Danish dansk
Pronunciation:	[d̥ænsɡ̊]
Spoken in:	Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Germany (Southern Schleswig)
Total speakers:	c. The Kingdom of Denmark ( ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊ (archaic ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊ commonly known as Denmark, is a country in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe The Faroe Islands or Faeroe Islands or simply Faroe(s or Faeroes (Føroyar meaning " Sheep Islands" Færøerne Old Norse Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat meaning "Land of the Greenlanders" Grønland is a self-governing Danish Province located between the Iceland, officially the Republic of Iceland ( ( Ísland or Lýðveldið Ísland ( Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. Southern Schleswig is a name for the geographical area covering the thirty or forty northernmost kilometers of Germany, where Germany borders upon Denmark. 6 million
Ranking:	102
Language family:	Indo-European  Germanic   North Germanic    East Scandinavian     Danish
Official status
Official language in:	Denmark  Greenland  Faroe Islands  European Union Nordic Council
Regulated by:	Dansk Sprognævn (“Danish Language Committee”)
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	da
ISO 639-2:	dan
ISO 639-3:	dan
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. This is a list of languages, ordered by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages The Kingdom of Denmark ( ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊ (archaic ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊ commonly known as Denmark, is a country in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat meaning "Land of the Greenlanders" Grønland is a self-governing Danish Province located between the The Faroe Islands or Faeroe Islands or simply Faroe(s or Faeroes (Føroyar meaning " Sheep Islands" Færøerne Old Norse The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in The Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers is an intergovernmental forum for co-operation between the Nordic countries. This is a list of bodies that regulate Standard languages Natural languages Auxiliary languages Interlingua The auxiliary language ("Danish Language Committee" is the official regulatory body of the Danish language as a part of the Danish Ministry of Culture, and resides at the ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

Danish (dansk, IPA: [d̥ænsɡ̊]) is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany where it holds the status of minority language. The Kingdom of Denmark ( ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊ (archaic ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊ commonly known as Denmark, is a country in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe is the northernmost of the 16 ''Bundesländer'' in Germany. The former English name was Sleswick-Holsatia the Danish name is Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. Danish also holds official status and is a mandatory subject in school in the Danish territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which now enjoy limited autonomy. Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat meaning "Land of the Greenlanders" Grønland is a self-governing Danish Province located between the The Faroe Islands or Faeroe Islands or simply Faroe(s or Faeroes (Føroyar meaning " Sheep Islands" Færøerne Old Norse In Iceland and Faroe Islands, Danish is taught as a compulsory foreign language in schools. Iceland, officially the Republic of Iceland ( ( Ísland or Lýðveldið Ísland ( The Faroe Islands or Faeroe Islands or simply Faroe(s or Faeroes (Føroyar meaning " Sheep Islands" Færøerne Old Norse There are also Danish language communities in Argentina, the U.S. and Canada. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Argentina topics. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page

Classification

Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Norse dialect group, while Norwegian is classified as a West Norse language together with Faroese and Icelandic. Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the Norwegian ( norsk) is a North Germanic Language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language Faroese ( føroyskt ˈføːɹɪst or) often also spelled Faeroese (cf Icelandic ( is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Scandinavian in two groups: Southern Scandinavian, which is Danish, and Northern Scandinavian, consisting of Norwegian and Swedish. In Linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between Languages in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand Icelandic and Faroese are placed in a separate category labeled Insular Scandinavian.

Written Danish and Norwegian Bokmål are particularly close, though the phonology (that is, the system of relationships among the speech sounds that constitute the fundamental components of the language) and the prosody (the patterns of stress and intonation) differ somewhat. Bokmål (lit "book language" or Dano-Norwegian is the most commonly used of the two official Norwegian written Standard languages the other Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can understand the others, though studies have shown that speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each other. Both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they understand each other's languages. [1]

Due to the Danish language's proximity with German, Fan Noli, linguist and translator of Ibsen’s works, said that “those who know German can learn Danish in fifteen days”. Theofan (Fan Stilian Noli ( January 6, 1882 - March 13, 1965) was an Albanian politician writer and Eastern Orthodox "Ibsen" redirects here For other people named Ibsen see Ibsen (disambiguation. ^[1] Since he himself spoke 13 languages, however, this statement might mostly be representative for philologists already speaking a large number of languages.

