Hi, and welcome to this introduction
to the Danish language. I’m Adam, and I’ll be your teacher. Danish is spoken natively by about 5,4 million people. It is the primary and official language of Denmark where it is the first language
of about 90% of the population and the second language of the remaining 10%. Danish is also spoken by between
10 and 20 thousand people across the border in the province
of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany where it is recognized and protected
as a minority language. It is also spoken and used
in the Faroe Islands and in Greenland two self-governing countries
within the Kingdom of Denmark. In the Faroe Islands, Danish is spoken
by some 1500 people which amounts to about 3% of the total population most of whom have their roots in Denmark. Together with Faroese, Danish is
an official language on the islands and is spoken as a second language
by the entire population. It has a strong position in areas such as
economy, education and popular culture but is nevertheless not a dominant language
in Faroese society in general. In Greenland, the situation is a little bit different. Due to historical policies of danification there’s been tendencies of language shift
among many Greenlanders living in major towns and Danish is now the primary language
of about 10–15% of the population with an additional 10–20% being functionally bilingual though like in the Faroes, many of these
have their roots in Denmark as well. Among the approximately 70%
with Greenlandic as their only mother tongue only about a third are also proficient in Danish. And this fact, combined with the colonial history has led to a more pronounced conflict
between Danish and Greenlandic and since 2009, Danish is no longer
an official language of the island though in practice, it still retains a dominant position in administration, economy,
education and popular culture. Finally, Danish is one of the 24 official languages
of the European Union as well as a working language of the Nordic Council. And in the North, there’s not only a council
but also a Nordic Language Convention which gives speakers of the five main official languages the right to use their own language with authorities
and public institutions in the entire Nordic area. It is also worth pointing out that due to being subject to Danish hegemony
for more than 300 years the Danish language has had a lasting impact
on Iceland and Norway as well. In Iceland, Danish is still a mandatory school subject and although general knowledge can vary quite a lot a substantial amount of Icelanders
have at least a basic knowledge of the language. Traditionally, Danish was an important language
of education and popular culture in Iceland as well but has been more or less phased out
in favor of the native Icelandic in the past half century. In Norway, Danish does not play
any significant role in itself at all but the historical influence of Danish
on the Norwegian language has been huge and cannot in any way be underestimated. Norwegian has borrowed
large amounts of vocabulary from Danish many prestigious urban dialects of Norway
are originally Danish-Norwegian hybrid varieties and one of the two Norwegian written languages
is in fact based on the Danish one all leading to widescale similarities
between the two languages. The Danish alphabet consists of the Latin alphabet with three extra letters attached at the end. These extra letters represent vowels,
and are proper letters in their own right and are never regarded as variations of ae, o or a. It should be noted, however, that until 1948 the combination aa was used instead of the letter å,
a variety still found in many Danish names and several cities, such as
Aarhus, Aalborg and Aabenraa have in fact resisted or reversed the change altogether. As for the regular letters: c, q, w, x and z
are only used in loanwords and personal names. Regarding pronunciation, we can
circle in on four important features. First of all, Danish has a lot of vowels,
forming ten distinct vocalic pairs where every vowel can be long or short, as in: and also take on different shapes depending on
the adjacent consonants, as in: Secondly, like French and German Danish has a uvular r, pronounced
with the back of the tongue which is also vocalized following a vowel,
for example in: Thirdly, Danish often turns these consonants
into approximants, which is a kind of half-vocalic sound when they follow a vowel. This is a big characteristic of Danish,
and can be seen in words such as: Finally, we have the concept of 'stød',
which literally means a push, thrust or jolt and which is probably the most infamous feature
of the Danish language by far. This is basically a kind of glottal closure where the vocal cords are narrowed together
to form a kind of cut-off sound to the word in question. It’s somewhat similar to the glottal stop found in English words in casual pronunciations
such as 'bet', 'can’t' and British 'lettuce'. The presence of stød is phonemic,
and can change the meaning of a word entirely and there are multiple pairs in Danish
where stød is the only difference in pronunciation for example: Grammar wise, Danish has no cases,
but two genders: common gender and neuter. The difference between the two genders
is clearly visible in the articles of nouns as in the indefinite words 'en kat' and 'et hus',
meaning 'a cat' and 'a house' respectively. As for the definite article,
this is in fact attached at the end of words which is typical of Scandinavian languages. So from the two indefinite forms just mentioned we can form the definite forms 'katten' and 'huset',
meaning 'the cat' and 'the house'. As for the verbs, there is no conjugation for person so a verb like 'svømme', meaning 'to swim',
is 'svømmer' in the present tense 'svømmede' in the past tense,
and 'har svømmet' in the perfect no matter what person is doing the swimming. This is of course unlike English, where you say
for example 'I swim', but 'he swims', and so on. Another important feature of Danish grammar,
which it shares with most other Germanic languages is the so called V2, or verb-second, word order. What this means, is that in a main clause,
