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Danish Language
*** Shopping-Tip: Danish Language
{{Infobox Language
|name=Danish
|nativename=dansk
|states=
Denmark,
Faroe Islands,
Greenland,
Germany (
Schleswig-Holstein)
|speakers=5.5 million
|familycolor=Indo-European
|fam2=
Germanic languages Germanic
|fam3=
North Germanic language North Germanic
|fam4=East Scandinavian
|nation=
Denmark,
European Union,
Germany (protected minority language)
|agency=
Dansk Sprognævn ("Danish Language Committee")
|iso1=da|iso2=dan|iso3=dan}}
'''Danish''' (''dansk'') belongs to the
North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the
Germanic languages Germanic branch of the
Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people mainly in
Denmark including some 50,000 people in the northern parts of
Schleswig-Holstein in
Germany, where it holds the status of minority language. Danish also holds official status and is a mandatory subject in school in the former Danish colonies of
Greenland and the
Faroe Islands, that now enjoy limited autonomy. In
Iceland, which was a part of Denmark until
1944, Danish is still the second foreign language taught in schools (although a few learn Swedish or Norwegian instead).
The language started diverging from the common ancestor language
Old Norse language Old Norse sometime during the
13th century and became more distinct from the other emerging Scandinavian national languages with the first bible translation in
1550, establishing an
orthography differing from that of
Swedish language Swedish, though written Danish is usually far easier for Swedes to understand than the spoken language. Modern spoken Danish is characterized by a very strong tendency of reduction of many sounds making it particularly difficult for foreigners to understand and properly master, not just by reputation but by sheer phonetic reality.
Classification and related languages
Danish belongs to the East Scandinavian languages, together with Swedish. Though
Norwegian language Norwegian is classified as a West Scandinavian language together with
Faroese language Faroese and
Icelandic language Icelandic, a more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility places Icelandic and Faroese in a separate ''Insular Scandinavian'' branch while Norwegian is considered to be a ''Mainland Scandinavian'' language and grouped with Danish and Swedish. Written Danish and Norwegian
Bokmål are particularly close, though the phonology and prosody of all three languages differ somewhat. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can understand the others, though studies have shown that speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand any of the other languages.
History
Image:Old norse, ca 900.PNG Old Norse language right|250px|thumb|This is the approximate extent of [[Old Norse language|Old Norse and related languages in the early
10th century. The red area is the distribution of the dialect '''Old West Norse'''; the orange area is the spread of the dialect '''Old East Norse'''. The pink area is
Old Gutnish and the green area is the extent of the other
Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility..html" title="Meaning of Old Norse.html" title="Meaning of right|250px|thumb|This is the approximate extent of [[Old Norse language|Old Norse">right|250px|thumb|This is the approximate extent of [[Old Norse language|Old Norse and related languages in the early
10th century. The red area is the distribution of the dialect '''Old West Norse'''; the orange area is the spread of the dialect '''Old East Norse'''. The pink area is
Old Gutnish and the green area is the extent of the other
Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility.">Old Norse.html" title="Meaning of right|250px|thumb|This is the approximate extent of [[Old Norse language|Old Norse">right|250px|thumb|This is the approximate extent of [[Old Norse language|Old Norse and related languages in the early
10th century. The red area is the distribution of the dialect '''Old West Norse'''; the orange area is the spread of the dialect '''Old East Norse'''. The pink area is
Old Gutnish and the green area is the extent of the other
Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility.
In the
8th century, the common
Germanic language of
Scandinavia,
Proto-Norse language Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into
Old Norse. This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects, ''Old West Norse'' (
Norway and
Iceland) and ''Old East Norse'' (
Denmark and
Sweden).
Old East Norse is in Sweden called ''Runic Swedish'' and in Denmark ''Runic Danish'', but until the
12th century, the dialect was the same in the two countries. The dialects are called ''runic'' due to the fact that the main body of text appears in the
runic alphabet. Unlike
Proto-Norse, which was written with the
Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the
Younger Futhark alphabet, which only had 16 letters. Due to the limited number of runes, some runes were used for a range of
phonemes, such as the rune for the
vowel ''u'' which was also used for the vowels ''o'', ''ø'' and ''y'', and the rune for ''i'' which was also used for ''e''.