History

Main article: History of Danish

The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century:       Old West Norse dialect       Old East Norse dialect       Old Gutnish dialect       Crimean Gothic       Old English       Other Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility

In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse. The Danish language originates from a common Germanic language. Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age Old Gutnish was the dialect of Old Norse that was spoken on the island of Gotland. Crimean Gothic was a Germanic dialect spoken by the Crimean Goths in some isolated locations in Crimea (now in Ukraine) until the late 18th The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. Terminology and usage As a cultural term "Scandinavia" has no official definition and is subject to usage by those who identify with the culture in question as well Proto-Norse (also Proto-Scandinavian, Primitive Norse, Proto-Nordic, Ancient Nordic, Old Scandinavian and Proto-North Germanic Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects, Old West Norse (Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). Norway ( Norwegian: Norge ( Bokmål) or Noreg ( Nynorsk) officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Constitutional Iceland, officially the Republic of Iceland ( ( Ísland or Lýðveldið Ísland ( The Kingdom of Denmark ( ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊ (archaic ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊ commonly known as Denmark, is a country in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe "Sverige" redirects here For other uses see Sweden (disambiguation and Sverige (disambiguation.

Old East Norse is in Sweden called Runic Swedish and in east Denmark Runic Danish, but until the 12th century, the dialect was roughly the same in the two countries. The dialects are called runic due to the fact that the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which only had 16 letters. Proto-Norse (also Proto-Scandinavian, Primitive Norse, Proto-Nordic, Ancient Nordic, Old Scandinavian and Proto-North Germanic The Elder Futhark (or Elder Fuþark, Older Futhark, Old Futhark) is the oldest form of the Runic alphabet, used by Germanic tribes The Younger Futhark, also called the Scandinavian runes, is a Runic alphabet, a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, consisting of only 16 characters in Due to the limited number of runes, some runes were used for a range of phonemes, such as the rune for the vowel u which was also used for the vowels o, ø and y, and the rune for i which was also used for e. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract

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 stæin to sten. In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with A monophthong ( Greek μονόφθογγος "monophthongos" = single note) is a "pure" Vowel sound one whose articulation at This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin. There was also a change of au as in dauðr into ø as in døðr. This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from tauþr into tuþr. Moreover, the øy (Old West Norse ey) diphthong changed into ø as well, as in the Old Norse word for "island".

Some famous authors of works in Danish are existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, prolific fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen, and playwright Ludvig Holberg. Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine which posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives and that this essence follows from their existence Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (ˈsœːɐn ˈkʰiɐ̯kəˌɡ̊ɒˀ in Danish Anglicized as;) A fairy tale or fairy story is a fictional Story that may feature folkloric characters (such as fairies, enchantments]] often involving Hans Christian Andersen (ˈhanˀs ˈkʰʁæʂd̥jan ˈɑnɐsn̩ in Danish or simply H Ludvig Holberg Baron of Holberg ( December 3, 1684 – January 28, 1754) was a writer essayist philosopher historian and playwright born in Three 20th century Danish authors have become Nobel Prize laureates in Literature: Karl Adolph Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (joint recipients in 1917) and Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (awarded 1944). The Nobel Prize (Nobelpriset (Nobelprisen is a Swedish prize established in the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel; it was first awarded in Peace, Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature (Nobelpriset i litteratur is awarded annually since 1901 to an author from any country who has in the words from the will of Alfred Karl Gjellerup ( June 2, 1857 &ndash October 13, 1919) was a Danish poet and Novelist who together with his Henrik Pontoppidan ( July 24, 1857 — August 21, 1943) was a realist writer who shared with Karl Gjellerup the Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, in Denmark always called Johannes V Jensen, ( January 20, 1873 — November 25, 1950) was a Danish

Danish was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England. Many Danish derived words, such as "gate" (gade) for street, still survive in Yorkshire and other parts of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings. Yorkshire is a historic county of Northern England and the largest in Great Britain. A Viking is one of the Norse ( Scandinavian Explorers Warriors Merchants, and pirates who raided and colonized wide areas The city of York was once the Danish settlement of Jorvik. York ( is an historic Walled city sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England.

