Danish language
Template:Short description Template:Good article Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox language
Danish (Template:IPAc-en, Template:Respell; Template:Langx Template:IPA, Template:Lang Template:IPA)<ref name="ordnet.dk" /> is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland,Template:Sfn the Faroe Islands, and the northern German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status.<ref name=deofficial-law /><ref name="deofficial-tvsyd" /> Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina.Template:Sfn
Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Norse dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Norwegian Bokmål are classified as West Norse along with Faroese and Icelandic. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as "mainland (or continental) Scandinavian", while Icelandic and Faroese are classified as "insular Scandinavian". Although the written languages are compatible, spoken Danish is distinctly different from Norwegian and Swedish and thus the degree of mutual intelligibility with either is variable between regions and speakers.
Until the 16th century, Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Southern Jutland and Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions. With the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of the printing press, a standard language was developed which was based on the educated dialect of Copenhagen and Malmö.Template:Sfn It spread through use in the education system and administration, though German and Latin continued to be the most important written languages well into the 17th century. Following the loss of territory to Germany and Sweden, a nationalist movement adopted the language as a token of Danish identity, and the language experienced a strong surge in use and popularity, with major works of literature produced in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, traditional Danish dialects have all but disappeared, though regional variants of the standard language exist. The main differences in language are between generations, with youth language being particularly innovative.
Danish has a very large vowel inventory consisting of 27 phonemically distinctive vowels,Template:Sfn and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon Template:Lang, a kind of laryngeal phonation type. Due to the many pronunciation differences that set Danish apart from its neighboring languages, particularly the vowels, difficult prosody and "weakly" pronounced consonants, it is sometimes considered to be a "difficult language to learn, acquire and understand",Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and some evidence shows that children are slower to acquire the phonological distinctions of Danish compared with other languages.Template:Sfn The grammar is moderately inflective with strong (irregular) and weak (regular) conjugations and inflections. Nouns, adjectives, and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender. Like English, Danish only has remnants of a former case system, particularly in the pronouns. Unlike English, it has lost all person marking on verbs. Its word order is V2, with the finite verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence.
Classification
[edit]Danish is a Germanic language of the North Germanic branch. Other names for this group are the NordicTemplate:Sfn or Scandinavian languages. Along with Swedish, Danish descends from the Eastern dialects of the Old Norse language; Danish and Swedish are also classified as East Scandinavian or East Nordic languages.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Scandinavian languages are often considered a dialect continuum, where no sharp dividing lines are seen between the different vernacular languages.Template:Sfn
Like Norwegian and Swedish, Danish was significantly influenced by Low German in the Middle Ages, and has been influenced by English since the turn of the 20th century.Template:Sfn
Danish itself can be divided into three main dialect areas: Jutlandic (West Danish), Insular Danish (including the standard variety), and East Danish (including Bornholmian and Scanian). According to the view that Scandinavian is a dialect continuum, East Danish can be considered intermediary between Danish and Swedish, while Scanian can be considered a Swedified East Danish dialect, and Bornholmian is its closest relative.Template:Sfn
Vocabulary
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Approximately 2,000 uncompounded Danish words are derived from Old Norse and ultimately from Proto Indo-European. Of these 2,000, 1,200 are nouns, 500 are verbs and 180 are adjectives.Template:Sfn Danish has also absorbed many loanwords, most of which were borrowed from Low German of the Late Middle Ages. Out of the 500 most frequently used Danish words, 100 are loans from Middle Low German; this is because Low German was the second official language of Denmark–Norway.<ref name=Sproget>Template:Cite web</ref> In the 17th and 18th centuries, standard German and French superseded Low German influence, and in the 20th century, English became the main supplier of loanwords, especially after World War II. Although many old Nordic words remain, some were replaced with borrowed synonyms, for example Template:Lang (to eat) was mostly supplanted by the Low German Template:Lang. As well as loanwords, new words can be freely formed by compounding existing words. In standard texts of contemporary Danish, Middle Low German loans account for about 16–17% of the vocabulary, Graeco-Latin loans 4–8%, French 2–4% and English about 1%.<ref name=Sproget/>
Danish and English are both Germanic languages. Danish is a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse, and English is a West Germanic language descended from Old English. Old Norse exerted a strong influence on Old English in the early medieval period.
The shared Germanic heritage of Danish and English is demonstrated with many common words that are very similar in the two languages. For example, when written, commonly used Danish verbs, nouns, and prepositions such as Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and Template:Lang are easily recognizable to English speakers.Template:Sfn Similarly, some other words are almost identical to their Scots equivalents, e.g. Template:Lang (Scots Template:Lang, i.e., 'church') or Template:Lang (Scots and northern English bairn, i.e. 'child'). In addition, the word Template:Lang, meaning ‘village’ or ‘town’, occurs in many English place-names, such as Whitby and Selby, as remnants of the Viking occupation. During that period English adopted ‘are’, the third person plural form of the verb ‘to be’, as well as the personal pronouns ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’ from contemporary Old Norse.
