At 5:59:34 PM on Wednesday, October 2, 2013, Sygyrd
Sygyrdson wrote:

> So, I go to look up how to pronounce álfr / álfur at
> http://www.forvo.com/languages-pronunciations/is/alphabetically/page-11/

> and the lady there pronounces it with a "sh" sound at the
> end instead of an r... I ran into the same thing with a
> number of other words. Does anyone have any idea what is
> going on here? It doesn't seem to be consistent.

In that position Icelandic has a voiceless /r/. The actual
realization varies. The man pronouncing <átakanlegur> has a
very clear voiceless trill; the voiceless trill at the end
of <atkvæðisbær> isn’t quite so clear, but it’s still very
readily identifiable. If you listen closely to the woman
pronouncing <Ásgrímur>, you can still hear the trill, but
it’s beginning to blur into an ‘eshy’ hiss. The man
pronouncing <allrar> has a similar realization, the the
woman pronouncing <álfur> has lost the trilling altogether:
all that remains is a fricative similar (but not identical)
to English \sh\.

Brian