Danish Dansk
Danish is the official language of Denmark, Greenland and the Faeroe Islands. Both Greenland and the Faeroe Islands have their own language too, which most of the people speak but Danish is used for official purposes and taught in schools. Danish is also recognized as an official minority language in Germany. It is spoken by some 20,000 people just south of the Danish/German border.In Icelandic schools, too, the first foreign language to be taught is Danish. That serves as a way of communicating with the other Scandinavian countries.
The written Danish is characterized by a very strict norm, but the spoken language may vary considerably in pronunciation. The Danish language has several dialects even though Denmark is a small country. The standard language that is called Rigsdansk originated around Copenhagen, and was originally based on the sociolect of the upper class of Copenhagen. Almost every island has its own dialect, which can be difficult to understand for Danes in other parts of the country. However, the vast majority of the population speak either standard Danish or a social variation of it.
The Danish vocabulary is not based upon an enormous amount of words but it is in principle unlimited, as new words can freely be formed by means of compounding or deriving eg. Langtidsplanlægge (Created of three existing words lang, tid, planlægge, means to plan longterm). Existing words are simply used to create new words and as a result of this, the largest Danish dictionaries contain more than 200,000 words.
The Origin of Danish
Danish is a language of the Indo-European family, and it belongs to the North Germanic group together with Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian (bokmål) and Swedish. Historically speaking, Danish is a dialect of a common Scandinavian language which is known from AD 200. Only towards AD 1200 did a split become obvious, and many Viking Age loan words in English, law, window, ill, loose, die etc. are Scandinavian rather than Danish.
Over the centuries Danish has adopted thousands of words from foreign languages, especially from Lower German in the Middle Ages. Since the 17th century a considerable number of loan words have been taken from French, and especially in the 20th century many English words have found their way into the Danish language.
The historical changes in vocabulary were to a large extent brought about by external factors such as Christian missionaries in the Viking Age, trade links with Hanseatic merchants, immigration by north German artisans and noble families in the Middle Ages, the Lutheran Reformation in the 16th century, and since then a broad cultural contact with the modern international prestige languages. These were first German and French and from the end of the 19th century mainly English. The whole of this western European cultural milieu has constantly adopted words from the "dead" languages, Latin and Greek. Under the same external influences, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have in all essential aspects undergone a parallel development.
The Alphabet
Danish is written in the Roman alphabet. The biggest difference between the American and the Danish alphabet is that the Danish alphabet has three additional letters - æ, ø and å - totally 29 letters. Since 1948, the alphabet has been expanded with the Swedish and Norwegian letter å. The spelling reform of 1948 also abolished the practice of beginning all nouns with a capital letter.
The letters æ, ø and å come in this order as the last three letters of the alphabet and they are all vowels. The pronunciation can be confusing, but a good way of remembering how they should sound is: for æ as with e in egg; for ø as with i in first; for å as with o in lord.
The letters æ, ø and å are only found in Danish and Norwegian, so if you find a sentence with these three letters there is a good chance that it is a Danish text.
The å entered the Danish alphabet in 1948, and was meant to replace the double-a. However, the double-a is still to be found in written Danish. Double-a is precisely the same as å, so dont look for Aabenraa in the beginning of the dictionary, as you will then be searching in vain.
But what is the difference between å and aa and why are towns like Aalborg and Århus often spelt both ways? Today it is a question of spelling conventions, Aalborg insists on using the double-a even on road signs whereas Århus insists on using the å.
The proper usage of å versus aa is according to Retskrivningsbogen (The Danish dictionary of orthography):
The letter å was substituted for aa in 1948 as the token symbol for the å sound, but it is still possible to use both in Danish personal names and places, but not in other words.
Some places like Aalborg and Aabenraa have strong local traditions for replacing the å with the aa, and these should be followed. It can also be important to remember that the capitalization of the double-a when it starts a sentence is Aa, not AA.
Besides the æ, ø and å the most important things worth knowing about the Danish alphabet is that the letters c, q, w, x and z are only used in loan words as for instance check, zoo, weekend, and that the letters v and w are treated as being the same.
Pronunciation
Some of the major characteristics of Danish pronunciation is that the Danish "r" has to be fetched from deep below the tonsils and, as somebody would say, it requires special muscles. The reduction of unstressed vowels and the glottal stop are also characteristic features.
The glottal stop (stød) may be difficult for non-Danish speakers to imitate and does not in fact exist in the pronunciation of the language in many regions of Denmark. However, it is important to pronounce the glottal stop because otherwise words may be misunderstood. For example le´ver (with a glottal stop) means liver, whereas lever (without a glottal stop) means to live. The glottal stop is produced by a sudden contraction of the expiration muscles. If the vowel of the syllable in question is long, the glottal stop occurs at the end of the vowel. If the vowel is short the glottal stop is pronounced before the following consonant. In a syllable with a short vowel and a voiceless consonant there is no glottal stop.
