Danish phonology

The phonology of Danish is similar to that of the other closely related Scandinavian languages, Swedish and Norwegian, but it also has distinct features setting it apart. For example, Danish has a suprasegmental feature known as stød which is a kind of laryngeal phonation that is used phonemically. It also exhibits extensive lenition of plosives, which is noticeably more common than in the neighboring languages. Because of that and a few other things, spoken Danish is rather hard to understand for Norwegians and Swedes, although they can easily read it.

Consonants

Danish has at least 17 consonant phonemes:

occur only syllable-initially and only syllable-finally. is phonemically and is the syllable-final allophone of . also occurs syllable-initially in English loans, along with , but syllable-initial is in free variation with and these are not considered part of the phonological inventory of Danish.

occurs only before short vowels and stems morphophonologically, in native words, from or preceding and, in French loans, from a distinct . Beyond morphological boundaries, may also appear as the result of an optional assimilation of before .

are apical alveolar , although some speakers realize dentally ().

are voiceless aspirated, with also affricated: . The affricate is often transcribed with . In some varieties of standard Danish (but not the Copenhagen dialect), is just aspirated, without the affrication.

are voiceless unaspirated . In syllable codas, weak, partial voicing may accompany them especially when between voiced sounds. Utterance-final may be realized as , particularly in distinct speech. Intervocalic may be realized as a voiced flap , as in ''nordisk'' 'Nordic'.

is only weakly fricated. Between vowels, it is often voiced .

can be a voiced fricative , but is most often a voiced approximant .

– the so-called "soft d" ( da, blødt d) – is a velarized laminal alveolar approximant . It is acoustically similar to the cardinal vowels and . It is commonly perceived by non-native speakers of Danish as . Very rarely, can be realized as a fricative.

Syllable-initially, is a voiced uvular fricative or, more commonly, an approximant . According to Nina Grønnum, the fricative variant is voiceless . Its precise place of articulation has been described as pharyngeal, or more broadly, as "supra-pharyngeal". When emphasizing a word, word-initial may be realized as a voiced uvular fricative trill . In syllable-final position, is realized as .

The alveolar realization of is very rare. According to , it occurs in some varieties of Jutlandic dialect, and only for some speakers (mostly the elderly). The alveolar realization is considered non-standard, even in classical opera singing – it is probably the only European language in which this is the case. According to , it occurs (or used to occur until recently) in very old forms of certain conservative dialects in Northern Jutland and Bornholm.

are voiceless after , where the aspiration is realized as devoicing of the following consonant, so that is normally realized as an alveolo-palatal affricate .

A voiced velar continuant occurred distinctively in older Standard Danish. Some older speakers still use it in high register, most often as an approximant . It corresponds to , after back vowels and , and to , after front vowels and , in contemporary Standard Danish.

is elided after , and possibly also after , and less commonly after . Similarly, is elided after , and possibly also after , and less commonly after .

Vowels

Modern Standard Danish has around 20 different vowel qualities. These vowels are shown below in a narrow transcription.

and occur only in unstressed syllables and thus can only be short. Long vowels may have stød, thus making it possible to distinguish 30 different vowels in stressed syllables. However, vowel length and stød are most likely features of the syllable rather than of the vowel.

The 26 vowel phonemes of Standard Danish (14 short and 12 long) correspond to 21 morphophonemes (11 short and 10 long).

The three way distinction in front rounded vowels is upheld only before nasals, e.g. ''synes, synds, søns'' ('seems', 'sin's', 'son's').

and on the one hand and and on the other are largely in complementary distribution. However, a two-phoneme interpretation can be justified with reference to the unexpected vowel quality in words like ''andre'' 'others' or ''anderledes'' 'different', and an increasing number of loanwords.

Some phonemes and phones that only occur in unstressed position often merge with full phonemes and phones:
* with , leading to a variable merger of and (the former can be or instead, in which case no merger takes place).
* with . According to , these sounds are usually merged, the main difference being the greater variability in the realizations of , which only occurs in unstressed position. In the narrow phonetic transcriptions of and , the two sounds are treated as identical.