A change that separated Old East Norse (Runic Swedish/Danish) from Old West Norse was the change of the
diphthong ''æi'' (Old West Norse ''ei'') to the
monophthong ''e'', as in ''stæin'' to ''sten''. This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read ''stain'' and the later ''stin''. There was also a change of ''au'' as in ''dauðr'' into ''ø'' as in ''døðr''. This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from ''tauþr'' into ''tuþr''. Moreover, the ''øy'' (Old West Norse ''ey'') diphthong changed into ''ø'' as well, as in the Old Norse word for "island".
From
1100 and onwards, the dialect of Denmark began to diverge from that of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark which created a series of minor dialectal boundaries,
isoglosses, ranging from
Zealand to
Svealand.
Some famous authors of works in Danish are
existentialism existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, prolific
fairy tale author
Hans Christian Andersen, and playwright
Ludvig Holberg. Three
20th century Danish authors have become
Nobel Prize laureates in
Nobel Prize in Literature Literature:
Karl Adolph Gjellerup and
Henrik Pontoppidan (joint recipients in
1917) and
Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (awarded
1944).
Danish was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England. Many Danish derived words such as gate (gade) for street, still survive in
Yorkshire and other parts of eastern England colonized by Danish
Vikings. The city of
York was once the Danish settlement of Jorvik.
The first translation of the
Bible in Danish was published in
1550.
Geographical distribution
Danish is the
official language of
Denmark, one of two official languages of
Greenland (the other is
Greenlandic language Greenlandic), and one of two official languages of the
Faroe Islands Faeroes (the other is
Faroese language Faeroese). In addition, there is a small community of Danish speakers in
Schleswig, the portion of
Germany bordering Denmark, where it is an officially recognized and protected
regional language. Furthermore, it is one of the official languages of the
European Union.
Dialects
Standard Danish (''rigsdansk'' or ''rigsmål'') is the language based on dialects spoken in and around the capital of
Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish and Norwegian, Danish does not have more than one regional speech norm. More than 20% of all Danish speakers live in the metropolitan area and most government agencies, institutions and major businesses keep their main offices in Copenhagen, something that has resulted in a very homogeneous national speech norm. Though
Oslo and
Stockholm are quite dominant in terms of speech standards, cities like
Bergen, Norway Bergen,
Gothenburg and the
Malmö-
Lund region are large and influential enough to create secondary regional norms, making the standard language more varied than is the case with Danish. The general agreement is that Standard Danish is based on a form of Copenhagen dialect, but the specific norm is, as with most language norms, difficult to pinpoint for both laymen and linguists. More distinct "genuine"
dialects still exist in smaller communities, but most speakers in these areas generally speak a regionalized form of Standard Danish. Usually an adaption of the local dialect to ''rigsdansk'' is spoken, though code-changing between the neutralized norm and a distinct dialect is common.
Danish dialects are divided into three general dialect groups:
*''Østdansk'' ("Eastern Danish)
*''Ødansk'' ("Island Danish")
*''Jysk'' ("Jutlandish")
Historically, Eastern Danish includes what is today considered Southern Swedish dialects like
Scanian (linguistics) Scanian and the dialect spoken on the island of
Bornholm in the
Baltic Sea Baltic between the coasts Sweden and Germany. The background for this lies in the loss of originally Danish provinces like
Blekinge,
Halland and
Skåne to Sweden in 1658. While many similarities can be found in Southern Swedish and the Bornholm-dialect, they are more similar to the modern national standards than to each other. The Bornholm-dialect has also maintained a distinction between three
grammatical genders, rather than just two in Standard Danish and lacks the diphthongs used in the standard language.