The first printed book in Danish dates from 1495. The first complete translation of the Bible in Danish was published in 1550. Etymology According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word bible is from Latin biblia, traced from the same word through Medieval Latin and Late Latin

Geographical distribution

Danish is the national language of Denmark, one of two official languages of Greenland (the other is Greenlandic), and one of two official languages of the Faroes (the other is Faroese). The Kingdom of Denmark ( ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊ (archaic ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊ commonly known as Denmark, is a country in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat meaning "Land of the Greenlanders" Grønland is a self-governing Danish Province located between the The Faroe Islands or Faeroe Islands or simply Faroe(s or Faeroes (Føroyar meaning " Sheep Islands" Færøerne Old Norse Faroese ( føroyskt ˈføːɹɪst or) often also spelled Faeroese (cf In addition, there is a small community of Danish speakers in Southern Schleswig, the portion of Germany bordering Denmark, where it is an officially recognized regional language, just as German is north of the border. Southern Schleswig is a name for the geographical area covering the thirty or forty northernmost kilometers of Germany, where Germany borders upon Denmark. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. A regional language is a Language spoken in an area of a Nation state, whether it be a small area a federal State or Province, or The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Furthermore, Danish is one of the official languages of the European Union and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in The Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers is an intergovernmental forum for co-operation between the Nordic countries. Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Danish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs. The Nordic Language Convention is a convention of Linguistic rights which came into force in March 1, 1987, under the auspices of the Nordic The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe called the Nordic region, consisting of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Language interpreting or interpretation is the intellectual activity of facilitating oral and sign-language communication either simultaneously or consecutively between two Translation is the interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text likewise called a " translation ^[2][3]

There is no law stipulating an official language for Denmark, making Danish the de facto language only. The Code of Civil Procedure does, however, lay down Danish as the language of the courts. Since 1997 public authorities have been obliged to observe the official spelling by way of the Orthography Law.

Dialects

Map of Danish dialects

Standard Danish (rigsdansk) is the language based on dialects spoken in and around the capital of Copenhagen. Copenhagen (ˌkəʊpənˈheɪgən ˌkəʊpənˈhɑːgən ˈkəʊpənˌheɪgən ˈkəʊpənˌhɑːgən kʰøb̥ənˈhɑʊ̯ˀn kʰøb̥m̩ˈhɑʊ̯ˀn is the capital and largest city 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, something that has resulted in a very homogeneous national speech norm. In contrast, though Oslo (Norway) and Stockholm (Sweden) are quite dominant in terms of speech standards, cities like Bergen, Gothenburg and the Malmö-Lund region are large and influential enough to create secondary regional norms, making the standard language more varied than is the case with Danish. (called Christiania from 1624 to 1878 and Kristiania from 1878 to 1924 is the Capital and largest city of Norway. ('stɔkhɔlm is Sweden 's Capital and its largest City. It is the site of the national Swedish government, the parliament, and the is the second largest city in Norway. It is located on the south-western coast of Norway in the county of Hordaland in between a group of mountains known as De syv fjell Gothenburg ( Swedish:) /jœte'bɔrj/ is a city, a municipality, and an urban area on the west-coast of Sweden. (lɵnd is a city in the province of Scania, southern Sweden. The town has 76188 inhabitants out of a muncipal total of 105000 The general agreement is that Standard Danish is based on a form of Copenhagen dialect, but the specific norm is, as with most language norms, difficult to pinpoint for both laypeople and scholars. Historically Standard Danish emerged as a compromise between the dialect of Zealand and Scania. The first layers of it can be seen in east Danish provincial law texts such as Skånske Lov, just as we can recognize west Danish in laws from the same ages in Jyske Lov. See also Medieval Scandinavian laws Scanian law ( Danish: Skånske Lov, Swedish: Skånelagen) is the oldest Danish Codex Holmiensis is the Manuscript of the Danish Code of Jutland, codified under Valdemar II of Denmark.

