Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by approximately six million people.

Most speakers live in and around Denmark, but communities exist in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. It also holds minority status in the Southern Schleswig region of Germany. Smaller groups of speakers reside in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Danish is part of a larger linguistic family known as the North Germanic or Scandinavian languages. These languages descend from Old Norse, the common tongue of the Viking Era.

This shared heritage connects Danish to its neighbors through a long history of movement and contact.

The evolution of Danish involves specific phonetic and structural changes. Historically, Danish emerged from Old East Norse, which separated from Old West Norse through certain vowel shifts. For example, the Old West Norse diphthong 'æi' became the monophthong 'e' in Danish. Another change saw 'au' transition into 'ø'. These shifts helped define the language's unique sound. Today, the language is characterized by a very large vowel inventory. It contains 27 phonemically distinctive vowels that change word meanings.

Danish also features a unique prosody called stød. This is a laryngeal phonation type, or a specific sound made in the throat. Because of these complex sounds and "weak" consonants, some find Danish difficult to acquire. Some evidence suggests children may be slower to master these specific phonological distinctions.

Danish can be categorized into three primary dialect areas. These are Jutlandic, which is West Danish, and Insular Danish, which includes the standard variety. The third is East Danish, which includes Bornholmian and Scanian.

Some linguists view Scandinavian languages as a dialect continuum. In this view, East Danish acts as an intermediary between Danish and Swedish. For instance, Scanian can be seen as a "Swedified" East Danish dialect. The language also uses a gender system for nouns, adjectives, and demonstrative pronouns. These are divided into common and neutral genders. While it once had a complex case system, only remnants remain in the pronouns, much like in English.

The history of written Danish changed significantly during the 16th century. Before this, Danish was a continuum of dialects with no standard spelling. The Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press helped create a standard variety. This standard was based on the dialect spoken in Copenhagen. It spread through the administration and the education system. The first printed book in Danish was the Rhyming Chronicle in 1495.

Later, the first complete Danish Bible was published in 1550. Christiern Pedersen's translation provided the orthographic choices that set the standard for future writing.

Nationalism also played a major role in the development of the language. Following the loss of territory to Germany and Sweden, a nationalist movement emerged. This movement adopted Danish as a symbol of national identity. This led to a surge in the language's popularity during the 18th and 19th centuries. During this time, many major works of literature were produced. While traditional dialects have mostly disappeared, regional variants of the standard language still exist. Modern Danish also shows differences between generations, with youth language remaining highly innovative.

The vocabulary of Danish is a mix of ancient roots and many foreign loans. Approximately 2,000 uncompounded words come from Old Norse and Proto-Indo-European. Of these, 1,200 are nouns, 500 are verbs, and 180 are adjectives.

Low German had a massive impact during the Middle Ages. In fact, 100 of the 500 most frequently used Danish words are loans from Middle Low German. In the 17th and 18th centuries, French and standard German became more influential. Since World War II, English has become the primary source for new loanwords. In contemporary standard texts, Middle Low German loans account for 16–17% of the vocabulary. Graeco-Latin loans make up 4–8%, while French accounts for 2–4%.

Understanding Danish is closely tied to the concept of mutual intelligibility. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are often called the "mainland Scandinavian" languages. They are largely mutually intelligible, meaning speakers can often understand one another. However, this understanding is often asymmetric. Norwegian speakers generally understand both Danish and Swedish better than the reverse.

This is partly because Norwegian has a tradition of using Danish as a written language. This shared history has created similarities in vocabulary. This contrasts with "insular Scandinavian" languages like Icelandic and Faroese, which are not mutually intelligible with Danish. This complex web of shared words and sounds shows how closely these North Germanic cultures are linked.