Sound system
{{main|Danish phonology}}
The sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. It is quite prone to considerable reduction and
assimilation (linguistics) assimilation of both consonants and vowels even in very formal standard language. A rare feature is the presence of a prosodic feature called ''
stød'' in Danish (lit. "push; thrust"), absent in some southern dialects. This is a form of laryngealization or
creaky voice, occasionally realized as a
glottal stop (especially in emphatic pronunciation). It can be the only distinguishing feature between certain words, thus creating
minimal pairs (e.g. ''bønder'' "peasants" with stød vs. ''bønner'' "beans" without). The distribution of stød in the lexicon is obviously related to the distribution of the common Scandinavian
tone (linguistics) tonal word accents found in most dialects of
Norwegian language Norwegian and
Swedish language Swedish, including the national
standard languages. Most linguists today believe that stød is a development of the word accents, rather than the other way round. Stød generally occurs in words that have "accent 1" in Swedish and Norwegian and that were monosyllabic in
Old Norse, while no-stød occurs in words that have "accent 2" in Swedish and Norwegian and that were polysyllabic in Old Norse.
Unlike the neighboring Continental Scandinavian languages, the
prosody of Danish does not have phonemic pitch.
stress (linguistics) Stress is phonemic in and distinguishes words
such as ''billigst'' ['bilist] "cheapest" and ''bilist'' [bi'list] "car driver".
Vowels
{| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode"
|-
| rowspan="2" |
! colspan="2" |
Front vowel Front
! colspan="2" |
Central vowel Central
! colspan="2" |
Back vowel Back
|- align=center
| unrounded
| rounded
| unrounded
| rounded
| unrounded
| rounded
|- align=center
|
Close vowel Close(high)
| i
| y
|
|
|
| u
|- align=center
|
Close-mid vowel Close-mid
| e
| ø
|
|
|
| o
|- align=center
|
Mid vowel Mid
|
|
| É™
|
|
|
|- align=center
|
Open-mid vowel Open-mid
|É›
|Å“
|É?
|
|
|É”
|- align=center
|
Open vowel Open(low)
|
|
|a
|
|É‘
|É’
|}
Modern Standard Danish has 26 vowel
phonemes, out of which all but two can be both long and short,
Schwa schwa and {{IPA|/É?/}}. The long and short realizations often differ in
vowel#Articulation quality and there are several
allophones that differ if they occur together with an /r/. For example, /ø/ is lowered when it occurs either before or after /r/ and /a/ is pronounced {{IPA|[ɛ]}} when it's long.
Consonants
{| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; text-align: center; font-size: 105%;"
|-
!
! colspan="2" |
Bilabial
! colspan="2" |
Labiodental Labio-
labiodental dental
! colspan="2" |
Alveolar
! colspan="2" |
Alveolar Alveolo-
palatal palatal
! colspan="2" |
Palatal
! colspan="2" |
Velar
! colspan="2" |
Uvular Uvu-
Pharyngeal pharyngeal
! colspan="2" |
Glottal
|-
|
Plosives
| {{IPA|pÊ°}}
| {{IPA|b}}
| colspan="2" |
| {{IPA|tˢ}}
| {{IPA|d}}
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| {{IPA|kÊ°}}
| {{IPA|g}}
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
|-
|
Nasals
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|m}}
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|n}}
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|Å‹}}
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
|-
|
Fricatives
| colspan="2" |
| {{IPA|f}}
|
| {{IPA|s}}
|
| colspan="2" | ( {{IPA|É•}} )
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| {{IPA|h}}
|
|-
|
Approximants
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|v}}
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|ð}}
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|j}}
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|r}}
| colspan="2" |
|-
|
Lateral consonant Lateral
approximant
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" | {{IPA|l}}
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
|}
{{IPA|/b, d, g/}} are
phonation devoiced in all contexts. {{IPA|/v, ð/}} often have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as
approximants. No distinction between {{IPA.html">voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
alveolo-palatal fricative, {{IPA|[É•]}}, making it possible to postulate a tentative {{IPA|/É•/}}-phoneme in Danish. {{IPA|/r/}} can be described as "tautosyllabic", meaning that it take the form of either a phonetic consonant or vowel. At the beginning of a word, it is pronounced as a
voiced uvular fricative uvular fricative, {{IPA|[Ê?]}}, with less friction between syllables, and as a non-syllabic
near-open central vowel low central vowel, {{IPA|[É?]}}. The latter is almost identical to how /r/ is often pronounced in
German language German.
