Danish and Norwegian alphabet
(Redirected from Norwegian alphabet)
Categories: Latin-derived alphabets | Danish language | Norwegian language
The Danish and Norwegian alphabet consists of 29 letters:
In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:
- DS 2089 (Danish) and NS 4551-1 (Norwegian), later established as international standard ISO 646
- IBM PC code page 865
- ISO 8859-1
- Unicode
The letter "Å" was introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing "Aa". Similarly, the letter "Å" was introduced in Danish in 1948, but the final decision on its place in the alphabet was not made. The initial proposal was to place it first, before A, B, C. Its place as the last letter of the alphabet, as in Norwegian, was decided in 1955. The former combination "aa" still occurs in names and old documents. It is treated like "å" in alphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent letters "a".
The difference between the Dano-Norwegian alphabet and the Swedish alphabet, is that Swedish uses the variant Ä instead of Æ, and the variant Ö instead of Ø — as in German. Also, the collating order for these three characters is different: Å, Ä, Ö.
Additionally, in current Danish and Norwegian, W is recognized as a seperate letter from V. In Danish, the transition was in 1980, before that the W was merely considered to be a variation of the letter V and words using it were alphabetized accordingly (e.g.: Wales, Vallø, Washington, Wedellsborg, Vendsyssel). A common Danish children's song about the alphabet still states that the alphabet has 28 letters (the last line reads 28 skal der stå, i.e. "that makes twenty-eight"). Since 1980, the number of letters has been 29.