The Danish orthography is principally conservative and only partly conforms to present day pronunciation. In for instance ligge (to lie), skylle (to rinse) and mund (mouth) the i, y and u represent a sound corresponding to e, ø and å, while the same vowel sign in kigge (to look), skylde (to owe), and hund (dog) is pronounced as it is written.
The written sequences ld and nd in which d can be silent, always indicate a preceding short vowel as for instance in bold (ball) and vind (wind)
Danish is rich in vowels. The 9 vowel letters represent 16 different vocalic sounds; for instance in sal (hall), salt (salt) and saks ( scissors) the letter a stands for three different pronunciations. In addition there are several diphthongs e.g. [aj] as in leje (to hire) and lege (to play).
Few consonants are voiced; even [b,d,g] are unvoiced. Moreover, the particular sound of Danish is partly due to stød, a near-closing of the vocal chords which occurs regularly in specific word types, for instance in monosyllables like tab [ta´b] (loss) and fugl [fu´l] (bird).
Grammar
Within the Germanic languages there are two grammatical traits that are peculiar to Scandinavian, namely the enclitic definite article e.g. dag-en (the day) år-et (the year) dage-ne (the days), år-ene (the years), and the passive form of the verbs, e.g. føl-es (is/are felt).
Danish has the definite article at the end of the word: a man = en mand, the man = manden. Adjectives and pronouns are inflected according to gender e.g. stor, stor-t (big), nogen (someone), noget (something)
Nouns: Danish nouns have two genders; common gender (fælleskøn) e.g. en dag, dagen (a day, the day) and neuter gender (intetkøn) e.g. et år, året (a year, the year). The words for a and an are en for common gender nouns and et for neuter nouns. Most nouns have only one gender, but some can have both without changing the nouns meaning e.g. en cirkus, et cirkus (a circus), but sometimes a different gender indicates a different meaning of a word e.g. vår - en (spring), vår - et (bedclothes). The plural of nouns is expressed in four different ways, by adding -e, -r, -er or no ending; dag-e (days), uge-r (weeks), måned-er (months) and år (years - zero ending).
Adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. For singular nouns nothing is added to the adjective with common nouns, but -t is added to the adjective with neuter nouns.
Danish is the official language of Denmark, Greenland and the Faeroe Islands. Both Greenland and the Faeroe Islands have their own language too, which most of the people speak but Danish is used for official purposes and taught in schools. Danish is also recognized as an official minority language in Germany. It is spoken by some 20,000 people just south of the Danish/German border.In Icelandic schools, too, the first foreign language to be taught is Danish. That serves as a way of communicating with the other Scandinavian countries.
The written Danish is characterized by a very strict norm, but the spoken language may vary considerably in pronunciation. The Danish language has several dialects even though Denmark is a small country. The standard language that is called Rigsdansk originated around Copenhagen, and was originally based on the sociolect of the upper class of Copenhagen. Almost every island has its own dialect, which can be difficult to understand for Danes in other parts of the country. However, the vast majority of the population speak either standard Danish or a social variation of it.
The Danish vocabulary is not based upon an enormous amount of words but it is in principle unlimited, as new words can freely be formed by means of compounding or deriving eg. Langtidsplanlægge (Created of three existing words lang, tid, planlægge, means to plan longterm). Existing words are simply used to create new words and as a result of this, the largest Danish dictionaries contain more than 200,000 words.
The Origin of Danish
Danish is a language of the Indo-European family, and it belongs to the North Germanic group together with Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian (bokmål) and Swedish. Historically speaking, Danish is a dialect of a common Scandinavian language which is known from AD 200. Only towards AD 1200 did a split become obvious, and many Viking Age loan words in English, law, window, ill, loose, die etc. are Scandinavian rather than Danish.
Over the centuries Danish has adopted thousands of words from foreign languages, especially from Lower German in the Middle Ages. Since the 17th century a considerable number of loan words have been taken from French, and especially in the 20th century many English words have found their way into the Danish language.
The historical changes in vocabulary were to a large extent brought about by external factors such as Christian missionaries in the Viking Age, trade links with Hanseatic merchants, immigration by north German artisans and noble families in the Middle Ages, the Lutheran Reformation in the 16th century, and since then a broad cultural contact with the modern international prestige languages. These were first German and French and from the end of the 19th century mainly English. The whole of this western European cultural milieu has constantly adopted words from the "dead" languages, Latin and Greek. Under the same external influences, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have in all essential aspects undergone a parallel development.
