Danish language
Countries (spoken in): |
Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Germany |
Official status: |
Denmark, Greenland, Faroe Islands, European Union |
Total speakers: |
5,7 million speakers (2005) |
Danish language (dan. Dansk) — is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark.
Standard Danish (rigsdansk) is the language based on dialects spoken in and around the capital of Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish and Norwegian, Danish does not have more than one regional speech norm.
More than 25% of all Danish speakers live in the metropolitan area of the capital and most government agencies, institutions and major businesses keep their main offices in Copenhagen, something that has resulted in a very homogeneous national speech norm.
The sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. It is quite prone to considerable reduction and assimilation of both consonants and vowels even in very formal standard language.
The oldest preserved examples of written Danish (from the Iron and Viking Ages) are in the Runic alphabet. The introduction of Christianity also brought the Latin alphabet to Denmark, and at the end of the High Middle Ages the Runes had more or less been replaced by the Latin letters.
Danish online translators
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Danish online dictionaries
Links by Danish language
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