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Danish and Norwegian Bokmål (by far the most common form of standard Norwegian) are very similar languages, but nevertheless differences between them exist.

Mutual comprehension

Generally, speakers of the three Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) can read in the each other's languages without much trouble. This holds especially of Danish and Norwegian. From the point of view of mutual comprehension, the main difficulties are usually perceived as differences in pronunciation. Danish speakers generally do not understand Norwegian as well as the extremely similar written norms would lead one to expect. Some Norwegians also have problems understanding Danish, but according to a recent scientific investigation Norwegians are better at understanding both Danish and Swedish than the Danes and Swedes are at understanding Norwegian. . Nonetheless, Danish is widely reported to be the most incomprehensible language of the three.

As a whole, Danes and Norwegians with only a little training will fluently understand the other language.

History

In the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway (1536-1814), the official language was Danish. The literate class spoke Dano-Norwegian, i.e. a form of Danish with East Norwegian pronunciation and other minor local peculiarities. After the split between the two countries, Dano-Norwegian remained official in a nearly unchanged form during the entire 19th century until the spelling and grammar reforms of the early 20th century brought its written norm closer to the educated spoken vernacular and to Norwegian rural and urban dialects. Since 1929 the language is known as Bokmål. Later attempts to bring it closer and eventually merge it with the artificially constructed Nynorsk language, based on Norwegian dialects, have failed due to widespread resistance. The most recent grammar and spelling reforms have even permitted some more conservative Danish-like forms that had been banned before.

Writing system

Generally, Norwegian orthography is much simplified, regularized and closer to the actual pronunciation of the words. As a rule, the graphic differences between the two languages do not reflect actual differences in pronunciation; while there are significant phonetic and phonological differences, they aren't expressed in writing. Exceptions are mentioned below.

• In writing, Danish may employ either the letter e or the letter æ to signify the short vowel phoneme /ɛ/. Norwegian only uses e. Example: Danish lægge (to lay), sende (to send) vs Norwegian legge, sende.
• Danish regularly, although not always, uses the letter combinations nd, ld instead of the double consonant letters nn, ll. In most cases this isn't etymologically justified. In Norwegian, only the etymologically justified spellings occur. Example: Danish kende (to know, Old Norse kenna), denne (this , ON masculine accusative denna) and sende (to send, ON senda) vs Norwegian kjenne, denne (but sende); Danish ilde (bad, ON illa), ville (to want, Old Norse vilja) and holde (to hold, Old Norse halda) vs Norwegian ille, ville (but holde).
• Unlike Norwegian, Danish often uses ds instead of double s. Example: ridse (to scratch) and visse (certain ) vs Norwegian risse, visse. Likewise in some other contexts, Danish bedst (best), sidst (last) vs Norwegian best, sist.

• Unlike Norwegian, Danish doesn't use double consonants word-finally. Example: Danish vis can signify both the adjective pronounced /vi:s/ (wise) and the adjective pronounced /ves/ (certain), even though the plural forms of the adjectives, where the consonant occurs medially, are distinguished in writing by means of a double s in the second word (vise vs visse). In contrast, Norwegian does distinguish between vis and viss in the same way as between vise and visse.

• Norwegian has preserved the spellings gj, kj, and skj in the beginning of words when followed by e, æ, ø, while modern Danish has simply g, k and sk. Nowadays, this partly reflects the fact that these words are also pronounced differently in the two languages, see below. Examples: Danish gemme (keep, hide), kær (dear), skønt (although) vs Norwegian gjemme, kjær, skjønt.

• A pair of diphthongs are spelled as ej and øj in Danish, but as ei and øy in Norwegian. The exact pronunciation of these diphthongs is also somewhat different in the two languages, see below, and the different spellings are phonetically justified at least for the second diphthong. Examples: Danish vej (way), løj (lied ) vs Norwegian vei, løy.

• In loanwords, Danish generally tends to partly preserve the spelling of the source language, whereas Norwegian usually adapts the spelling to its own rules in order to reflect the expected pronunciation. Examples: Danish bureau (bureau), chauffør (driver), information (information), garage (garage), zone (zone) vs Norwegian byrå, sjåfør, informasjon, garasje, sone.

Differences in pronunciation

The difference in pronunciation between Norwegian and Danish is much more striking than the difference between Norwegian and Swedish. Although written Norwegian is very similar to Danish, its pronunciation is more like Swedish.

The Danish pronunciation is popularly described as 'softer', which in this case refers mostly to the frequent approximants corresponding to Norwegian and historical plosives in some positions in the word (especially the pronunciation of the letters d and g), as well as the realisation of r as an approximant.

It is often humorously claimed that Danes have an easier time understanding drunk Norwegians than sober ones, as the former often use a more slurred manner of speech that resembles Danish.

German influence

First of all, Danish has adopted many German words and some grammatical influences not so frequently used in Bokmål anymore. An example is names of countries.
Danish and Swedish generally use the German names of countries, or at least the German ending, while Norwegian uses the Latin endings; this means that the usual ending is -a in Norwegian and -en or -et in Danish. The -en and -et endings are the definite articles.

English:   Spain 
Danish:    Spanien
Norwegian: Spania

Grammatical differences

Prepositions

The main difference in use of prepositions in the Danish and Norwegian language is the use of i/på, (in English in/on. In many cases the rules are the same, but there are still many exceptions. For example if you were to say I'm going out (as in out to a bar or a disco) you would say in Norwegian Jeg går på byen (literally I go on the city) but in Danish you would say Jeg går i byen (literally I go in the city – in Dano-Norwegian, this sentence would mean I walk in the city, which it can mean in Danish, too).

Another difference is the use of the definite endings. In Danish, the definite ending is used similarly to the definite article in English, so that I love that man becomes Jeg elsker den mand. In Norwegian, the definite article is still used even if a specific example is already indicated with den (that): I love that man becomes Jeg elsker den mannen in Norwegian, literally I love that the man.

• Danish language
• Dano-Norwegian language
• Language comparison