the verb will always be in the second position regardless of what stands in front of it. As an example, let’s take the sentence 'I see a dog',
which in Danish is 'Jeg ser en hund'. If we then add the word 'nu', meaning 'now',
to expand our sentence to 'Now I see a dog' we need to swap the verb and the subject around,
since the verb wants to stay in the second position and so we get: 'Nu ser jeg en hund'. This is a cornerstone of Danish syntax, and often one of the harder things to master
for people learning Danish as a second language. Internally, Danish is divided into three different
dialect groups: Jutish, Insular, and Eastern Danish. Traditionally, these groups were very distinct and consisted of a bunch of further subdivisions
and local dialects, which could often differ from each other
to the point of non-comprehension. But today, most traditional dialects have been replaced by a spoken standard based on Copenhagen
prestige dialects and on the written language. The traditional division is still relevant, however since regional variation still tends to correspond to it. But compared to the traditional dialects the differences between modern dialects of Danish
are quite insignificant in comparison and mainly concern pronunciation
and some minor variations in grammar and vocabulary. But the traditional dialects aren’t completely gone either and in some places they’re still being used
as a local language for example in the region of South Jutland where the traditional South Jutish dialect
is still commonly spoken and whose speakers are generally bilingual
in it and in Standard Danish meaning that it essentially functions
as an unrecognized minority language. On a greater scale, Danish is a North Germanic,
or Nordic, language, of the Indo-European language family. This makes it closely related to languages
such as Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic more distantly related to languages
such as English, Dutch and German and very distantly related to languages
such as French, Spanish, Russian, Greek and Hindi. The closest relatives of Danish
are Swedish and Norwegian and the three languages are generally considered
to be mutually intelligible. What this means is, that a speaker of one language
can generally use their own language with speakers of the other two,
and expect to be understood. In theory, that is. In practice, it tends to vary quite a lot,
especially when Danish is involved as its pronunciation differs quite considerably
from the other two languages where the pronunciation is instead a lot more similar. Writing wise though, there is usually less trouble as the Danish written language
doesn’t differ from the other two in the same way as the pronunciation at all. As an example of this here is the sentence ‘I gave the cat new food’
in all three of them, in Danish pronounced as: and from this it's quite apparent
how the three languages indeed are very closely related to each other. Finally, I’m going to let you listen and read along
to a short passage in Danish read by a native speaker from Copenhagen. The text in question is an excerpt from the novel
'We, the Drowned' by Carsten Jensen. The original title is 'Vi, de druknede',
and it is an international bestseller having been translated into more than 20 languages. And with this, it’s time to round off
this presentation of the Danish language. If you wanna see more introductions
like this one, or other videos about Danish make sure to keep an eye on this channel. Mange tak, and thank you for watching!
Det var faktisk en rigtig god video. Godt lavet, god introduktion til sproget og må være ærlig og indrømme at som en person født og opvokset i Danmark er det utroligt hvor mange ting som jeg bare ved, men egentlig ikke kender de grammatiske regler for.
Super video! :)
Jeg forstår dog stadig ikke, hvordan man kommer frem til, at "standard dansk" er baseret på københavnsk. Eller i hvert fald ikke på nutidig københavnsk. Det kan muligvist være baseret på en eller anden uddød københavnerdialekt, men det aner jeg ikke noget om.
Københavnsk er en af de mest unikke dialekter i hele landet, vil jeg påstå, og man kan oftest genkende den med det samme, da den bare ikke er som de andre. Var den ikke fra vores største by (og dermed en dialekt, man jævnligt hører), ville den dialekt blive set som lige så mærkelig som vestjysk osv. vil jeg påstå, da den absolut er lige så nem at genkende.
Derimod kan jeg have enormt svært ved at høre, hvor en jyde kommer fra f.eks. med mindre man kommer rigtigt ud i "yderområderne", og jeg er endda selv jyde, så jeg burde jo nok være vant til at høre den slags, og derfor bemærke evt. forskelle. Mange fynboer taler også noget, som minder meget om jysk, vil jeg mene.
Når jeg tænker på "skoledansk", "tv-dansk" osv. så er det bestemt ikke den københavnske dialekt, som er standarden da. Selvfølgelig vil en reel københavner på TV jo nok tale københavnsk, men den der Nyhederne-dansk måde at tale på mangler fuldstændigt det, som gør københavnsk så nem at genkende.
Man kan også se en københavner-forskel i videoen her. "Et hus" - "Hused" (Blød D-lyd i enden). Når man hører den udtale, er det helt åbenlyst, hvor i verden, vedkommende kommer fra. Jeg skal ikke kunne sige, om det udtales sådan i hele det område, som vi jyder ser som København, om en fra Helsingør også udtaler det sådan, om det kun udtales sådan i det egentlige København eller lign. men man gør det bestemt ikke herovre i min del af Jylland. Det er derfor sådan en ting, som straks får mig til at tænke "Det må være en københavner.". Københavnere har meget tydelige bløde D'er i et hav af ord, som slet ikke indholder D. "Meget" bliver til "Maaard" (med blødt D) osv. Det er ikke så overraskende, at det som regel er den københavnske dialekt, som svenskerne gør grin med, når de taler om "grötig", "potatisspråk" osv. vil jeg mene. :P
Udtalen af "Huset" kan godt variere lidt herovre også, men jeg hører det oftest som en lyd, der ligger et eller andet sted mellem en T-lyd og en hård D-lyd. Om det minder mest om T eller hårdt D kan variere, men jeg ved ikke, om det handler om dialekt eller bare personlig udtale, må jeg indrømme.
Skide godt