Danish language

Categories: Danish language | Guttural R | Languages of Denmark | Languages of Germany | North Germanic languages

Danish (dansk) belongs to the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 5.5 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 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, 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 is classified as a West Scandinavian language together with Faroese and 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

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 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 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), and one of two official languages of the Faeroes (the other is 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, 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 and the dialect spoken on the island of Bornholm in the 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.

Sounds

Main article: Danish phonology

The sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. The vowel system is quite large with 12 separate vowels that also feature contrast in length, making up a total of 24 vowel phonemes. Danish is also prone to a considerable reduction and assimilation of both consonants and vowels even in formal standard language. Another rare feature is the presence of a prosodic feature called stød in Danish (lit. "push; thrust"), which is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice, and can in certain minimal pairs be the only distinguishing feature. Stød is a Danish development of the common Scandinavian word accents found in most dialects of Norwegian and Swedish, including the national standard languages, but which are tonal accents.

Consonants

Danish has 17(-19) consonants:

/p, t, k/ are voiceless, lenis, and aspirated: [b̥ʰ, d̥ʰ, g̊ʰ]. /b, d, g/ are voiceless and lenis: [b̥, d̥, g̊]. /v, ð, ʁ/ may have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as pure approximants, and hence being rendered as [ʋ, ð̞, ʁ̞]. /ɣ/ has been lost from the pronunciation of all but the oldest speakers. No distinction between /pʰ~b/ and /tˢ~d/ is made in certain contexts, such as after /s/, between short vowels and in word-final position. Hence lappe and labbe are rendered [labə]. The combination of /sj/ is realized as [ɕ], making it possible to postulate a tentative /ɕ/-phoneme in Danish. /ʁ/ often has a syllabic function as a semivowel.

Vowels

Danish has 16 vowels:

Prosody

Unlike the neighboring Mainland Scandinavian languages Swedish and Norwegian, the prosody of Danish does not have phonemic pitch. Stress is phonemic in and distinguishes words like such as ['bilist] "cheapest" and [bi'list] "car driver".

Grammar

Main article: 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 tense, but otherwise do not vary according to person or 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 verbs in the language. However, the latest official reform of Danish permits many previously irregular verbs to be conjugated regularly, and for some nouns to be spelled as they are pronounced.

Danish nouns fall into two grammatical genders: common and neuter. While the majority of nouns 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. In both cases the article is en. (However, Danish uses a separate word for the definite article when an adjective is employed: "the big man", den store mand). The neuter equivalent would be "a house" (indefinite) et hus, "the house" (definite) huset and "the big house", det store hus.

Like most Germanic languages (but not English), Danish joins compound nouns. A clear example is kvindehåndboldlandsholdet, "the female handball national team". In some cases, these 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 Low German (for example, betale = to pay, måske = maybe). Later on, standard German and French and now 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

Danish numerals are in part based on a vigesimal system similar to that of French not shared with the other Scandinavian languages. This means that 20 (tyve) is used as a base number: Tres (short for tresindstyve) means 3 times 20, that is 60; firs (short for firsindstyve) means 4 times 20 that is 80. halvtreds means (3 - 1/2) times 20 (literally, "half third", i.e. 2 times 20 plus half of the third times 20), that is 50; halvfjerds means (4 - 1/2) times 20, that is 70; and halvfems means (5 - 1/2) times 20, that is 90. Many Danes are unaware of the vigesimal roots of these numerals. The numeral halvanden means one and a half (literally "half second", i.e. the first plus half of the second).

Writing system

Danish is written using the Latin alphabet, with three additional letters: æ, ø, and å, which come at the end of the Danish alphabet, in that order. A spelling reform in 1948 introduced the letter å, 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 Ålborg is often spelled Aalborg). Aa is treated just like å 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 the German language still does. Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs somewhat.

See also

• Synnejysk

References

• Basbøll, Hans. (1985). Stød in modern Danish. Folia Linguistica, 19, 1-50.
• Basbøll, Hans (2005) The Phonology of Danish ISBN 0-19-824268-9
• Garlén, Claes (1988) Svenskans fonologi ISBN 91-44-28151-X.
• Grønnum, Nina. (1992). The groundworks of Danish intonation. Copenhagen: Museum Tuscalanum Press.
• Grønnum, Nina. (1996). Danish vowels: Scratching the recent surface in a phonological experiment. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 28, 5-63.
• Grønnum, Nina. (1998a). Fonetik og fonologi, Almen og Dansk. København: Akademisk Forlag.
• Grønnum, Nina. (1998b). Illustrations of the IPA: Danish. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 28 (1 & 2), 99-105.
• Heger, Steffen (2003) Sprog & lyd: Elementær dansk fonetik ISBN 87-500-3089-2

External links

• All free Danish dictionaries
• "Speak Danish" 10 day intensive online course
• Ethnologue report for Danish
• Information on the Danish language
• Dictionary with Danish- English Translations from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition
• Danish grammar
• Hear and learn useful expressions in Danishaf:Deens (taal)

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