Grammar
{{main|Danish grammar}}
The infinitive forms of most Danish verbs end in a vowel, which in almost all cases is the letter ''e''. Verbs are conjugated according to
Grammatical tense tense, but otherwise do not vary according to
Grammatical person person or
Grammatical number number. For example the present tense form of the Danish infinitive verb ''spise'' ("to eat") is ''spiser''; this form is the same regardless of whether the subject is in the first, second, or third person, or whether it is singular or plural. This extreme ease of conjugating verbs is made up for by the many
Irregular verb irregular verbs in the language.
Danish nouns fall into two grammatical genders: ''common'' and ''neuter''. While the majority of nouns (ca. 90%) have the ''common'' gender and ''neuter'' is often used for inanimate objects, the genders of nouns are not generally predictable and must in most cases be memorized. A distinctive feature of the Scandinavian languages, including Danish, is an enclitic definite article.
To demonstrate: The ''common'' gender word "a man" (indefinite) is ''en mand'' but "the man" (definite) is ''manden''. The ''neuter'' equivalent would be "a house" (indefinite) ''et hus'', "the house" (definite) ''huset''. Even though the definite and indefinite articles have separate origins, they have become homographs. In the plural the definite articles is ''-ene'', whereas there is no indefinite article in the plural. The enclitic article is not used when an adjective is added to the noun; here the demonstrative pronoun is used instead: ''den store mand'' "the big man" and "the big house", ''det store hus''
Like most Germanic languages, Danish joins compound nouns. The example ''kvindehåndboldlandsholdet'', "the female handball national team", illustrates that it does so to a significantly higher degree than
English language English. In some cases, nouns are joined with an extra ''s'', like ''landsmand'' (from ''land'', "country", and ''mand'', "man", meaning "compatriot"), but ''landmand'' (from same roots, meaning "farmer"). Some words are joined with an extra ''e'', like ''gæstebog'' (from ''gæst'' and ''bog'', meaning "guest book").
Vocabulary
Most Danish words are derived from the
Old Norse language, with new words formed by compounding. A large percentage of Danish words, however, hails from
Middle Low German (for example, betale = to pay, måske = maybe). Later on,
German language standard German and
French language French and now
English language English have superseded Low German influence. Because English and Danish are related languages, many common words are very similar in the two languages. For example, the following Danish words are easily recognizable in their written form to English speakers: ''have'', ''over'', ''under'', ''for'', ''kat''. When pronounced, these words sound quite different from their English equivalents, however. In addition, the suffix ''by'', meaning "town", occurs in several English placenames, such as ''Whitby'' and ''Selby'', as remnants of the
Viking occupation.
Numerals
In Danish numerals, the tens and units digits of numbers above 20 are reversed when spoken or written, such that 21 is rendered ''enogtyve'' or ''en-og-tyve'', i.e. one and twenty. (The dashes in ''en-og-tyve'' and in the similar examples below are not commonly used, but are included here for clarity.) This is similar to
German language German,
Dutch language Dutch and also to some variants of
Bokmål Norwegian (sometimes known as
Riksmål). Danish numerals from 50 to 90 are based on a
vigesimal system similar to that of
French language French not shared with the other Scandinavian languages. This means that the
score (i.e. 20, ''tyve'' or, archaically, ''snes'') is used as a base number: ''Tres'' (short for ''tre-sinds-tyve'' or ''tre snese'') means 3 times 20, that is 60. Similarly, ''halvtreds'' (short for ''halvtred-sinds-tyve'') means 2.5 times 20, that is 50. The numeral ''halvanden'' means 1.5 (literally "half second", i.e. the first plus half of the second). The numerals ''halvtredje'' (2.5) and ''halvfjerde'' (3.5), likewise constructed by "overcounting", are obsolete, but still implicitly used in the vigesimal system. The ending ''-indstyve'' is archaic in
cardinal numbers, but still often used in
ordinal numbers. Thus, "fifty-two" is usually rendered ''to-og-halvtreds'', whereas "fifty-second" is either ''to-og-halvtredsende'' or ''to-og-halvtredsindstyvende''. Many Danes are unaware of the
vigesimal roots of such numerals.
