10.2. East Scandinavian subgroup

10.2.1. Danish

Danish is spoken by 5mln people in Denmark and about 300000 people in Greenland (14% of the population), USA, Germany, Canada, Norway and the Faroe Islands.

Geographically Denmark is the Jutland Penincula and a total of 483 long-lying islands, 97 inhabited. The number of islands and the fjords of Jutland gives Denmark and disproportionately long coastline which may have been the reason for dialectal varieties.

The chief Danish dialects are: Western Danish (Jutland), Central Danish (Sjaelland), Eastern Danish (Bornholm). Western Danish is often referred to as Jutish. The westernmost and southernmost dialects differ so much from Standard Danish that many people from the Eastern Islands have great difficulty understanding them.

The history of Danish is usually divided into 3 main periods: Old Danish (8000-1100), Middle Danish (1100-1500), and Modern Danish (from 1500).

Old Danish is preserved in 200 runic inscriptions, half of them carved between 950-1025. The longest Old Danish inscription on the gravestone contains the phrase Þur: uiki: Þasi: runa (let Thor sanctify the runes).

The most popular inscriptions on the gravestones are from Jutland (10^th century). They remind us of the Danish kings Horm the Old and Harald the Blue-teethed. The inscription dedicated to Horn’s wife means ‘Horm erected this monument to commemorate his wife, the rescuer of Denmark.’

During the 8^th and 9^th centuries the Danes plundered the rich monasteries in the north of England. Scandinavian invasion influenced certain changes in Old and Middle English. Western scholars even consider Old English an amalgam of dialects spoken by West Germanic Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and North Germanic Danes. The English and the Norsemen might have spoken a kind of pidgin which contributed to a change in the structure of the evolving English language (Sedley, 1990: 255, 261).

Although the language of the Danish runic inscriptions of the Viking Age resembles the Swedish and Norwegian inscriptions, some peculiarities can be singled out: h fell away before r in the 9^th century (Hrolfr in Old Icelandic and RoulfR in Danish), the tightening of old diphthongs (the 10^th century), the insertion of d between n and r (mandr ‘man”).

Early Middle Danish is represented by early Danish laws. No common language existed at that time. The main language territories were Scania, Zealand, and Jutland.

Books of laws and rudimentary medical textbooks in Danish appeared in the 13^th century. Among later Middle Danish works are the Proverbs of Peder Laale, the Lucidarius (an early encyclopedia), and the Rimkroniken (a versified Danish history). Besides, the folk ballads were transmitted orally all over Denmark.

Middle Danish underwent important changes. They include such processes as the levelling of inflections and simplification of grammar (mergence of the masculines and feminines in the common gender, the reduction of a 4-case system in a word-class noun, and some others). Also, loan-words were borrowed, especially from Low German. On the whole, the norm for a common language was Zealandic.

About 1500 Danish began to be used as a national language. The introduction of printing and the extension of publishing activities contributed to the development of a literary vocabulary.

The 16^th-century religious Reformation stimulated religious writing in Denmark. In the middle of the century the first Danish Bible was published, thanks to the efforts of the translator Christern Pedersen (1480-1554). Early hymn-writing was represented by Hans Christensen Sthen (1544-1610). The beginning of Danish dramatic literature is connected with the name of Hieronymous Justesen Ranch (1539-1607).

Danish expanded after it became the official written language of Norway (see Dano-Norwegian). At the same time, Denmark ceded Scania and two other territories to Sweden> in those territories Danish was soon substituted by Swedish.

From about 1500 to about 1700 Latin was used in literary writing. During the last half of the 17^th century, German was spoken at the court, so that Danish was open to German borrowings.

By the 18^th century, Danish had completed its grammatical development; it became a literary language.

Danish orthography has hardly changed since the 18^th century. About 1870 the germination of long vowels was discarded (Hus instead of Huus, tror ‘believe’ instead of troer , and the like).

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the interaction between spoken and written language increased, for the forms of a written language prevailed over the spoken ones. The vocabulary expanded through the assimilation of German, French, and English words.

A standard orthography has been in effect since 1871. The spelling reform of 1948 abolished the capitalization of nouns (which was introduced in the 18^th century), the letter aa was replaced by å, bringing Danish closer to Swedish and Norwegian.

Specific Danish features are:

1) the third consonant shift (see 5.2.3);

1. the reduction of unstressed vowels;

2. the weakening of voiced fricatives in the position after a vowel (vocalization of voiced fricatives, so that v became w, ð turned into j; due to this process, the number of diphthongs in Danish (11) exceeds any other Scandinavian language (none in Swedish, 4 in Norwegian, 4 in Icelandic, 6 in Faroese; some of the diphthongs are found only in Danish (iu, ui, eu, u, yu, öu, øu), only two diphthongs are shared with Norwegian and Icelandic (ai), and Icelandic and Faroese (ou);

3. a specific kind of word stress, known as stød (push): the sound is emphasized through instant weakening and immediate strengthening of air stream, so that the vocal cords are tense and drawn together: facing the obstruction, the air stream increases pressure on the vocal cords, and when the tension weakens, the air stream is pushed out producing the “push” accentuation. Although Danish is the Scandinavian language with dynamic stress (together with Icelandic and Faroese), neither Icelandic nor Faroese has stød. The words pronounced with a push usually consist of one syllable; the words with more syllables, as a rule, have no stød. Historically, Danish stød is connected with the pitch stress (the feature of Swedish and Norwegian). Stød substituted pitch stress, influenced by the reduction of unstressed vowels and the Danish consonant shift.