Danish Orthography

Danish orthography is the system and norms used for writing the Danish language, including spelling and punctuation.

Officially, the norms are set by the Danish language council through the publication of Retskrivningsordbogen.

Danish currently uses a 29-letter Latin-script alphabet with three additional letters: , and . It is identical to the Norwegian alphabet.

The orthography is characterized by a low degree of correspondence between writing and pronunciation.

History

There were spelling reforms in 1872, 1889 (with some changes in 1892), and 1948. These spelling reforms were based in the decisions of the Nordic spelling conference of 1869, whose goal was to abolish spellings that are justified by neither phonetics nor etymology and to bring Danish and Swedish orthographies closer.

The reform of 1872 replaced the letter by in some words (> , > , > ; however, for words with the change was reverted in 1889), abolished the distinction of the homophonous words ''Thing'' and ''Ting'' (however, the distinction between and was retained), replaced the letter by (''Qvinde''>''Kvinde''), deleted the silent after vowels (''faae''>''faa''), abolished doubling of vowels to signify vowel length (''Steen''>''Sten''), replaced by after vowels (''Vei''>''Vej''), deleted the letter in the combinations and except in morpheme borders (''Vædske''>''Væske'', ''Prinds''>''Prins'', but ''islandsk''), and abolished doubling of consonants before other consonants (''sikkre''>''sikre''). In some cases, spelling of loanwords was simplified, but in general the question of spelling loanwords was largely left undecided.

In 1889, was abolished from native words and most loanwords: ''Oxe''>''Okse'', ''Exempel''>''Eksempel''. The letter was deleted from the combinations ''gje, gjæ, gjø, kje, kjæ, kjø'': ''Kjøkken''>''Køkken''. This change reflected a phonological shift in the spoken language towards dropping the j in these consonant clusters, e.g. ''Kjøbenhavn''>''København'' (Copenhagen). Additionally, spelling of loanwords was standardized. In some cases, simplified spellings were adopted ( sounded mostly becomes ; in words of Greek origin are replaced by ), but in many cases original spellings were retained.

Danish formerly used both (in Fraktur) and (in Antiqua), though it was suggested to use for /ø/ and for /œ/, which was also sometimes employed.N. M. Petersen: ''Dänische Sprachlehre für Deutsche'' (i.e. Danish Grammar for Germans), Kopenhagen, 1830, p. 1–3
at books.google
The distinction between and was optionally allowed in 1872, recommended in 1889, but rejected in 1892, although the orthographic dictionaries continued to use and (collated as if they were the same letter) until 1918 and the book '' Folkehöjskolens Sangbog'' continued to use and in its editions as late as 1962.

Earlier instead of , or a ligature of two was also used.N. M. Petersen: ''Dänische Sprachlehre für Deutsche'' (i.e. Danish Grammar for Germans), Kopenhagen, 1830, p. 1–3
at books.google

In 1948 was re-introduced or officially introduced in Danish, replacing . The letter then came from the Swedish alphabet, where it has been in official use since the 18th century. The initial proposal was to place first in the Danish alphabet, before . Its place as the last letter of the alphabet, as in Norwegian, was decided in 1955. The former digraph still occurs in many personal names, e.g. Søren Aabye Kierkegaard as opposed to the would-be modern spelling Søren Åby Kirkegård, as well as in Danish geographical names. However, in geographical names, is allowed as an alternative spelling: '' Aabenraa'' or ''Åbenrå'', ''Aalborg'' or ''Ålborg'', ''Aarhus'' or ''Århus''. remains in use as a transliteration, if the letter is not available for technical reasons. is treated like in alphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent , meaning that while is the first letter of the alphabet, is the last.

All nouns in Danish used to be capitalized, as in German. The reform of 1948 abolished the capitalization of all nouns.

The reform of 1948 also changed the spelling of past tense forms of modal verbs (''kunde, skulde, vilde''): now they are spelled ''kunne, skulle, ville'', the same as the infinitives of those verbs.

Alphabet

The Danish alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1980 when was separated from .

* , and are often transcribed with , and even though the first set is voiceless, the second one is aspirated and the rhotic is uvular, not alveolar.
* In monomorphematic words, vowels are usually short before two or more consonants + .
* Vowels are usually long before a single consonant + .
* In two consecutive vowels the stressed vowel is always long and the unstressed is always short.