Mutual intelligibility
[edit]Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish. A proficient speaker of any of the three languages can often understand the others fairly well, though studies have shown that the mutual intelligibility is asymmetric: Norwegian speakers generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each other. Concomitantly, Swedes and Danes understand Norwegian better than they understand each other's languages.Template:Sfn
Norwegian occupies the middle position in terms of intelligibility because of its shared border with Sweden, resulting in a similarity in pronunciation, combined with the long tradition of having Danish as a written language, which has led to similarities in vocabulary.Template:Sfn Among younger Danes, Copenhageners are worse at understanding Swedish than Danes from the provinces. In general, younger Danes are not as good at understanding the neighboring languages as the young in Norway and Sweden.Template:Sfn
History
[edit]Template:Main The Danish philologist Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen divided the history of Danish into a period from 800 AD to 1525 to be "Old Danish", which he subdivided into "Runic Danish" (800–1100), Early Middle Danish (1100–1350) and Late Middle Danish (1350–1525).Template:Sfn
Runic Danish
[edit]Template:MainTemplate:Old Norse language map Template:Quote box By the eighth century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse. This language was generally called the "Danish tongue" (Template:Lang), or "Norse language" (Template:Lang). Norse was written in the runic alphabet, first with the elder futhark and from the 9th century with the younger futhark.Template:Sfn
Possibly as far back as the seventh century, the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, resulting in the appearance of two dialect areas, Old West Norse (Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). Most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway.Template:Sfn 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 Template:Lang to Template:Lang. This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read Template:Lang and the later Template:Lang. Also, a change of au as in Template:Lang into ø as in Template:Lang occurred. This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from Template:Lang into Template:Lang. Moreover, the Template:Lang (Old West Norse Template:Lang) diphthong changed into Template:Lang, as well, as in the Old Norse word for "island". This monophthongization started in Jutland and spread eastward, having spread throughout Denmark and most of Sweden by 1100.Template:Sfn
Through Danish conquest, Old East Norse was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England. Many words derived from Norse, such as "gate" (Template:Wikt-lang) for street, still survive in Yorkshire, the East Midlands and East Anglia, and parts of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings. The city of York was once the Viking settlement of Jorvik. Several other English words derive from Old East Norse, for example "knife" (Template:Wikt-lang), "husband" (Template:Wikt-lang), and "egg" (Template:Wikt-lang). The suffix "-by" for 'town' is common in place names in Yorkshire and the east Midlands, for example Selby, Whitby, Derby, and Grimsby. The word "dale" meaning valley is common in Yorkshire and Derbyshire placenames.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Old and Middle dialects
[edit]Template:Quote box 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 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.Template:Sfn
Throughout this period, Danish was in contact with Low German, and many Low German loan words were introduced in this period.Template:Sfn With the 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 Template:Lang, the voicing of many stop consonants, and the weakening of many final vowels to /e/.Template:Sfn
The first printed book in Danish dates from 1495, the Template:Lang (Rhyming Chronicle), a history book told in rhymed verses.<ref>Template:Cite web</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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
Early Modern
[edit]Template:Quote box Following the first Bible translation, the development of Danish as a written language, as a language of religion, administration, and public discourse accelerated. In the second half of the 17th century, grammarians elaborated grammars of Danish, first among them Rasmus Bartholin's 1657 Latin grammar Template:Lang; then Laurids Olufsen Kock's 1660 grammar of the Zealand dialect Template:Lang; and in 1685 the first Danish grammar written in Danish, Template:Lang ("The Art of the Danish Language") by Peder Syv. Major authors from this period are Thomas Kingo, poet and psalmist, and Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, whose novel Template:Lang (Remembered Woes) is considered a literary masterpiece by scholars. Orthography was still not standardized and the principles for doing so were vigorously discussed among Danish philologists. The grammar of Jens Pedersen Høysgaard was the first to give a detailed analysis of Danish phonology and prosody, including a description of the Template:Lang. In this period, scholars were also discussing whether it was best to "write as one speaks" or to "speak as one writes", including whether archaic grammatical forms that had fallen out of use in the vernacular, such as the plural form of verbs, should be conserved in writing (i.e. Template:Lang "he is" vs. Template:Lang "they are").Template:Sfn
The East Danish provinces were lost to Sweden after the Second Treaty of Brömsebro (1645) after which they were gradually Swedified; just as Norway was politically severed from Denmark, beginning also a gradual end of Danish influence on Norwegian (influence through the shared written standard language remained). With the introduction of absolutism in 1660, the Danish state was further integrated, and the language of the Danish chancellery, a Zealandic variety with German and French influence, became the de facto official standard language, especially in writing—this was the original so-called Template:Lang ("Danish of the Realm"). Also, beginning in the mid-18th century, the Template:Lang, the uvular R sound (Template:IPA), began spreading through Denmark, likely through influence from Parisian French and German. It affected all of the areas where Danish had been influential, including all of Denmark, Southern Sweden, and coastal southern Norway.Template:Sfn
In the 18th century, Danish philology was advanced by Rasmus Rask, who pioneered the disciplines of comparative and historical linguistics, and wrote the first English-language grammar of Danish. Literary Danish continued to develop with the works of Ludvig Holberg, whose plays and historical and scientific works laid the foundation for the Danish literary canon. With the Danish colonization of Greenland by Hans Egede, Danish became the administrative and religious language there, while Iceland and the Faroe Islands had the status of Danish colonies with Danish as an official language until the mid-20th century.Template:Sfn
Standardized national language
[edit]Following the loss of Schleswig to Germany, a sharp influx of German speakers moved into the area, eventually outnumbering the Danish speakers. The political loss of territory sparked a period of intense nationalism in Denmark, coinciding with the so-called "Golden Age" of Danish culture. Authors such as N.F.S. Grundtvig emphasized the role of language in creating national belonging. Some of the most cherished Danish-language authors of this period are existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and prolific fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen.Template:Sfn The influence of popular literary role models, together with increased requirements of education did much to strengthen the Danish language, and also started a period of homogenization, whereby the Copenhagen standard language gradually displaced the regional vernacular languages. Throughout the 19th century, Danes emigrated, establishing small expatriate communities in the Americas, particularly in the United States, Canada, and Argentina, where memory and some use of Danish remains today.