Despite the relative cultural monopoly of the capital and the centralised government, the divided geography of the country allowed distinct rural dialects to flourish during the centuries. Such "genuine" dialects were formerly spoken by a vast majority of the population, but have declined much since the 1960s. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος dialektos) is a variety of a Language that is characteristic of a particular group of They still exist in communities out on the countryside, but most speakers in these areas generally speak a regionalized form of Standard Danish, when speaking with one who speaks to them in that same standard. Usually an adaptation of the local dialect to rigsdansk is spoken, though code-switching between the standard-like norm and a distinct dialect is common. Code-switching is a term in Linguistics referring to using more than one language or variety in conversation

The distribution of one, two, and three grammatical genders in Danish dialects. In Zealand the transition from three to two genders has happened fairly recently. West of the red line the definite article goes before the word as in English or German; east of the line it takes the form of a suffix.

Danish is divided into three distinct dialect groups:

• Eastern Danish (østdansk), including the Bornholm, Scanian and Halland dialects
• Island Danish (ømål or ødansk), including dialects of Zealand, Funen, Lolland, Falster, and Møn
• Jutlandic (jysk), further divided in North, East, West and South Jutlandic

Historically, Eastern Danish includes what is occasionally considered Southern Swedish dialects. Bornholmsk a dialect of Danish, is spoken on the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm. Jutlandic or Jutish (Danish jysk or in old spelling jydsk) is a term for the western Dialects of Danish, spoken on the South Jutlandic or South Jutish (South Jutish Synnejysk; Sønderjysk Südjütisch or Plattdänisch is a dialect of the Danish language. The background for this lies in the loss of the originally Danish provinces Blekinge, Halland and Scania to Sweden in 1658. is a one of the Provinces of Sweden ( landskap) situated in the south of the country is one of the traditional Provinces of Sweden ( landskap in Swedish on the western coast of Sweden. Scania ( in Swedish and Danish) is a geographical region on the southernmost tip of the Scandinavian peninsula, a traditional province ( The island Bornholm in the Baltic also belongs to this group, but remained Danish. A few generations ago, the classical dialects spoken in the southern Swedish provinces could still be argued to be more Eastern Danish than Swedish, being similar to the dialect of Bornholm. Today influx of Standard Swedish vocabulary has generally meant that Scanian and Bornholmish are closer to the modern national standards than to each other. The Bornholm dialect has also maintained to this day many ancient features, such as a distinction between three grammatical genders, which the central Island Danish dialects gave up during the 20th century. In Linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called Noun classes are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words every noun must belong Standard Danish has two genders, and Western Jutlandic only one, similar to English.

Today, Standard Danish is most similar to the Island Danish dialect group.

Sound system

This article is part of the series on: Danish language

Use: Alphabet Phonology Grammar Other topics: History Literature Dansk Sprognævn

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Main article: Danish phonology

The sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. The Danish and Norwegian Alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian and 1955 See also Danish language Consonants Danish has 17 to 19 Consonants depending on analysis Vowels Danish has 16 Danish grammar is either the study of Grammar in the Danish language, or the grammatical system itself in the Danish language The Danish language originates from a common Germanic language. Danish literature is for the purposes of this article the subset of Scandinavian literature composed in Denmark or by Danish people ("Danish Language Committee" is the official regulatory body of the Danish language as a part of the Danish Ministry of Culture, and resides at the See also Danish language Consonants Danish has 17 to 19 Consonants depending on analysis Vowels Danish has 16 It is quite prone to considerable reduction and assimilation of both consonants and vowels even in very formal standard language. Assimilation is a common Phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary A rare feature is the presence of a prosodic feature called stød in Danish (lit. Stød is a suprasegmental unit of Danish Phonology, which in its most common form is a kind of Creaky voice (laryngealization but may "push; thrust"). This is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice, only occasionally realized as a full glottal stop (especially in emphatic pronunciation). Vocal fry registerIn Linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation or vocal fry or glottal fry) This article is about the sound in spoken language For the letter see Glottal stop (letter. It can be the only distinguishing feature between certain words, thus creating minimal pairs (e. In Phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of Words or phrases in a particular Language, which differ in only one phonological element such as a Phone g. bønder "peasants" with stød vs. bønner "beans" without). The distribution of stød in the lexicon is clearly related to the distribution of the common Scandinavian tonal word accents found in most dialects of Norwegian and Swedish, including the national standard languages. Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words Norwegian ( norsk) is a North Germanic Language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the A standard language (also standard dialect, standardized dialect, or standardised dialect) is a particular variety of a Language that Most linguists today believe that stød is a development of the word accents, rather than the other way round. Some have theorized it emerged from the overwhelming influence of Low German in medieval times, having flattened the originally Nordic melodic accent, but stød is absent in most southern Danish dialects where Low German impact would have been the greatest. Low German or Low Saxon (in Germany: Plattdüütsch or Nedderdüütsch; in Netherlands: Nedersaksisch or Nederduuts Stød generally occurs in words that have "accent 1" in Swedish and Norwegian and that were monosyllabic in Old Norse, while no-stød occurs in words that have "accent 2" in Swedish and Norwegian and that were polysyllabic in Old Norse. Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age

Unlike the neighboring Continental Scandinavian languages, the prosody of Danish does not have phonemic pitch. Stress is phonemic and distinguishes words such as billigst ['bilist] "cheapest" and bilist [bi'list] "car driver". In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word

Vowels

Modern Standard Danish has 20 vowel phonemes. A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A central vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A close-mid vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds A mid vowel is a Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an The open-mid vowels make a class of Vowel sounds used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU All but two of these vowels may be either long and short, with the exceptions being schwa and /ɐ/. In Linguistics, specifically Phonetics and Phonology, schwa can mean the following An unstressed and toneless neutral The long and short realizations often differ in quality and there are several allophones that differ if they occur together with an /r/. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. For example, /ø/ is lowered when it occurs either before or after /r/ and /a/ is pronounced [æ] when it is long.

Consonants

/b, d, g/ are devoiced in all contexts. In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet In Phonetics, labiodentals are Consonants articulated with the lower Lip and the upper Teeth. In Phonetics, labiodentals are Consonants articulated with the lower Lip and the upper Teeth. Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants A pharyngeal consonant is a type of Consonant which is articulated with the root of the Tongue against the Pharynx. Glottal consonants are Consonants articulated with the Glottis. A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants Laterals are "L"-like Consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of Phonetics. /v, ð/ often have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as approximants. Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants The distinction between /pʰ~b/, /tˢ~d/ and kʰ~g is only made in the beginning of a word or at the beginning of a stressed syllable. Hence lappe and labbe are rendered [labə]. The combination of /sj/ is realized as a alveolo-palatal fricative, [ɕ], making it possible to postulate a tentative /ɕ/-phoneme in Danish. The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet /r/ can be described as "tautosyllabic", meaning that it takes the form of either a phonetic consonant or vowel. At the beginning of a word or after a consonant, it is pronounced as a uvular fricative, [ʁ], but in most other positions it is either realised as a non-syllabic low central vowel, [ɐ] (which is almost identical to how /r/ is often pronounced in German) or simply coalesces with the preceding vowel. The voiced uvular fricative is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that The near-open central vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. The phenomenon is also comparable to non-rhotic pronunciations of English. English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups the rhotic (ˈroʊtɪk and non-rhotic, depending on when the sound typically represented

