Nucléosome

History

At the 8th century, the common Germanic language in Scandinavia, the Proto-norrois, evolved/moved in Vieux norrois. This language sudden of new changes which were not spread everywhere in Scandinavia, which resulted in the development from two rather close dialects: the Scandinavian Westerner (spoken in Norway and Iceland) and the Eastern Scandinavian (spoken in Denmark and in Sweden). The latter name “runic” according to the alphabetical system Futhark with sixteen characters called Rune S.

What separated the Western old man norrois of the Eastern old man norrois was the change of the Diphtongue æi in Monophtongue E ( stæin in sten for example). There was also the evolution of the to the in ø ( dauðr in døðr for example). Thus, as of the year 1100, it dialect of Denmark started to be distinguished from that of Sweden. These innovations were spread everywhere in Denmark to create a series of minor dialectical borders (see Isoglosse) Zealand with the Svealand.

With the the Middle Ages, Danish spoke itself in the counties about the North-East about England, the Viking S Danish having colonized this area. Most known of these colonies is the town of York, which was at the time the Danish village of Jorvik.

The first translation of the Bible in Danish was published in 1550.

Several authors published their Danish works: the philosopher existentialist Søren Kierkegaard, the writer of fairy tales Hans Christian Andersen, and the playwright Ludvig Holberg. Three Danish authors of the 20th century are prizes winner of the Nobel Prize of Literature: Karl Adolph Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (which accepted it together in 1917) and Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (in 1944).

Before the orthographical reform of 1948, the Danish writing used capital letters for the first letter of the common nouns, as in German, and the C-W communication aa in the place of å . The latter still remains in some names, like Aalborg.

Danish is governed in Denmark by Dansk Sprognævn (the council of the Danish language).

Classification

It is a Germanic Langue Scandinavian, near to the Norwegian and Swedish. Somebody who usually speaks Danish would not have many problems to include/understand (more or less) Norwegian and Swedish. Danish with the writing and the Norwegian Bokmål are particularly close, though the pronunciation is a little different (the pronunciation of Norwegian resembles that of Swedish).

Geographical distribution

The Danish is the official Langue Denmark, Faroe Islands and Greenland (with parity with the Inuit Greenlandic) and Danish is generally included/understood in Sweden and Norway. The Norwegian Bokmål is based on Danish and of kind it is easy for a Dane to write it and to include/understand it. Danish is also included/understood by the suédophone S of Finland and some people in Iceland.

Today, much about people in Europe of the south and Africa of north in bond with the destinations of holidays speak a little Danish, to be former immigrants or to have worked some time in Denmark. Moreover Danish is one of the official languages of the European Union (EU).

Dialects

Cutting in island S of the Danish territory facilitated the appearance of different Dialecte S, in spite of the low surface of the country and the number relatively low inhabitants.

Danish of reference speaks itself in the area about Copenhagen, on the island of Sjælland
the Jysk (to pronounce) speaks itself in the Péninsule about the Jutland
the Fynsk (to pronounce) speaks itself on the island about Fyn
the Bornholmsk speaks itself on the island about Bornholm

Derived languages

The Swedish and the Norwegian Bokmål are sufficiently close to Danish so that a Dane can include/understand the general direction of the sentences, but the reverse is less true because of particular pronunciation of Danish, a little diverting even for the other Scandinavians (Swedish joke, saying that Danish is not a language but a “disease of the throat”; Coluche said that it is “of German spoken under water”). See for a detailed description of the pronunciation of this language the manual of Danish language , by Ingeborg de Stemann, of the Klincksieck editions (prefaced by Andre Martinet).

Writing

Danish uses the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, like å , ø and the Digramme æ .

the å corresponds to “aa”.
the ø corresponds to “oe”. He is written “ö” in Swedish.
the æ corresponds to “ae”.

Alphabetical order and value of the graphèmes

Uses

The letters C , Q , W , X and Z appear practically only in the words of foreign origin.

Pronunciation

For more information on the pronunciation of Danish, to see the detailed article and Round as a chief.

Å O (long)

Æ have

there U (long)

ø have

Grammar

As in Norwegian, the verbs have only one form in valid weather with all the people.

For example to be :

At være (to be)

jeg er - I am
er - you are
han er - it is
hun er - it is
den/det er - il/elle is or it is
VI er - we are
i/De er - you are
of er - they/they are

Numbers

The Danish , contrary to the Swedish and the Norwegian , uses a system at base 20 enough complicated to count. Moreover, beyond 20, (as for the numbers in German), the units are placed between the hundreds and tens.

Numbers from 0 to 20: no one, in, to, tre, fire, fem, seks, syv, otte, nor, Ti, elleve, tolv, tretten, fjorten, femten, seksten, sytten, atten, nitten, tyve .
From 20, the units being placed before tens, one counts “twenty”, “one and twenty”, “two and twenty”, etc; the and say og . In Danish from 20 to 30: tyve, enogtyve, toogtyve, treogtyve, fireogtyve, femogtyve, seksogtyve, syvogtyve, otteogtyve, niogtyve, tredive .
From 50, tens are a number of times twenty. Thus, 50 is half of the 3^e times 20 ((2+ ½) ×20), 60 is 3 times twenty . That led to rather long expressions of these numbers, which were phonetically shortened. Thus, 70, which is half of the 4^e times 20 , in Danish halv fjerde sinde tyve , became halvfjerds . In Danish from 10 to 100: Ti, tyve, tredive, fyrre, halvtreds, very, halvfjerds, firs, halvfems, hundrede . Little Dane knows the etymology of tens.
the hundreds are a number of times 100. In Danish from 100 to 1000: hundrede, to hundrede, tre hundrede, fire hundrede, fem hundrede, seks hundrede, syv hundrede, otte hundrede, nor hundrede, tusind .
the thousands are a number of times 1000: tusind, to tusind, tre tusind,…
Powers of 10: 10¹ Ti , 10 ² hundrede , 10 ³ tusind , 10⁴ titusind , 10⁵ hundrede tusind , 10⁶ million, 10⁹ billion , 10¹² billion , 10¹⁸ trillion . See the French numbers.
By respecting this diagram, a number as 3254 states 3 thousand 2 hundred and 4 and half of the 3^e times 20 , is tre tusinde to hundrede og fireoghalvtreds in Danish. But it is rare to meet numbers written in all letters beyond 100, except the even moneys like 1000.

Lexicon

French loans

In the French language, some words come from the Scandinavian Langues, like Inlandsis, Fjord.

In the other direction, many words and Danish expressions come from French, like Tempérament, Café (in the direction Bistro), Restaurant, etc

Examples

Others

code ISO 639 -1: da

See too

Internal bonds

Linguistic

Dictionary of the languages

Languages by family

Indo-European Languages

Germanic Languages

Scandinavian Languages

Eastern Scandinavian languages

Swadesh List of Danish
Pronunciation of Danish - Stød

External bonds

Presentation of Danish: history, uses and specificities of Danish (Ministry for Foreign Affairs)
STELLA - to learn Danish in line
Danish grammar
Freelang dictionary - Danish-French/French-Danish Dictionary.
Danish Proverbs (in French language)
To listen to and learn from the practical Danish expressions (with audio and illustrations)

Beats-smg: Danu kalba Be-X-old: Дацкаямова Nds-nl: Deens Simple: Danish language

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