After the Schleswig referendum in 1920, a number of Danes remained as a minority within German territories.Template:Sfn After the occupation of Denmark by Germany in World War II, the 1948 orthography reform dropped the German-influenced rule of capitalizing nouns, and introduced the letter Template:Vr. Three 20th-century Danish authors have become Nobel Prize laureates in Literature: Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (joint recipients in 1917) and Johannes V. Jensen (awarded 1944).
With the exclusive use of Template:Lang, the High Copenhagen Standard, in national broadcasting, the traditional dialects came under increased pressure. In the 20th century, they have all but disappeared, and the standard language has extended throughout the country.Template:Sfn Minor regional pronunciation variation of the standard language, sometimes called Template:Lang ("regional languages") remain, and are in some cases vital. Today, the major varieties of Standard Danish are High Copenhagen Standard, associated with elderly, well to-do, and well educated people of the capital, and low Copenhagen speech traditionally associated with the working class, but today adopted as the prestige variety of the younger generations.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Also, in the 21st century, the influence of immigration has had linguistic consequences, such as the emergence of a so-called multiethnolect in the urban areas, an immigrant Danish variety (also known as Template:Lang), combining elements of different immigrant languages such as Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish, as well as English and Danish.Template:Sfn
Geographic distribution and status
[edit]Danish Realm
[edit]Within the Danish Realm, Danish is the national language of Denmark and one of two official languages of the Faroe Islands (alongside Faroese). There is a Faroese variant of Danish known as Gøtudanskt. Until 2009, Danish was also one of two official languages of Greenland (alongside Greenlandic). Danish now acts as a lingua franca in Greenland, with a large percentage of native Greenlanders able to speak Danish as a second language (it was introduced into the education system as a compulsory language in 1928). About 10% of the population speaks Danish as their first language, due to immigration.Template:Sfn
Iceland was a territory ruled by Denmark–Norway, one of whose official languages was Danish.Template:Sfn Though Danish ceased to be an official language in Iceland in 1944, it is still widely used and is a mandatory subject in school, taught as a second foreign language after English.
No law stipulates an official language for Denmark, making Danish the de facto official language only. The Code of Civil Procedure does, however, lay down Danish as the language of the courts.Template:Sfn Since 1997, public authorities have been obliged to follow the official spelling system laid out in the Orthography Law. In the 21st century, discussions have been held with a view to create a law that would make Danish the official language of Denmark.Template:Sfn
Surrounding countries
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In addition, a noticeable community of Danish speakers is in Southern Schleswig, the portion of Germany bordering Denmark, and a variant of Standard Danish, Southern Schleswig Danish, is spoken in the area. Since 2015, Schleswig-Holstein has officially recognized Danish as a regional language,<ref name=deofficial-law>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="deofficial-tvsyd">Template:Cite news</ref> just as German is north of the border. Furthermore, Danish is one of the official languages of the European Union and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council.<ref name=norden>Template:Cite web</ref> Under the Nordic Language Convention, Danish-speaking citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs.<ref name=norden />
The more widespread of the two varieties of written Norwegian, Template:Lang, is very close to Danish, because standard Danish was used as the de facto administrative language until 1814 and one of the official languages of Denmark–Norway. Template:Lang is based on Danish, unlike the other variety of Norwegian, Template:Lang, which is based on the Norwegian dialects, with Old Norwegian as an important reference point.Template:Sfn Also North Frisian<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Gutnish (Gutamål) were influenced by Danish.<ref>Bengt Pamp: Svenska dialekter. Natur och Kultur, Stockholm 1978, Template:ISBN, p. 76</ref>
Other locations
[edit]There are also Danish emigrant communities in other places of the world who still use the language in some form. In the Americas, Danish-speaking communities can be found in the US, Canada, Argentina and Brazil.Template:Sfn
Dialects
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Standard Danish (Template:Lang) is the language based on dialects spoken in and around the capital, Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish and Norwegian, Danish does not have more than one regional speech norm. More than 25% of all Danish speakers live in the metropolitan area of the capital, and most government agencies, institutions, and major businesses keep their main offices in Copenhagen, which has resulted in a very homogeneous national speech norm.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Danish dialects can be divided into the traditional dialects, which differ from modern Standard Danish in both phonology and grammar, and the Danish accents or regional languages, which are local varieties of the Standard language distinguished mostly by pronunciation and local vocabulary colored by traditional dialects. Traditional dialects are now mostly extinct in Denmark, with only the oldest generations still speaking them.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Danish traditional dialects are divided into three main dialect areas:
- Insular Danish (Template:Lang), including dialects of the Danish islands of Zealand, Funen, Lolland, Falster, and Møn<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- Jutlandic (Template:Lang), further divided in North, East, West, and South JutlandicTemplate:Sfn
- East Danish (Template:Lang), including dialects of Bornholm (Template:Lang), Scania, Halland and BlekingeTemplate:Sfn
