Danish (dansk) belongs to the North Germanic languages (also known as Scandinavian languages), the sub-class action of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. These are spoken by around Cinque.Five million population inside the main in Denmark including some 50,000 population in the northern area of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, where it holds a status of minority language. Danish likewise holds official status & occurs as required subject inside school in the previous Danish colonies of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, that now enjoy limited autonomy. Within Iceland, which was a a share of Denmark until 1944, Danish is however a 2nd foreign language taught inside schools (although two or even three study Swedish or Norwegian instead).

A language began diverging from either a park ascendant language Old Norse sometime during a 13th century & became supplementary distinct from either a more emerging Scandinavian national languages by having a 1st bible translation around 1550, establishing an orthography differing from that of Swedish, though written Danish is ordinarily far more easygoing for Swedes to realize than a spoken language. Modern spoken Danish is characterized by the super heavy tendency of reduction of several sounds making it particularly hard for foreigners to read & properly master, non good by reputation however by sheer phonetic reality.

Classification and related languages

Danish belongs to the East Scandinavian languages, together using Swedish. Though Norwegian is classified as a West Scandinavian language together by using Faroese and Icelandic, the further recent classification according to reciprocal intelligibility wharehouses Icelandic & Faroese inside a separate Insular Scandinavian branch when Norwegian is considered to become the Mainland Scandinavian language & grouped by owning Danish & Swedish. Written Danish & Norwegian Bokmål are particularly close, though the phonemics & prosody of a lot deuce-ace languages differ somewhat. Adept speakers of any of a threesome languages could see the others, though studies keep around shown that speakers of Norwegian usually realize two Danish & Swedish far better than Swedes or even Danes read any of the more languages.

History

).

Old East Norse is around Sweden known as Runic Swedish & around Denmark Runic Danish, however until a 12th century, a idiom was the equivalent in the deuce countries. A accent come known as runic ascribable a fact that the independent body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with a Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with a Younger Futhark alphabet, which only got Xvi letters. Due to the limited total of runic letter, the few runic letter were utilized for a range of phonemes, such as a runic letter for the vowel u which was also utilized for the vowels o, ø & y, & a runic letter for i which was besides utilized for e.

a vary that separated Old East Norse (Runic Swedish/Danish) from either Old West Norse was the vary of the diphthong æi (Old West Norse ei) to the monophthong e, as within stæin to sten. This is reflected inside runic inscriptions in which a older see stain & a later on stin. There was likewise the vary of au when around dauðr into ø when within døðr. This vary is shown inside runic inscriptions as a vary from either tauþr into tuþr. Furthermore, a øy (Old West Norse ey) diphthong changed into ø too, when in the Old Norse word for "island".

From either 1100 and onwards, a idiom of Denmark began to vary from either that of Sweden. the innovations spread unevenly from either Denmark which created a series of minor dialectal boundaries, isoglosses, ranging from Zealand to Svealand.

A bit of celebrated authors of works around Danish come existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, prolific fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen, and dramatist Ludvig Holberg. 3 20th century Danish authors have be Nobel Prize laureates in Literature: Karl Adolph Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (joint recipients in 1917) and Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (awarded 1944).

Danish was when widely spoken in the north-east counties of England. Several Danish derived words like gate (gade) for street, however hold up inside Yorkshire and other area of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings. A city of York was once a Danish class action settlement of Jorvik.

A number 1 translation of the Bible in Danish was published in 1550.

Geographical distribution

Danish is the official language of Denmark, one of two official languages of Greenland (the more is Greenlandic), and one of ii official languages of the Faeroes (the more is Faeroese). Additionally, there is a little community of Danish speakers inside Schleswig, the part of Germany bordering Denmark, where these are an officially recognized & secure regional language. What is more, these are one of a official languages of the European Union.

Dialects
Standard Danish (rigsdansk or even rigsmål) is a language according to idiom spoken inside & around the capital of Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish & Norwegian, Danish doesn't use other than 1 regional speech norm. To the higher degree 20% of tons Danish speakers sleep inside a area & virtually all federal agency, institutions & major businesses keep their central office around Copenhagen, something that has resulted in a super homogenous national speech norm. Though Oslo and Stockholm are quite dominant in terms of speech standards, cities rather Bergen, Gothenburg and the Malmö-Lund region are big & influential sufficiency to produce secondary regional norms, making a standard language additional varied than is the experience sustaining Danish. a general agreement is that Standard Danish is according to a form of Copenhagen idiom, however the specific norm is, when by using virtually all language norms, hard to pinpoint for two laymen & linguists. Supplementary distinct "genuine" dialects still survive witharound smaller communities, however virtually all speakers in these areas usually speak the regionalized form of Standard Danish. Normally an adaptation of the local idiom to rigsdansk is spoken, though code-changing between the neutralised norm & a distinct accent is green.