The letters are not used in the spelling of native words. Therefore, the phonemic interpretation of letters in loanwords depends on the donating language. However, Danish tends to preserve the original spelling of loanwords. In particular, a that represents is almost never transliterated to in Danish, as would most often happen in Norwegian. Many words originally derived from Latin roots retain in their Danish spelling, for example Norwegian vs Danish . However, the letter representing is mostly normalized to . The letter is used in a few loanwords like (from English), but is normally replaced by in words from Latin (e.g. ) and by in words from French (e.g. ). is normally replaced by in words from Latin, Greek, or French, e.g. ; but is retained: 1) at the beginning of words of Greek origin, where it sounds , e.g. ; 2) before in words of Latin origin, e.g. ; 3) in chemical terms, e.g. ; 4) in loanwords from English, e.g. ; 5) at the end of French loanwords, where it is silent, e.g. . The verb , derived from the name of the letter itself, can be spelled either way. The letter is also used instead of ''eks-'' in abbreviations: , also written .

The "foreign" letters also sometimes appear in the spelling of otherwise-indigenous family names. For example, many of the Danish families that use the surname ''Skov'' (literally: "Woods") spell it ''Schou''. Also has been restored in some geographical names: '' Nexø'', '' Gladsaxe'', '' Faxe''.

The difference between the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Swedish uses. instead of , and instead of — similar to German. Also, the collating order for these three letters is different: Å, Ä, Ö.

In current Danish, is recognized as a separate letter from . The transition was made in 1980; before that, was considered to be a variation of and words using it were alphabetized accordingly (e.g.: "Wales, Vallø, Washington, Wedellsborg, Vendsyssel"). The Danish version of the alphabet song still states that the alphabet has 28 letters; the last line reads , i.e. "that makes twenty-eight". However, today the letter is considered an official letter.

Diacritics

Standard Danish orthography has no compulsory diacritics, but allows the use of an acute accent for disambiguation, and some words, such as 'avenue' or 'idea', are listed in the spelling dictionary both with and without the accent. An accent on can be used to mark a stressed syllable in one of a pair of homographs that have different stresses, for example (a boy) versus (one boy), i.e. to disambiguate the use of as indefinite article) and as the numeral 'one'. Any vowel (though not recommended on ) may be written with an accent to indicate stress or emphasis on a word, either to clarify the meaning of the sentence, the form of a word or to ease the reading otherwise. For example: ("I was standing"), versus ("I got out of bed"); ("copy", imperative of verb), versus ("copies", plural of noun). Most often, however, such distinctions are made using typographical emphasis (italics, underlining) or simply left to the reader to infer from the context, and the use of accents in such cases may appear dated.

The current Danish official spelling dictionary does not use diacritics other than in loanwords: , , ; in the spelling rules, it is stated that foreign letters and diacritics may occur in proper names and in words and texts quoted from other languages. The grave accent may occur on , i.e. , in a restricted number of words and formulations of French origin, such as and . These spellings were part of the Retskrivningsordbog until 1986, when they were replaced by and . Other diacritics such as the circumflex, diaeresis and tilde are only found on words from other languages that use them.

Principles

The Danish Language Council makes use of two overall principles when deciding the spelling norms: the principle of language use () and the principle of tradition (). These principles are established by ministerial deed.

The principle of tradition states that spelling, generally, should not change. This can lead to spellings that do not match the pronunciation. Secondarily, the principle means that loanwords should be adapted to existing Danish spelling norms, e.g. based on how earlier loanwords have been adapted. This includes the lack of adaption, which is common for English loanwords.

The principle of language use states that the norm should be set on the basis of the written practice among "good and certain" language users. A deviation from existing norms can thus become a norm (or replace an earlier norm) if enough exemplary writers make use of it, thus breaking the principle of tradition.

Who constitutes a "good and certain" () language user is widely discussed,
but usually includes people who work professionally with language or communication in some way.

Spelling-to-sound correspondence

The following tables lists graphemes used in Danish and phonemes they represent.

Computing standards

In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:

* DS 2089, later established in international standard ISO 646
* IBM PC code page 865
* ISO 8859-1
* Unicode

See also

*
*
* Danish braille
* Danish phonology
* Icelandic orthography
* Futhark, the Germanic runes used formerly
* Spelling alphabets
* Swedish alphabet

References

External links

Type Danish characters online

Reform proposals of the Nordish spelling conference of 1869 (in Danish)

1889 spelling reform (in Danish)

1948 spelling reform (in Danish)

Current orthographic rules (in Danish)

Spelling of loanwords (in Danish)

Danish spelling reforms (in Danish)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Danish Orthography

Orthography
Indo-European Latin-script orthographies