Jutlandic is further divided into Southern Jutlandic and Northern Jutlandic, with Northern Jutlandic subdivided into North Jutlandic and West Jutlandic. Insular Danish is divided into Zealand, Funen, Møn, and Lolland-Falster dialect areas―each with additional internal variation. Bornholmian is the only Eastern Danish dialect spoken in Denmark. Since the Swedish conquest of the Eastern Danish provinces Skåne, Halland and Blekinge in 1645/1658, the Eastern Danish dialects there have come under heavy Swedish influence. Many residents now speak regional variants of Standard Swedish. However, many researchers still consider the dialects in Scania, Halland (Template:Lang) and Blekinge (Template:Lang) as part of the East Danish dialect group.<ref>Niels Åge Nielsen: Dansk dialektantologi. Bind 1: Østdansk og ømål, København 1978</ref><ref>Harry Perridon: Dialects and written language in Old Nordic II: Old Danish and Old Swedish, I: Oskar Bandle, Kurt Braunmuller, Ernst Hakon Jahr, Allan Karker, Hans-Peter Naumann og Ulf Teleman: The Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages, Berlin 2003, Template:ISBN</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Swedish National Encyclopedia from 1995 classifies Scanian as an Eastern Danish dialect with South Swedish elements.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Traditional dialects differ in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary from standard Danish. Phonologically, one of the most diagnostic differences is the presence or absence of Template:Lang.Template:Sfn Four main regional variants for the realization of stød are known: In Southeastern Jutlandic, Southernmost Funen, Southern Langeland, and Ærø, no Template:Lang is used, but instead a pitch accent (like in Norwegian, Swedish and Gutnish). South of a line (Template:Lang, 'the stød border') going through central South Jutland, crossing Southern Funen and central Langeland and north of Lolland-Falster, Møn, Southern Zealand and Bornholm neither Template:Lang nor pitch accent exists.<ref name="dialekt">Template:Cite web</ref> Most of Jutland and on Zealand use Template:Lang, and in Zealandic traditional dialects and regional language, Template:Lang occurs more often than in the standard language. In Zealand, the Template:Lang line divides Southern Zealand (without Template:Lang), an area which used to be directly under the Crown, from the rest of the Island that used to be the property of various noble estates.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Grammatically, a dialectally significant feature is the number of grammatical genders. Standard Danish has two genders and the definite form of nouns is formed by the use of suffixes, while Western Jutlandic has only one gender and the definite form of nouns uses an article before the noun itself, in the same fashion as West Germanic languages. The Bornholmian dialect has maintained to this day many archaic features, such as a distinction between three grammatical genders.Template:Sfn Insular Danish traditional dialects also conserved three grammatical genders. By 1900, Zealand insular dialects had been reduced to two genders under influence from the standard language, but other Insular varieties, such as Funen dialect had not.Template:Sfn Besides using three genders, the old Insular or Funen dialect, could also use personal pronouns (like he and she) in certain cases, particularly referring to animals. A classic example in traditional Funen dialect is the sentence: "Katti, han får unger", literally The cat, he is having kittens, because cat is a masculine noun, thus is referred to as Template:Lang (he), even if it is a female cat.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Phonology
[edit]The sound system of Danish is unusual, particularly in its large vowel inventory. In informal or rapid speech, the language is prone to considerable reduction of unstressed syllables, creating many vowel-less syllables with syllabic consonants, as well as reduction of final consonants. Furthermore, the language's prosody does not include many clues about the sentence structure, unlike many other languages, making it relatively more difficult to perceive the different sounds of the speech flow.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn These factors taken together make Danish pronunciation difficult to master for learners, and research shows Danish children take slightly longer in learning to segment speech in early childhood.Template:Sfn
Vowels
[edit]Although somewhat depending on analysis, most modern variants of Danish distinguish 12 long vowels, 13 short vowels, and two central vowels, Template:IPA and Template:IPA, which only occur in unstressed syllables. This gives a total of 27 different vowel phonemes – a very large number among the world's languages.Template:Sfn At least 19 different diphthongs also occur, all with a short first vowel and the second segment being either Template:IPA, Template:IPA, or Template:IPA.Template:Sfn The table below shows the approximate distribution of the vowels as given by Template:Harvcoltxt in Modern Standard Danish, with the symbols used in IPA/Danish. Questions of analysis may give a slightly different inventory, for example based on whether r-colored vowels are considered distinct phonemes. Template:Harvcoltxt gives 25 "full vowels", not counting the two unstressed "schwa" vowels.
Consonants
[edit]The consonant inventory is comparatively simple. Template:Harvcoltxt distinguishes 17 non-syllabic consonant phonemes in Danish.
Many of these phonemes have quite different allophones in onset and coda where intervocalic consonants followed by a full vowel are treated as in onset, otherwise as in coda.Template:Sfn Phonetically there is no voicing distinction among the stops, rather the distinction is one of aspiration.Template:Sfn Template:IPA are aspirated in onset realized as Template:IPA, but not in coda. The pronunciation of t, Template:IPA, is in between a simple aspirated Template:IPA and a fully affricated Template:IPA (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.Template:Sfn
Template:IPA is pronounced as a Template:IPA in syllable coda, so e.g. Template:IPA (Template:Lang) is pronounced Template:IPA.Template:Sfn
Template:IPA often have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as approximants. Danish Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA by second language learners.Template:Sfn
The sound Template:IPA is found for example in the word /sjovˀ/ "fun" pronounced Template:IPA and Template:IPA "marijuana" pronounced Template:IPA. Some analyses have posited it as a phoneme, but since it occurs only after Template:IPA or Template:IPA and Template:IPA does not occur after these phonemes, it can be analyzed as an allophone of Template:IPA, which is devoiced after voiceless alveolar frication. This makes it unnecessary to postulate a Template:IPA-phoneme in Danish.Template:Sfn Jutlandic dialects often lack the sound Template:IPA and pronounce the sj cluster as Template:IPA or Template:IPA.