Grammar

Main article: Danish grammar

The infinitive forms of Danish verbs end in a vowel, which in almost all cases is the letter e. Danish grammar is either the study of Grammar in the Danish language, or the grammatical system itself in the Danish language Verbs are conjugated according to tense, but otherwise do not vary according to person or number. Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at during or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs Grammatical person, in Linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event such as the speaker the Addressee, or others In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" For example the present tense form of the Danish infinitive verb spise ("to eat") is spiser; this form is the same regardless of whether the subject is in the first, second, or third person, or whether it is singular or plural. This extreme ease of conjugating verbs is made up for by the many irregular verbs in the language. In contrast to Regular verbs irregular verbs are those Verbs that fall outside the standard patterns of conjugation in the Languages in which they

Standard Danish nouns fall into only two grammatical genders: common and neuter, while some dialects still often have masculine, feminine and neuter. West Jutlandic has only one gender, but has developed a distinction between countable and uncountable material (den træ "the tree", det træ, "the wood"). This is sometimes observed in Standard Danish as well (usually det mælk although strictly grammatically it should be den mælk "that milk"). 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. A distinctive feature of the Scandinavian languages, including Danish, is an enclitic definite article. To demonstrate: The common gender word "a man" (indefinite) is en mand but "the man" (definite) is manden. The neuter equivalent would be "a house" (indefinite) et hus, "the house" (definite) huset. Even though the definite and indefinite articles have separate origins, they have become homographs in Danish. In the plural, the definite article is -(e)ne, as the plural endings are - / -e / -er. The enclitic article is not used when an adjective is added to the noun; here the demonstrative pronoun is used instead: den store mand "the big man", "the big house", det store hus.

Like most Germanic languages, Danish joins compound nouns. The example kvindehåndboldlandsholdet, "the female handball national team", illustrates that it does so to a significantly higher degree than English. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States In some cases, nouns are joined with an extra s, like landsmand (from land, "country", and mand, "man", meaning "compatriot"), but landmand (from same roots, meaning "farmer"). Some words are joined with an extra e, like gæstebog (from gæst and bog, meaning "guest book").

Vocabulary

Danish words are largely derived from the Old Norse language, with new words formed by compounding. Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age A large percentage of Danish words, however, hail from Middle Low German (for example, betale = to pay, måske = maybe). Middle Low German ( ISO 639 -3 code gml) is a Language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. Later on, standard German and French and now English have superseded Low German influence - although many old Nordic words remain, they fall out of favor when the new come in, such as can be seen with æde (to eat) which became less common when the Low German spise came into fashion. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States Because English and Danish are related languages, many common words are very similar in the two languages. For example, the following Danish words are easily recognizable in their written form to English speakers: have, over, under, for, give, flag, salt, kat. When pronounced, these words sound quite different from their English equivalents, due to the Great Vowel Shift of English. The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the Pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1200 and In addition, the word by, meaning "village" or "town", occurs in several English placenames, such as Whitby and Selby, as remnants of the Viking occupation. A Viking is one of the Norse ( Scandinavian Explorers Warriors Merchants, and pirates who raided and colonized wide areas

Numerals

In Danish numerals, the tens and units digits of numbers above 20 are reversed when spoken or written, such that 21 is rendered enogtyve, i. e. one and twenty. This is similar to German, Dutch (and Afrikaans) and also to some variants of Norwegian. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname Afrikaans is an Indo-European language, derived from 17th century Dutch and classified as Low Franconian Germanic, mainly spoken in Norwegian ( norsk) is a North Germanic Language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language

The numeral halvanden means 1. 5 (literally "half second"). The numerals halvtredje (2. 5) and halvfjerde (3. 5), likewise constructed by "overcounting", are rarely used and almost obsolete, but still implicitly used in the vigesimal system described below. Similarly, the time halv tre, literally "half three", is half past two.

