Editing Danish language (section)

=== Consonants ===
The consonant inventory is comparatively simple. {{harvcoltxt|Basbøll|2005|p=73}} distinguishes 17 non-syllabic consonant phonemes in Danish.

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"
!
! [[Labial consonant|Labial]]
! [[Alveolar consonant|Alveolar]]
! [[Palatal consonant|Palatal]]
! [[Velar consonant|Velar]]
! [[Uvular consonant|Uvular]]/<br />[[Pharyngeal consonant|Pharyngeal]]{{sfn|Basbøll|2005|p=130}}
! [[glottal consonant|Glottal]]
|-
! [[Nasal stop|Nasal]]
| {{IPA link|m}}
| {{IPA link|n}}
|
| {{IPA link|ŋ}}
|
|
|-
! [[Stop consonant|Stop]]
| {{IPA link|p}} {{IPA link|b}}
| {{IPA link|t}} {{IPA link|d}}
| 
| {{IPA link|k}} {{IPA link|ɡ}}
|
|
|-
! [[Fricative consonant|Fricative]]
| {{IPA link|f}}
| {{IPA link|s}}
|
|
|
| {{IPA link|h}}
|-
! [[Approximant consonant|Approximant]]
| {{IPA link|ʋ}}
| {{IPA link|l}} {{IPA link|ð}}
| {{IPA link|j}}
|
| {{IPA link|ʁ}}
|
|}

Many of these phonemes have quite different [[allophone]]s in [[Syllable onset|onset]] and [[Syllable coda|coda]] where intervocalic consonants followed by a full vowel are treated as in onset, otherwise as in coda.{{sfn|Basbøll|2005|p=43}} Phonetically there is no voicing distinction among the stops, rather the distinction is one of aspiration.{{sfn|Haberland|1994|p=320}} {{IPA|/p t k/}} are aspirated in onset realized as {{IPA|[pʰ, tsʰ, kʰ]}}, but not in coda. The pronunciation of ''t'', {{IPA|[tsʰ]}}, is in between a simple aspirated {{IPA|[tʰ]}} and a fully affricated {{IPA|[tsʰ]}} (as has happened in German with the second [[High German consonant shift]] from ''t'' to ''z''). There is dialectal variation, and some [[Jutlandic]] dialects may be less affricated than other varieties, with Northern and Western Jutlandic traditional dialects having an almost unaspirated ''dry t''.{{sfn|Puggaard|2021}}

{{IPA|/v/}} is pronounced as a {{IPA|[w]}} in syllable coda, so e.g. {{IPA|/ɡraːvə/}} ({{lang|da|grave}}) is pronounced {{IPA|[kʁɑːwə]}}.{{sfn|Basbøll|2005|p=64}}

{{IPA|[ʋ, ð]}} often have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as [[approximant]]s. Danish {{IPA|[ð]}} differs from the English sound that is conventionally transcribed with the same IPA symbol, in that it is not a dental fricative but an alveolar [[approximant]] which is frequently heard as {{IPA|[l]}} by second language learners.{{sfn|Haberland|1994|p=320}}

The sound {{IPA|[ɕ]}} is found for example in the word /sjovˀ/ "fun" pronounced {{IPA|[ɕɒwˀ]}} and {{IPA|/tjalˀ/}} "marijuana" pronounced {{IPA|[tɕælˀ]}}. Some analyses have posited it as a phoneme, but since it occurs only after {{IPA|/s/}} or {{IPA|/t/}} and {{IPA|[j]}} does not occur after these phonemes, it can be analyzed as an [[allophone]] of {{IPA|/j/}}, which is devoiced after voiceless alveolar frication. This makes it unnecessary to postulate a {{IPA|/ɕ/}}-phoneme in Danish.{{sfn|Grønnum|2005|pp=305–306}} Jutlandic dialects often lack the sound {{IPA|[ɕ]}} and pronounce the ''sj'' cluster as {{IPA|[sj]}} or {{IPA|[sç]}}.

In onset, {{IPA|/r/}} is realized as a [[voiced uvular fricative|uvular-pharyngeal approximant]], {{IPA|[ʁ]}}, but in coda it is either realized as a non-syllabic [[near-open central vowel|low central vowel]], {{IPA|[ɐ̯]}} or simply coalesces with the preceding vowel. The phenomenon is comparable to the ''r'' in German or in [[non-rhotic]] pronunciations of English. The Danish realization of {{IPA|/r/}} as guttural – the so-called ''skarre-r'' – distinguishes the language from those varieties of Norwegian and Swedish that use trilled {{IPA|[r]}}. Only very few, middle-aged or elderly, speakers of Jutlandic retain a frontal {{IPA|/r/}} which is then usually realised as a flapped {{IPA|[ɾ]}} or approximant {{IPA|[ɹ]}}.