In onset, Template:IPA is realized as a uvular-pharyngeal approximant, Template:IPA, but in coda it is either realized as a non-syllabic low central vowel, Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA as guttural – the so-called skarre-r – distinguishes the language from those varieties of Norwegian and Swedish that use trilled Template:IPA. Only very few, middle-aged or elderly, speakers of Jutlandic retain a frontal Template:IPA which is then usually realised as a flapped Template:IPA or approximant Template:IPA.
Prosody
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Danish is characterized by a prosodic feature called Template:Lang (Template:Lit). This is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice. Some sources have described it as a glottal stop, but this is a very infrequent realization, and today phoneticians consider it a phonation type or a prosodic phenomenon.Template:Sfn The occurrence is also dependent on stress, and some varieties also realize it primarily as a tone.Template:Sfn The Template:Lang has phonemic status, since it serves as the sole distinguishing feature of words with different meanings in minimal pairs such as Template:Lang ("peasants") with Template:Lang, versus Template:Lang ("beans") without Template:Lang. The distribution of Template:Lang in the vocabulary is related to the distribution of the common Scandinavian pitch accents found in most dialects of Norwegian and Swedish.Template:Sfn
Stress is phonemic and distinguishes words such as Template:Lang Template:IPA "cheapest" and Template:Lang Template:IPA "car driver".Template:Sfn
Intonation reflects the stress group, sentence type and prosodic phrase. In Copenhagen Standard Danish, the pitch pattern reaches its lowest peak within the stress group on the stressed syllable followed by its highest peak on the following unstressed syllable, after which it declines gradually until the next stress group.Template:Sfn In interaction, pitch can mark e.g. the end of a storyTemplate:Sfn and turn-taking.Template:Sfn
Grammar
[edit]Similarly to the case of English, modern Danish grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, a fairly fixed SVO word order and a complex syntax. Some traits typical of Germanic languages persist in Danish, such as the distinction between irregularly inflected strong stems inflected through ablaut or umlaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairs Template:Lang ("takes/took") and Template:Lang ("foot/feet")) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such as Template:Lang "love/loved", Template:Lang "car/cars"). Vestiges of the Germanic case and gender system are found in the pronoun system. Typical for an Indo-European language, Danish follows accusative morphosyntactic alignment. Danish distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns, numerals, adjectives, adverbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and onomatopoeia.Template:Sfn
Nouns
[edit]Nouns are inflected for number (singular vs. plural) and definiteness, and are classified into two grammatical genders. Only pronouns inflect for case, and the previous genitive case has become an enclitic. A distinctive feature of the Nordic languages, including Danish, is that the definite articles, which also mark noun gender, have developed into suffixes. Typical of Germanic languages plurals are either irregular or "strong" stems inflected through umlaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem) (e.g. Template:Lang "foot/feet", Template:Lang "man/men") or "weak" stems inflected through affixation (e.g. Template:Lang "ship/ships", Template:Lang "woman/women").Template:Sfn
Gender
[edit]Template:Main Standard Danish has two nominal genders: common and neuter; the common gender arose as the historical feminine and masculine genders conflated into a single category. Some traditional dialects retain a three-way gender distinction, between masculine, feminine and neuter, and some dialects of Jutland have a masculine/feminine contrast. While the majority of Danish nouns (ca. 75%) 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. The gender of a noun determines the form of adjectives that modify it, and the form of the definite suffixes.Template:Sfn
Definiteness
[edit]| Class 1 | Class 2 | Class 3 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sg. | Pl. | Pl. definite. | Sg. | Pl. | Pl. definite. | Sg. | Pl. | Pl. definite. |
| Template:Lang month |
Template:Lang months |
Template:Lang the months |
Template:Lang day |
Template:Lang days |
Template:Lang "the days" |
Template:Lang year |
Template:Lang years |
Template:Lang the years |
| Template:Lang car |
Template:Lang cars |
Template:Lang the cars |
Template:Lang dog |
Template:Lang dogs |
Template:Lang the dogs |
Template:Lang fish |
Template:Lang fish (pl.) |
Template:Lang the fishes |
Definiteness is marked by two mutually exclusive articles: either a postposed enclitic or a preposed article which is the obligatory way to mark definiteness when nouns are modified by an adjective.Template:Sfn Neuter nouns take the clitic Template:Lang, and common gender nouns take Template:Lang. Indefinite nouns take the articles Template:Lang (common gender) or Template:Lang (neuter). Hence, the common gender noun Template:Lang "a man" (indefinite) has the definite form Template:Lang "the man", whereas the neuter noun Template:Lang "a house" (indefinite) has the definite form, "the house" (definite) Template:Lang.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Indefinite:
- Jeg så et hus: "I saw a house"
Definite with enclitic article:
- Jeg så huset: "I saw the house"
Definite with preposed demonstrative article:
- Jeg så det store hus:<ref group='nb'>Note here that in Swedish and Norwegian the preposed and the enclitic article occur together (e.g. Template:Lang), whereas in Danish the enclitic article is replaced by the preposed demonstrative.</ref> "I saw the big house"
The plural definite ending is Template:Lang (e.g. Template:Lang "boys > Template:Lang "the boys" and Template:Lang "girls" > Template:Lang "the girls"), and nouns ending in Template:Lang lose the last Template:Lang before adding the -ne suffix (e.g. Template:Lang "Danes" > Template:Lang "the Danes"). When the noun is modified by an adjective, the definiteness is marked by the definite article Template:Lang (common) or Template:Lang (neuter) and the definite/plural form of the adjective: Template:Lang "the big man", Template:Lang "the big house".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Number
[edit]| Sg. | Pl. | Pl. definite |
|---|---|---|
| Template:Lang man |
Template:Lang men |
Template:Lang the men |
