Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Robth (talk | contribs) at 18:02, 4 June 2006 (clean up, rm cleanup tag). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Danish and Norwegian Bokmål (by far the most common form of standard Norwegian) are very similar languages, but differences between them do exist. The languages are mutually comprehensible, with the primary differences being in pronunciation.

Mutual comprehension

Generally, speakers of the three Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) can read in the each other's languages without great difficulty. This holds especially true of Danish and Norwegian. The primary obstacles to mutual comprehension are 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 urban Norwegian upper class spoke Dano-Norwegian, a form of Danish with East Norwegian pronunciation and other minor local peculiarities. After the two countries separated, Dano-Norwegian remained the official language of Norway, and remained largely unchanged until grammar reforms in the early 20th century led to the standardization of forms more similar to the Norwegian vernacular. Since 1929, this written standard has been known as Bokmål. Later attempts to bring it closer to and eventually merge it with the other Norwegian written standard, Nynorsk, constructed on the basis of Norwegian dialects, have failed due to widespread resistance. Instead, the most recent forms of Bokmål have included certain Danish-like constructions that had previously been deprecated.

Writing system

Generally, Norwegian orthography is more simplified and regularized and closer to actual pronunciation than Danish. 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 are rarely expressed in writing; the few exceptions are noted 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. Today, this in part 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 the oblique case forms of the 1st and 2nd person pronouns and of reflexive pronouns, the ei/ej diphthong is spelled ig in Danish, but eg in Norwegian: mig, dig, sig vs meg, deg, seg.
• 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, spoken Norwegian more closely resembles Swedish.

The Danish pronunciation is typically 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.

Vowels

Arguably the most acoustically striking differences in vowels are that:

• In Danish, the grapheme a corresponds, in most contexts, to the pronunciation of a front, often even open-mid front vowel ( or ). In Norwegian, a is invariably an open back vowel . Example: Danish vs Norwegian (course).
• The grapheme u corresponds to (more or less closed) back vowels in Danish, but usually to a closed central vowel (/ʉ/)in Norwegian. Example: Danish vs Norwegian .

As a whole, Norwegian still preserves the old pairs of short and long vowels, as suggested by the writing system, pretty close to each other, even though the long ones are usually more closed. Thus, the grapheme e corresponds to long (sene , late ) and short (sende , to send), while the grapheme i corresponds to long (sine , oneself's) and short (sinne , anger). In Danish, the tendency of differentiation has lead to a qualitative overlapping: also here, e can stand for long (sene , late ) and for short (sende , to send), but i, besides signifying long (sine , oneself's), has come to correspond to short (sinde , ever) and, to complicate things further, a short pronunciation is maintained in some cases (siste , last). Most Danish vowels have also many segmentally conditioned allophones, especially more open ones when preceded or followed by /r/.

The following is a table that compares the most common Danish and the Norwegian pronunciations of a letter (without taking into account the grouping of sounds into phonemes, as well as many sub-rules, esceptions and subtleties). Note that in many cases, even when the same IPA transcription is used, the sounds may still be some what different in the two languages.

German influence

Danish has adopted many German words and grammatical structures, while Bokmål today uses relatively few such imports. An example is the naming 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. Thus, Spain is known as Spania in Bokmål, but as Spanien in Danish.

Grammatical differences

Certain words present in both languages are used differently in each. This can result in identical sentences meaning different things in the two languages, or in constructions that make sense in one language becoming nonsensical in the other. Examples include:

• må/kan - The word "må" usually means "must" in Norwegian, but can mean "may", "can", or "must" in Danish.
• der/som - Danish has both words for "which", although der is only used as the grammatical subject.
• lave/gjøre - in Danish both lave or gøre (roughly, "make" or "do") occur, in Norwegian only gjøre is used in equivalent expressions.
• nogle/nogen - in Danish the English words "some" (in a plural sense) and "any" can be translated with "nogle" and "nogen", respectively, while in Norwegian both are rendered as "noen" (from Danish "nogen").

Another difference is the use of 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.

Prepositions

The primary difference in preposition use in the Danish and Norwegian languages is the use of i/på, (in English in/on). Although the two are generally used similarly in both languages, in certain cases the two languages choose a different preposition for the same construction.

Notes

1. ^ "Nordmenn forstår nabospråkene best". Retrieved 2006-06-04. (Norwegian)

• Danish language
• Dano-Norwegian language
• Language comparison