Editing Danish language (section)

=== Old and Middle dialects ===
{{Quote box |align=right|quoted=true |
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|quote={{lang|non|Fangær man saar i hor seng mæth annæns mansz kunæ. oc kumær han burt liuænd...}}.<br /> "If one catches someone in the whore-bed with another man's wife and he comes away alive..."
|source= Jutlandic Law, 1241{{sfn|Pedersen|1996|page=220}}
}}
In the medieval period, Danish emerged as a separate language from Swedish. The main written language was Latin, and the few Danish-language texts preserved from this period are written in the Latin alphabet, although the runic alphabet seems to have lingered in popular usage in some areas. The main text types written in this period are laws, which were formulated in the vernacular language to be accessible also to those who were not Latinate. The [[Codex Holmiensis|Jutlandic Law]] and [[Scanian Law]] were written in vernacular Danish in the early 13th century. Beginning in 1350, Danish began to be used as a language of administration, and new types of literature began to be written in the language, such as royal letters and testaments. The orthography in this period was not standardized nor was the spoken language, and the regional laws demonstrate the dialectal differences between the regions in which they were written.{{sfn|Pedersen|1996|pages=219–221}}

Throughout this period, Danish was in contact with [[Low German language|Low German]], and many Low German loan words were introduced in this period.{{sfn|Pedersen|1996|pages=221–224}} With the [[Protestant Reformation in Denmark|Protestant Reformation]] in 1536, Danish also became the language of religion, which sparked a new interest in using Danish as a literary language. Also in this period, Danish began to take on the linguistic traits that differentiate it from Swedish and Norwegian, such as the {{lang|da|[[stød]]}}, the voicing of many stop consonants, and the weakening of many final vowels to /e/.{{sfn|Torp|2006|pp=57–58}}

The first printed book in Danish dates from 1495, the {{lang|da|Rimkrøniken}} (''Rhyming Chronicle''), a history book told in rhymed verses.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kb.dk/da/kb/nb/ha/virtuelt_bogmuseum/bogmuseum_danmark.html|publisher=Royal Danish Library|title=Bog Museum (Book Museum)|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141221182726/http://www.kb.dk/da/kb/nb/ha/virtuelt_bogmuseum/bogmuseum_danmark.html|archive-date=21 December 2014}}</ref> The first complete translation of the [[Bible]] in Danish, the Bible of Christian II translated by [[Christiern Pedersen]], was published in 1550. Pedersen's orthographic choices set the ''de facto'' standard for subsequent writing in Danish.{{sfn|Pedersen|1996|page=225}} From around 1500, several printing presses were in operation in Denmark publishing in Danish and other languages. In the period after 1550, presses in Copenhagen dominated the publication of material in the Danish language.{{sfn|Dal|1991}}

{{Anchor|Early Modern Danish}}