| Template:Lang cow |
Template:Lang cows |
Template:Lang the cows |
| Template:Lang eye |
Template:Lang eyes |
Template:Lang the eyes |
| Template:Lang account |
Template:Lang accounts |
Template:Lang the accounts |
There are three different types of regular plurals: Class 1 forms the plural with the suffix Template:Lang (indefinite) and Template:Lang (definite), Class 2 with the suffix Template:Lang (indefinite) and Template:Lang (definite), and Class 3 takes no suffix for the plural indefinite form and Template:Lang for the plural definite.Template:Sfn
Most irregular nouns have an ablaut plural (i.e. with a change in the stem vowel), or combine ablaut stem-change with the suffix, and some have unique plural forms. Unique forms may be inherited (e.g. the plural of Template:Lang "eye", which is the old dual form Template:Lang), or for loan words they may be borrowed from the donor language (e.g. the word Template:Lang "account" which is borrowed from Italian and uses the Italian masculine plural form Template:Lang "accounts").Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Possession
[edit]Possessive phrases are formed with the enclitic -s, for example Template:Lang "my father's house" where the noun Template:Lang carries the possessive enclitic.Template:Sfn This is however not an example of genitive case marking, because in the case of longer noun phrases the -s attaches to the last word in the phrase, which need not be the head-noun or even a noun at all. For example, the phrases Template:Lang "the king of Denmark's candy factory", where the factory is owned by the king of Denmark, or Template:Lang "that is the daughter of the girl that Uffe lives with", where the enclitic attaches to a stranded preposition.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Nominal compounds
[edit]Like all Germanic languages, Danish forms compound nouns. These are represented in Danish orthography as one word, as in Template:Lang, "the female national handball team". In some cases, nouns are joined with s as a linking element, originally possessive in function, like Template:Lang (from Template:Lang, "country", and Template:Lang, "man", meaning "compatriot"), but Template:Lang (from same roots, meaning "farmer"). Some words are joined with the linking element Template:Lang instead, like Template:Lang (from Template:Lang and Template:Lang, meaning "guest book"). There are also irregular linking elements.
Pronouns
[edit]| Person | Nominative case | Oblique case | Possessive case/adjective |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st sg. | Template:Lang I |
Template:Lang me |
Template:Lang my, mine |
| 2nd sg. | Template:Lang You |
Template:Lang you |
Template:Lang your(s) |
| 3rd sg. | Template:Lang he/she/it |
Template:Lang him/her/it |
Template:Lang his/her(s)/its |
| 1st pl. | Template:Lang we |
Template:Lang us |
Template:Lang our(s) |
| 2nd pl. | Template:Lang you (pl.) |
Template:Lang you (pl.) |
Template:Lang your(s) (pl.) |
| 3rd pl. | Template:Lang they |
Template:Lang them |
Template:Lang their(s) |
| 3rd refl. | N/A | Template:Lang him/her/itself, themself/selves |
Template:Lang his/her(s)/its (own) |
As does English, the Danish pronominal system retains a distinction between nominative and oblique case. The nominative form of pronouns is used when pronouns occur as grammatical subject of a sentence (and only when non-coordinated and without a following modifierTemplate:Sfn), and oblique forms are used for all non-subject functions including direct and indirect object, predicative, comparative and other types of constructions. The third person singular pronouns also distinguish between animate masculine (Template:Lang "he"), animate feminine (Template:Lang "she") forms, as well as inanimate neuter (Template:Lang "it") and inanimate common gender (Template:Lang "it").Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang: "I sleep"
- Template:Lang: "you sleep"
- Template:Lang: "I kiss you"
- Template:Lang: "you kiss me"
Possessive pronouns have independent and adjectival uses, but the same form.Template:Sfn The form is used both adjectivally preceding a possessed noun (Template:Lang "it is my horse"), and independently in place of the possessed noun (Template:Lang "it is mine"). In the third person singular, Template:Lang is used when the possessor is also the subject of the sentence, whereas Template:Lang ("his"), Template:Lang (her) and Template:Lang "its" is used when the possessor is different from the grammatical subject.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
- Han tog sin hat: He took his (own) hat
- Han tog hans hat: He took his hat (someone else's hat)
Verbs
[edit]| infinitive | Present | Past |
|---|---|---|
| Template:Lang to be |
Template:Lang is/are/am |
Template:Lang was/were |
| Template:Lang to see |
Template:Lang sees |
Template:Lang saw |
| Template:Lang to know |
Template:Lang knows |
Template:Lang knew |
| Template:Lang to remember |
Template:Lang remembers |
Template:Lang remembered |
| Template:Lang to forget |
Template:Lang forgets |
Template:Lang forgot |
Danish verbs are morphologically simple, marking very few grammatical categories. They do not mark person or number of subject, although the marking of plural subjects was still used in writing as late as the 19th century. Verbs have a past, non-past and infinitive form, past and present participle forms, and a passive, and an imperative.Template:Sfn
Tense, aspect, mood, and voice
[edit]Verbs can be divided into two main classes, the strong/irregular verbs and the regular/weak verbs.Template:Sfn The regular verbs are also divided into two classes, those that take the past suffix Template:Lang and those that take the suffix Template:Lang.Template:Sfn
The infinitive always ends in a vowel, usually -e (pronounced Template:IPA), infinitive forms are preceded by the article Template:Lang (pronounced Template:IPA) in some syntactic functions.Template:Sfn The non-past or present tense takes the suffix Template:Lang, except for a few strong verbs that have irregular non-past forms. The past form does not necessarily mark past tense, but also counterfactuality or conditionality, and the non-past has many uses besides present tense time reference.Template:Sfn
The present participle ends in Template:Lang (e.g. Template:Lang "running"), and the past participle ends in Template:Lang (e.g. Template:Lang "run"), Template:Lang (e.g. købt "bought"). The Perfect is constructed with Template:Lang ("to have") and participial forms, like in English. But some intransitive verbs form the perfect using Template:Lang ("to be") instead, and some may use both with a difference in meaning.