Danish numerals from 50 to 90 are (like the French numerals 80 and 90) based on a vigesimal system, not shared with the other Scandinavian languages. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The vigesimal or base - numeral system is based on twenty (in the same way in which the ordinary decimal numeral system is based on ten This means that the score is used as a base number: Tres (short for tre-sinds-tyve) means 3 times 20, that is 60. "Twenty" redirects here For the village in England, see Twenty Lincolnshire. Similarly, halvtreds (short for halvtredje-sinds-tyve) means 2. 5 times 20, that is 50. The ending sindstyve is archaic in cardinal numbers, but still used in ordinal numbers. This article describes cardinal numbers in mathematics For cardinals in linguistics see Names of numbers in English. In Set theory, an ordinal number, or just ordinal, is the Order type of a Well-ordered set. Thus, "fifty-two" is usually rendered to-og-halvtreds, whereas "fifty-second" is to-og-halvtredsindstyvende. An exception is in check-writing, where traditionally the ten-base without reversal is used to write out the amount above twenty; thus, fireti (4 times 10 or 40), seksti-to (6 times 10 plus 2 or 62), niti-syv (9 times 10 plus 7 or 97). Likewise, the Danish fifty-kroner note is labeled "Femti".

For large numbers (one billion or larger), Danish uses the long scale, so that e. The long and short scales are two different numerical systems used throughout the world Short scale is the English translation of the French g. one billion is called milliard, and one trillion is called billion.

Writing system

The oldest preserved examples of written Danish (from the Iron and Viking Ages) are in the Runic alphabet. The introduction of Christianity also brought the Latin alphabet to Denmark, and at the end of the High Middle Ages the Runes had more or less been replaced by the Latin letters. Christianity ( Greek Χριστιανισμός from the word Xριστός ( Christ)is a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings The High Middle Ages was the period of European history in the 11th 12th and 13th centuries (AD 1000&ndash1299

As in Germany, the Fraktur types were still commonly used in the late 19th century (until 1875, Danish children were taught to read and write the Fraktur letters in school), and most books were printed with Fraktur typesetting even in the beginning of the 20th century. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. The German word Fraktur () refers to a specific sub-group of Blackletter Typefaces The word derives from the past participle fractus (“broken” Also as in German, nouns were capitalized until after World War II.

The modern Danish alphabet is similar to the English one, with three additional letters: æ, ø, and å, which come at the end of the alphabet, in that order. Æ ( minuscule: æ) is a Grapheme formed from the letters A and E. The " Ø " ( minuscule: " ø " is a Vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese and Norwegian The letter Å represents various sounds in the Swedish, Finnish (although no native Finnish words contain the letter å Danish, Norwegian The Danish and Norwegian Alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian and 1955 A spelling reform in 1948 introduced the letter å, already in use in Norwegian and Swedish, into the Danish alphabet to replace the letter aa; the old usage still occurs in some personal and geographical names and old documents (for example, the name of the city of Aalborg is spelled with Aa following a decision from the City Council in the 1970s). Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate often officially sanctioned or mandated change to spelling takes place Aalborg ( IPA ˈʌlb̥ɒːˀ is a city in Denmark. Its population as of 2006 is 121540 making it the fourth largest in the country after Copenhagen, When representing the å sound, aa is treated just like å in alphabetical sorting, even though it looks like two letters. When the letters are not available (e. g. , in URLs), they are replaced by ae (Æ, æ), oe (Ø, ø) or o, and aa (Å, å), respectively.

The same spelling reform changed the spelling of a few common words, such as the past tense vilde (would), kunde (could) and skulde (should), to their current forms of ville, kunne and skulle (making them identical to the infinitives in writing, as they are in speech), and did away with the practice of capitalising all nouns, which German still does. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs somewhat.

See also

• Jutlandic
• South Jutlandic
• Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish

Notes

References

• Basbøll, Hans (2005) The Phonology of Danish ISBN 0-19-824268-9

External links

• Danish and Swedish with sound files including Japanese translation
• "GrammarExplorer Danish" an online Danish grammar