The vowel system is unstable, and according to a study by Ejstrup & Hansen (2004), the contemporary spoken language might be experiencing a merger of several of these vowels. The following vowel pairs may be merged by some speakers (only vowels not adjacent to , r, were analyzed):
* with (11 out of 18 speakers)
* with (7 out of 18)
* with (5 out of 18)
* with (5 out of 18)
* with (4 out of 18)
* with (3 out of 18)
* with (2 out of 18)
* with (1 out of 18)

Schwa-assimilation

In addition to , which stems from the fusion of , , or , assimilates to adjacent sonorants in a variety of ways:

* assimilates to preceding long vowels: → ''die'' 'nurse', → ''due'' 'pigeon'.
* after a long vowel other than and after a long vowel other than become monophthongs : → ''læge'' 'doctor', → ''låge'' 'gate'. In innovative varieties, the vowels may become shorter: .
* A sonorant consonant () and , in either order, become a syllabic consonant .
** It is longer after a short vowel than after a long one: → ''bade'' 'bathe', → ''hule'' 'cave', → ''spidde'' 'spear', → ''kulde'' 'cold'.
** When is placed between two sonorant consonants, the second becomes syllabic: → ''saddel'' 'saddle', → ''hyldet'' 'praised'.
** The place of a syllabic nasal () assimilates to that of the preceding consonant: → ''lappen'' 'the patch', → ''lakken'' 'varnishes'.

In casual speech, may also be elided after an obstruent. If that occurs after a long vowel, the syllable with the elided may be retained by lengthening the vowel preceding the consonant: → ''håbe'' 'hope'.

Glottal stop insertion

A word-initial vowel may be preceded by a glottal stop when preceded by a vowel. This is known as .

Prosody

Stress, and intonation are prosodic features used in Danish phonology. Durational distinctions are also present, but usually considered part of the vowel phonemes.

Stress

Unlike the neighboring Scandinavian languages Swedish and Norwegian, the prosody of Danish does not have phonemic pitch. Stress is phonemic and distinguishes words like ''billigst'' ('cheapest') and ''bilist'' ('car driver'). In syntactic phrases, verbs lose their stress (and stød, if any) with an object without a definite or indefinite article: e.g. ''ˈJens ˈspiser et ˈbrød'' ('Jens eats a loaf') ~ ''ˈJens spiser ˈbrød'' ('Jens eats bread'). In names, only the surname is stressed, e.g. '' Johanne Luise Heiberg''.

Stød

In a number of words, stressed syllables with a long vowel or with a short vowel and a sonorant may exhibit a prosodic feature called ''stød'' ('thrust'). Acoustically, vowels with stød tend to be a little shorter and feature creaky voice. Historically, this feature operated as a redundant aspect of stress on monosyllabic words that had either a long vowel or final voiced consonant. Since the creation of new monosyllabic words, this association with monosyllables is no longer as strong. Some other tendencies include:
*Polysyllabic words with the nominal definite suffix ''-et'' may exhibit stød
*Polysyllabic loanwords with final stress on either a long vowel or a vowel with a final sonorant typically feature stød

Diphthongs with an underlying long vowel always have stød.

Intonation

Danish intonation has been described by Nina Grønnum as a hierarchical model where components such as the stress group, sentence type and prosodic phrase are combined, and where the stress group is the main intonation unit. In Copenhagen Standard Danish, the stress group mainly has a certain pitch pattern that reaches its lowest peak on the stressed syllable followed by its highest peak on the following unstressed syllable, after which it declines gradually until the next stress group. However, the pitch pattern is placed differently in relation to the stressed syllable in other varieties of Danish

The pitch pattern of an utterance can also vary depending on the type of utterance, with declaratives having a steep falling pitch and questions displaying a level pitch, with other categories in between. Other studies on pitch in Danish take into account the interactional function of the utterance or other unit: The climax of a storytelling can be marked through a wide pitch pattern while pitch movements at the end of a turn can be used for the timing of turn-taking. A number of studies also treat various uses of interjections with different pitch patterns (such as with rising or falling pitch) as relating to the previous turn, such as for the purpose of matching a stance expressed by the previous speaker. Note that the realization of also affects pitch, while some varieties also realize it primarily with pitch.

Text sample

The sample text is an indistinct reading of the first sentence of The North Wind and the Sun.

Orthographic version

Nordenvinden og solen kom engang i strid om, hvem af dem der var den stærkeste.

Broad phonetic transcription

References

Bibliography

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Further reading

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External links

IPA for Danish


Overview of the Danish sound system

{{Language phonologies

phonology
Germanic phonologies