The Alphabet
Danish is written in the Roman alphabet. The biggest difference between the American and the Danish alphabet is that the Danish alphabet has three additional letters - æ, ø and å - totally 29 letters. Since 1948, the alphabet has been expanded with the Swedish and Norwegian letter å. The spelling reform of 1948 also abolished the practice of beginning all nouns with a capital letter.
The letters æ, ø and å come in this order as the last three letters of the alphabet and they are all vowels. The pronunciation can be confusing, but a good way of remembering how they should sound is: for æ as with e in egg; for ø as with i in first; for å as with o in lord.
The letters æ, ø and å are only found in Danish and Norwegian, so if you find a sentence with these three letters there is a good chance that it is a Danish text.
The å entered the Danish alphabet in 1948, and was meant to replace the double-a. However, the double-a is still to be found in written Danish. Double-a is precisely the same as å, so dont look for Aabenraa in the beginning of the dictionary, as you will then be searching in vain.
But what is the difference between å and aa and why are towns like Aalborg and Århus often spelt both ways? Today it is a question of spelling conventions, Aalborg insists on using the double-a even on road signs whereas Århus insists on using the å.
The proper usage of å versus aa is according to Retskrivningsbogen (The Danish dictionary of orthography):
The letter å was substituted for aa in 1948 as the token symbol for the å sound, but it is still possible to use both in Danish personal names and places, but not in other words.
Some places like Aalborg and Aabenraa have strong local traditions for replacing the å with the aa, and these should be followed. It can also be important to remember that the capitalization of the double-a when it starts a sentence is Aa, not AA.
Besides the æ, ø and å the most important things worth knowing about the Danish alphabet is that the letters c, q, w, x and z are only used in loan words as for instance check, zoo, weekend, and that the letters v and w are treated as being the same.
Pronunciation
Some of the major characteristics of Danish pronunciation is that the Danish "r" has to be fetched from deep below the tonsils and, as somebody would say, it requires special muscles. The reduction of unstressed vowels and the glottal stop are also characteristic features.
The glottal stop (stød) may be difficult for non-Danish speakers to imitate and does not in fact exist in the pronunciation of the language in many regions of Denmark. However, it is important to pronounce the glottal stop because otherwise words may be misunderstood. For example le´ver (with a glottal stop) means liver, whereas lever (without a glottal stop) means to live. The glottal stop is produced by a sudden contraction of the expiration muscles. If the vowel of the syllable in question is long, the glottal stop occurs at the end of the vowel. If the vowel is short the glottal stop is pronounced before the following consonant. In a syllable with a short vowel and a voiceless consonant there is no glottal stop.
The Danish orthography is principally conservative and only partly conforms to present day pronunciation. In for instance ligge (to lie), skylle (to rinse) and mund (mouth) the i, y and u represent a sound corresponding to e, ø and å, while the same vowel sign in kigge (to look), skylde (to owe), and hund (dog) is pronounced as it is written.
The written sequences ld and nd in which d can be silent, always indicate a preceding short vowel as for instance in bold (ball) and vind (wind)
Danish is rich in vowels. The 9 vowel letters represent 16 different vocalic sounds; for instance in sal (hall), salt (salt) and saks ( scissors) the letter a stands for three different pronunciations. In addition there are several diphthongs e.g. [aj] as in leje (to hire) and lege (to play).
Few consonants are voiced; even [b,d,g] are unvoiced. Moreover, the particular sound of Danish is partly due to stød, a near-closing of the vocal chords which occurs regularly in specific word types, for instance in monosyllables like tab [ta´b] (loss) and fugl [fu´l] (bird).
Grammar
Within the Germanic languages there are two grammatical traits that are peculiar to Scandinavian, namely the enclitic definite article e.g. dag-en (the day) år-et (the year) dage-ne (the days), år-ene (the years), and the passive form of the verbs, e.g. føl-es (is/are felt).
Danish has the definite article at the end of the word: a man = en mand, the man = manden. Adjectives and pronouns are inflected according to gender e.g. stor, stor-t (big), nogen (someone), noget (something)
Nouns: Danish nouns have two genders; common gender (fælleskøn) e.g. en dag, dagen (a day, the day) and neuter gender (intetkøn) e.g. et år, året (a year, the year). The words for a and an are en for common gender nouns and et for neuter nouns. Most nouns have only one gender, but some can have both without changing the nouns meaning e.g. en cirkus, et cirkus (a circus), but sometimes a different gender indicates a different meaning of a word e.g. vår - en (spring), vår - et (bedclothes). The plural of nouns is expressed in four different ways, by adding -e, -r, -er or no ending; dag-e (days), uge-r (weeks), måned-er (months) and år (years - zero ending).
Adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. For singular nouns nothing is added to the adjective with common nouns, but -t is added to the adjective with neuter nouns.