- Template:Lang. Template:Lang: She has walked. The plane has flown
- Template:Lang. Template:Lang: She has left. The plane has taken off
- Template:Lang. Template:Lang: She had walked. The plane had flown
- Template:Lang. Template:Lang: She had left. The plane had taken off
The passive form takes the suffix -s: Template:Lang ("the newspaper is read every day"). Another passive construction uses the auxiliary verb Template:Lang "to become": Template:Lang.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
The imperative form is the infinitive without the final schwa-vowel, with Template:Lang potentially being applied depending on syllable structure.:
- Template:Lang: "run!"
NumeralsTemplate:Anchor
[edit]Certain numerals are formed on the basis of a vigesimal system with various rules. In the word forms of numbers above 20, the units are stated before the tens, so 21 is rendered Template:Lang, literally "one and twenty".
The numeral Template:Lang means Template:Frac (literally "half second", implying "one plus half of the second one"). The numerals Template:Lang (Template:Frac), Template:Lang (Template:Frac) and Template:Lang (Template:Frac) are obsolete, but still implicitly used in the vigesimal system described below. Similarly, the temporal designation (Template:Lang) halv tre, literally "half three (o'clock)", is half past two.
One peculiar feature of the Danish language is that the numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 are (as are the French numerals from 80 through 99) based on a vigesimal system, meaning that the score (20) is used as a base unit in counting. Template:Lang (short for Template:Lang, "three times twenty") means 60, while 50 is Template:Lang (short for Template:Lang, "half third times twenty", implying two score plus half of the third score). The ending Template:Lang meaning "times twenty" is no longer included in cardinal numbers, but may still be used in ordinal numbers. Thus, in modern Danish fifty-two is usually rendered as Template:Lang from the now obsolete Template:Lang, whereas 52nd is either Template:Lang or Template:Lang. Twenty is Template:Lang (derived from Old Danish Template:Lang, Old Norse form Template:Lang, meaning 'two tens'<ref name="ODS">Template:Cite web</ref>), while thirty is Template:Lang (Old Danish Template:Lang, "three tens"), and forty is Template:Lang (Old Danish Template:Lang, "four tens",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> still used today as the archaism Template:Lang).Template:Sfn Thus, the suffix Template:Lang should be understood as a plural of Template:Lang (10), though to modern Danes Template:Lang means 20, making it hard to explain why Template:Lang is 40 (four tens) and not 80 (four twenties).
| Cardinal numeral | Danish | Literal translation | Ordinal numeral | Danish | Literal translation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Template:Lang / Template:Lang | one | 1st | Template:Lang | first |
| 12 | Template:Lang | twelve | 12th | Template:Lang | twelfth |
| 23 | Template:Lang | three and twenty | 23rd | Template:Lang | three and 20th |
| 34 | Template:Lang | four and thirty | 34th | Template:Lang | four and 30th |
| 45 | Template:Lang | five and forty (four tens) | 45th | Template:Lang | five and four tens-th |
| 56 | Template:Lang | six and [two score plus] half [of the] third (score) | 56th | Template:Lang | six and [two score plus] half [of the] third score-th |
| 67 | Template:Lang | seven and three (score) | 67th | Template:Lang | seven and three score-th |
| 78 | Template:Lang | eight and [three score plus] half [of the] fourth (score) | 78th | Template:Lang | eight and [three score plus] half [of the] fourth score-th |
| 89 | Template:Lang | nine and four (score) | 89th | Template:Lang | nine and four score-th |
| 90 | Template:Lang | [four score plus] half [of the] fifth (score) | 90th | Template:Lang | [four score plus] half [of the] fifth score-th |
For large numbers (one billion or larger), Danish uses the long scale, so that the short-scale billion (1,000,000,000) is called Template:Lang, and the short-scale trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is Template:Lang.