Writing system
Danish is written using the
Latin alphabet, with three additional letters: ''
Æ æ'', ''
Ø ø'', and ''
Å å'', which come at the end of the
Danish alphabet, in that order. A
spelling reform in
1948 introduced the letter ''Ã¥'', already in use in Norwegian and Swedish, into the Danish alphabet to replace the letter ''aa''; the old usage still occurs in some personal and geographical names and old documents (for example, the name of the city of ''Ã…lborg'' is often spelled ''Aalborg''). When representing the ''Ã¥'' sound, ''aa'' is treated just like ''Ã¥'' in alphabetical sorting, even though it looks like two letters.
The same spelling reform changed the spelling of a few common words, such as ''vilde'', ''kunde'' and ''skulde'', to their current forms of ''ville'', ''kunne'' and ''skulle'', and did away with the practice of capitalising all nouns, which
German language German still does. Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs somewhat.
See also
*
Synnejysk
*
Danish Swadesh list Swadesh list of Danish words
References
*
Hans Basbøll Basbøll, Hans (2005) ''The Phonology of Danish'' ISBN 0-19-824268-9
External links
{{InterWiki|code=da}}
{{book}}
-
Danish-English, English-Danish online dictionary
-
All free Danish dictionaries
-
Dictionary of the Danish Language
-
"Speak Danish" 10 day intensive online course
-
"STELLA Danish" free online course for beginners
-
Ethnologue report for Danish
-
Information on the Danish language
-
Dictionary with Danish- English Translations from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
-
Danish grammar
-
Hear and learn useful expressions in Danish
-
List of online Danish-language related resources
{{Official EU languages}}
Category:Danish language
Category:Guttural R
Category:Languages of Denmark
Category:Languages of Germany
Category:North Germanic languages
af:Deens (taal)
ang:Denisc sprǣc
ar:لغة دانماركية
bg:ДатÑ?ки език
be:ДацкаÑ? мова
bs:Danski jezik
ca:Danès
cs:Dánština
cy:Daneg
da:Dansk (sprog)
de:Dänische Sprache
et:Taani keel
es:Idioma danés
eo:Dana lingvo
eu:Daniera
fo:Danskt mál
fr:Danois
gl:Lingua dinamarquesa
ko:�마�어
io:Daniana linguo
id:Bahasa Denmark
is:Danska
it:Lingua danese
he:×“× ×™×ª
ka:დ�ნიური ენ�
kw:Danek
la:Lingua Danica
lt:Danų kalba
li:Deens
hu:Dán nyelv
nl:Deens
nds:Däänsche Spraak
ja:デンマーク語
no:Dansk språk
nn:Dansk språk
pl:Język duński
pt:LÃngua dinamarquesa
ro:Limba daneză
ru:ДатÑ?кий Ñ?зык
se:Dánskkagiella
simple:Danish language
sk:DánÄ?ina
sl:DanÅ¡Ä?ina
fi:Tanskan kieli
sv:Danska
th:ภาษาเดนมาร์�
tr:Danca
uk:ДанÑ?ька мова
zh:丹麦è¯
Category:Languages of Denmark
Category:North Germanic languages
da:Kategori:Dansk sprog
ru:КатегориÑ?:ДатÑ?кий Ñ?зык
see
Danish language
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