Danish accent come divided into trey general idiom groups:

Østdansk ("Eastern Danish) Ødansk ("Island Danish") Jysk ("Jutlandish")

Historically, Eastern Danish includes what is today considered Southern Swedish dialects like Scanian and the dialect spoken on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic between the coasts Sweden and Germany. The background for this lies in the loss of originally Danish provinces like Blekinge, Halland and Skåne to Sweden in 1658. While many similarities can be found in Southern Swedish and the Bornholm-dialect, they are more similar to the modern national standards than to each other. The Bornholm-dialect has also maintained a distinction between three grammatical genders, rather than just two in Standard Danish and lacks the diphthongs used in the standard language.

Sounds

The sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. The vowel system is quite large with 12 separate vowels that also feature contrast in length, making up a total of 24 vowel phonemes. Danish is also prone to a considerable reduction and assimilation of both consonants and vowels even in formal standard language. Another rare feature is the presence of a prosodic feature called stød in Danish (lit. "click; click"), which is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice, and can in certain minimal pairs be the only distinguishing feature. Stød is a Danish development of the common Scandinavian word accents found in most dialects of Norwegian and Swedish, including the national standard languages, but which are tonal accents.

Vowels

Consonants

often has a syllabic function as a semivowel.

Prosody
Unlike the neighboring Mainland Scandinavian languages Swedish and Norwegian, the prosody of Danish does not have phonemic pitch. Stress is phonemic in and distinguishes words like such as ['bilist] "inexpensive" and [bi'list] "car driver".

Grammar
The infinitive forms of most Danish verbs end in a vowel, which in almost all cases is the letter e. Verbs are conjugated according to tense, but otherwise do not vary according to person or number. 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. However, the latest official reform of Danish permits many previously irregular verbs to be conjugated regularly, and for some nouns to be spelled as they are pronounced.

Danish nouns fall into two grammatical genders: common and neuter. While the majority of nouns 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 "the human" (indefinite) is en mand but "a human" (definite) is manden. In both cases the article is en. (However, Danish uses a separate word for the definite article when an adjective is employed: "the large human", den store mand). The neuter equivalent would be "a home" (indefinite) et hus, "a home" (definite) huset and "a large home", det store hus.

Like most Germanic languages (but not English), Danish joins compound nouns. A clear example is kvindehåndboldlandsholdet, "a female handball national team". In some cases, these nouns are joined with an extra s, like landsmand (from land, "united states", and mand, "human", 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

Most Danish words are derived from the Old Norse language, with new words formed by compounding. A large percentage of Danish words, however, hails from Low German (for example, betale = to pay, måske = maybe). Later on, High German and French and now English have superseded Low German influence. 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, kat. When pronounced, these words sound quite different from their English equivalents, however. In addition, the suffix by, meaning "town", occurs in several English placenames, such as Whitby and Selby, as remnants of the Viking occupation.

Numerals
Danish numerals are in part based on a vigesimal system similar to that of French not shared with the other Scandinavian languages. This means that 20 (tyve) is used as a base number: Tres (short for tresindstyve) means 3 times 20, that is 60; firs (short for firsindstyve) means 4 times 20 that is 80. halvtreds means (3 - 1/2) times 20 (literally, "half third", i.e. 2 times 20 plus half of the third times 20), that is 50; halvfjerds means (4 - 1/2) times 20, that is 70; and halvfems means (5 - 1/2) times 20, that is 90. Many Danes are unaware of the vigesimal roots of these numerals. The numeral halvanden means one and a half (literally "half 2nd", i.e. the first plus half of the second).

Writing system

Danish is written using the Latin alphabet, with three additional letters: æ, ø, and å, which come at the end of the Danish alphabet, in that order. 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 Ålborg is often spelled Aalborg). Aa is treated just like å in alphabetical sorting, even though it looks like two letters.

The same spelling reform changed the spelling of a few common words, such as vilde, kunde and skulde, to their current forms of ville, kunne and skulle, and did away with the practice of capitalising all nouns, which the German language still does. Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs somewhat.