Syntax
[edit]Danish basic constituent order in simple sentences with both a subject and an object is Subject–Verb–Object.Template:Sfn However, Danish is also a V2 language, which means that the verb must always be the second constituent of the sentence. Following the Danish grammarian Paul DiderichsenTemplate:Sfn Danish grammar tends to be analyzed as consisting of slots or fields, and in which certain types of sentence material can be moved to the pre-verbal (or foundation) field to achieve different pragmatic effects. Usually the sentence material occupying the preverbal slot has to be pragmatically marked, usually either new information or topics. There is no rule that subjects must occur in the preverbal slot, but since subject and topic often coincide, they often do. Therefore, whenever any sentence material that is not the subject occurs in the preverbal position the subject is demoted to postverbal position and the sentence order becomes VSO.Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang: "Peter saw Jytte"
but
- Template:Lang: "Yesterday, Peter saw Jytte"
When there is no pragmatically marked constituents in the sentence to take the preverbal slot (for example when all the information is new), the slot has to take a dummy subject "der".Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang: there came a girl in through the door, "A girl came in the door"
Main clauses
[edit]Template:Harvtxt describes the basic order of sentence constituents in main clauses as comprising the following 8 positions:
| Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| And | him | had | Per | not | given | a thought | for years |
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| "And him Per hadn't given a thought in years" | |||||||
Position 0 is not part of the sentence and can only contain sentential connectors (such as conjunctions or interjections). Position 1 can contain any sentence constituent. Position 2 can only contain the finite verb. Position 3 is the subject position, unless the subject is fronted to occur in position 1. Position 4 can only contain light adverbs and the negation. Position 5 is for non-finite verbs, such as auxiliaries. Position 6 is the position of direct and indirect objects, and position 7 is for heavy adverbial constituents.Template:Sfn
Questions with wh-words are formed differently from yes/no questions. In wh-questions the question word occupies the preverbal field, regardless of whether its grammatical role is subject or object or adverbial. In yes/no questions the preverbal field is empty, so that the sentence begins with the verb.
Wh-question:
- Template:Lang: whom saw she, "whom did she see?"
- Template:Lang: saw she him?, "did she see him?"
Subordinate clauses
[edit]In subordinate clauses, the word order differs from that of main clauses. In the subordinate clause structure the verb is preceded by the subject and any light adverbial material (e.g. negation).Template:Sfn Complement clauses begin with the particle Template:Lang in the "connector field".
- Han sagde, at han ikke ville gå: he said that he not would go, "He said that he did not want to go"
Relative clauses are marked by the relative pronouns Template:Lang or Template:Lang which occupy the preverbal slot:
- Jeg kender en mand, som bor i Helsingør:Template:Sfn "I know a man who lives in Elsinore"
Writing system and alphabet
[edit]
The oldest preserved examples of written Danish (from the Iron and Viking Ages) are in the Runic alphabet.Template:Sfn The introduction of Christianity also brought the Latin script to Denmark. And at the end of the High Middle Ages, runes had more or less been replaced by Latin letters.
Danish orthography is conservative, using most of the conventions established in the 16th century. The spoken language however has changed a lot since then, creating a gap between the spoken and written languages.Template:Sfn Since 1955, Dansk Sprognævn has been the official language council in Denmark.
The modern Danish alphabet is similar to the English one, with three additional letters: Template:Vr, Template:Vr, and Template:Vr, which come at the end of the alphabet, in that order. The letters Template:Vr, Template:Vr, Template:Vr, Template:Vr and Template:Vr are only used in loan words. A spelling reform in 1948 introduced the letter Template:Vr, already in use in Norwegian and Swedish, into the Danish alphabet to replace the digraph Template:Vr.Template:Sfn The old usage continues to occur in some personal and geographical names; for example, the name of the city of Template:Lang is spelled with Template:Vr following a decision by the City Council in the 1970s and Template:Lang decided to go back to Template:Vr in 2011. When representing the same sound Template:Vr, Template:Vr is treated like Template:Vr in alphabetical sorting, though it appears to be two letters. When the letters are not available due to technical limitations, they are often replaced by Template:Vr (for Template:Vr), Template:Vr or Template:Vr (for Template:Vr), and Template:Vr (for Template:Vr), respectively.
The same spelling reform changed the spelling of a few common words, such as the past tense Template:Lang (would), Template:Lang (could) and Template:Lang (should), to their current forms of Template:Lang, Template:Lang and Template:Lang (making them identical to the infinitives in writing, as they are in speech). Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs slightly, particularly with the phonetic spelling of loanwords;Template:Sfn for example the spelling of Template:Lang and Template:Lang in Danish remains identical to other languages, whereas in Norwegian, they are transliterated as Template:Lang and Template:Lang.
Example text
[edit]Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Danish:
- Template:Lang<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
- All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
See also
[edit]Realm languages:
References
[edit]Bibliography
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External links
[edit]Template:InterWiki Template:Wiktionary category Template:Wikibooks Template:Wikivoyage
- "Sproget.dk" (a website where you can find guidance, information and answers to questions about the Danish language and language matters in Denmark (in Danish))
- "Samtalegrammatik.dk" (parts of a grammar of spoken Danish)
Template:Danish language Template:Languages of Denmark Template:Denmark topics Template:Germanic languages
- Pages with broken file links
- Danish language
- Fusional languages
- Languages of Denmark
- Languages of Norway
- Languages of Sweden
- Languages of Iceland
- Languages of the Faroe Islands
- Languages of Germany
- Languages of Greenland
- East Scandinavian languages
- North Germanic languages
- Scandinavian culture
- Subject–verb–object languages
- Verb-second languages
- Stress-timed languages