Last weekend the nieces spontaneously decided to make a volcano in the backyard

[conuly]

(We don't know where they got that idea.)

I didn't find out about the real volcano erupting until a day or so after it happened (and I refuse to try either to spell or pronounce it, I'll just keep calling it "That volcano in Iceland that recently erupted" until it's no longer recent), but I did tell the nieces about it.

Ana: A volcano? Really? REALLY? I thought volcanoes were all in the past!

At any rate, I wonder why I didn't hear about the volcano sooner. Did I hear about it and not pay attention?

Comments

[ironychan.livejournal.com]

I looked up the pronunciation on Wikipedia, and honestly, I coudln't say it if I tried. If you play the sample, it starts off fine and then descends into what sounds like senseless mumbling. Like "Eyashfphhshtlffm." Like they started to type the word into a synthesizer, and then the cat walked on the keyboard.

It makes me wonder what English sounds like to people in Iceland.

[conuly]

English probably sounds a lot more familiar there than Icelandic does here.

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

There's a great Language Log post on the pronunciation of Eyjafjallajökull, including several clips with the correct pronunciation and even more of incorrect ones:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2257

Until recently, I had no idea "ll" in Icelandic was pronounced like "tl".

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, my favorite mispronunciation is a tie between "jah-fa-lock-uh-cull" (a random subway user that the NYTimes surveyed) and "ey-ya-fa-look-it-la" (a BBC presenter).

[conuly]

I'm still not convinced that they're not all playing a joke on the rest of the world. "Sure, a volcano just exploded, but let's prank everybody and call it an impossible name! Won't that be an amusing diversion?"

[velvetchamber.livejournal.com]

I beg your pardon, but there is a serious volcanic eruption going on, harming my people, my friends, and people are blaming us for the effects it is having on flights in the world. We don't need any of that. Our language is just fine, it is entirely unnecessary to act like that towards us even if a good number of English speaking people are phonetically challenged when it comes to Icelandic words. It would be far more useful to try to be positive in our direction, these are hard years in Iceland, and a serious volcanic eruption was definitely not needed.

[conuly]

I'm sorry.

[velvetchamber.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Eyjafjallajökull

O.o

Yup, I think I will call it "that word I couldn't say if my life depended on it".

(I don't watch the news, and don't read much of it. Too many friends and family deployed ATM for it to be worth it to me)

[conuly]

Apparently it's a compound?

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Its a word/name that I know no matter how many times I try to say it, I will say it WRONG.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I suspect you may not have heard about it sooner because it wasn't really much of an issue (internationally) before it began to affect airplane travel.
I found a three weeks-old issue of Stern magazine where a picture of the eruption was among the "photoshots of the week": An impressive yet (compared with the last weeks) small eruption, with a lot of people standing around to watch, take photos and have a barbecue. The blurb that came with the picture was something along the lines of "The area around Eyjafjalla glacier has become a tourist hotspot after a volcano underneath the glacier erupted on March 20th. The dramatic spectacle will likely be short-lived: Geologists predict that the volcano's current activity will abate within a few days."

Which on hindsight is vaguely amusing - and which was pretty much the full extent of media coverage we got about it here.
Until last week.

So you may have heard about it as a side-note at best.

My brother and I once wanted to make a volcano in our backyard by digging until we reached magma. It's probably just one of those childhood memes floating around. ;)

(Our "volcano" just ended in a hole of perhaps 30 cm depth. We encountered too many roots and rocks afterwards. V. disappointing. I seem to remember a fun "science for kids" experiment that involved food dye and flour and clay in order to simulate a volcanic eruption though. Have to see if I can find that again.)