'un-subtle' a speaker with another mother tongue thinks it is.

An example. In Icelandic there is no phonemic difference between
voiced and unvoiced plosives. It follows that hearing the difference
between a French 't' and a French 'd' is extremely hard for me.

On the other hand voice is phonemic in Icelandic 'n'. A voiced 'n'
and an unvoiced 'n' are two different phonemes. This is hard for speakers
of many other languages to grokk since this phonemic difference in voice
is not present in their mother tongues.

Thus the proposition "Voice is a non-subtle distinction" is much too
general. You have to look at individual languages and individual phonemes.

The following monosyllables are entirely distinct in Icelandic.
Try pronouncing them.

hljóð (sound)
hlóð (loaded)
hjóð (not a word - but a phonetically legal syllable)
ljóð (poem)
jóð (child)
lóð (weight)

> By the way, is the 'r' at the end of "vikingr" pronounced? I
> thought I had read that it was pronounced, but not a separate
> syllable. But two posts to this group today implied it's silent?

Why would it have been written if it wasn't pronounced?
I can think of three possibilities:

1. It is a loan-word from another language - the spelling is kept
but the ON phonetic system doesn't allow 'r' in this position
so it isn't pronounced.
2. It was originally pronounced but later on the 'r' fell away in
the pronunciation but was kept in the spelling.
3. It isn't pronounced but is written to maintain some sort of
structural integrity in the spelling. For example: "all strongly
declined masculine nouns have an 'r' in the nominative - but when
it is added to certain consonants, like 'ng', it is not pronounced".

Don't think of the spelling as causa sui. Tell me which of those you
think are likely and any other possibilities you might think of.

Kveðja,
Haukur

--
The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
-- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.