Danish phonology

Danish is a Scandinavian language related closely to Swedish and Norwegian, and more distantly to Icelandic and Faroese as well as to the other Germanic languages. However, Danish phonology is highly distinct from those found in these other languages. For example Danish has a suprasegmental feature known as stød to distinguish certain words. Its use of approximants in place of certain consonants is greater than its neighbors', though the Scandinavian languages are largely mutually intelligible, and Danish can easily be read by Swedes and Norwegians.

Consonants
In distinct pronunciation it is possible to distinguish at least 20 consonants in most variants of Danish:


 * are bilabial, are labiodental, whereas  is labialized velar.
 * have been variously described as apical alveolar and laminal denti-alveolar.
 * Intervocalic between two unstressed vowels may be realized as flap.
 * Among stops, are voiceless and aspirated (in case of  also affricated) in syllable onset:  (some scholars analyse them as voiceless aspirated lenis: ). Aspiration is lost in syllable coda.
 * For simplicity, the aspirated and affricated allophone of is often transcribed as /, i.e. as if it were just affricated.
 * In some varieties of standard Danish, is just aspirated, without the affrication.
 * The exact place of articulation of varies; it is more front (pre-velar) before front vowels, and more back (post-velar) before back vowels. Bornholmsk dialect features even stronger fronting of  before front vowels, i.e. to palatal.
 * Voiceless continuants and  are fricatives.
 * is an apical alveolar non-retracted sibilant, but some speakers realize it as dental . It is always voiceless.
 * is only weakly fricated. Between vowels, it is often voiced.
 * occurs only after or . Since  doesn't occur after these phonemes,  can be analyzed as, which is devoiced after voiceless alveolar frication. This makes it unnecessary to postulate a -phoneme in Danish.
 * Among voiced continuants, the lateral is an approximant, whereas  vary between being fricatives and approximants:
 * is either a voiced fricative or, most often, a voiced approximant.
 * is a voiced velarized laminal alveolar approximant (often transcribed ).   It is weak, acoustically similar to  or . British phonetician John C. Wells commented on his blog about the quality of Danish  that to him, it sounds "awfully like a lateral". Very rarely,  can be realised as a voiced laminal alveolar non-sibilant fricative.
 * is an approximant, but when it occurs word-finally after, it is articulated more strongly than usual, sometimes even as a fricative.
 * An additional voiced continuant, namely the voiced velar fricative occurred in older Standard Danish. Some older speakers still use it in high register, but most often as an approximant . Young speakers of contemporary Standard Danish realize it in three ways:
 * (phonemically ) after back vowels and ;
 * (phonemically ) after front vowels;
 * (phonemically ) after.
 * has been variously described as:
 * Uvular fricative or approximant . Initial  is most often an approximant. According to Nina Grønnum, the fricative variant is voiceless.
 * "Supra-pharyngeal" approximant
 * Pharyngeal approximant
 * When emphasising a word, word-initial may be realized as a voiced uvular trill fricative.
 * The alveolar realization of  is very rare; it occurs in some varieties of Jutlandic dialect, and only for some speakers (mostly the elderly). This realization is considered non-standard, even in classical opera singing ( asserts that this is probably the only European language in which this is the case).
 * are voiceless after aspirated, where the aspiration is realized as devoicing of the following sonorant. Note, however, that the sequence  is normally realized as a voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.

The Danish allophones can be analyzed into 15 distinctive consonant phonemes,, where have different pronunciation in syllable onset vs. syllable coda.

Instances of can be analyzed as  as it only occurs before  or  and isn't contrasting with. This makes it unnecessary to postulate an -phoneme in Danish.

are voiceless and lenis in syllable onset:. In syllable coda and sometimes  are opened:. becomes after front vowels and  after back vowels.

Final may be realized as, in particular in distinct speech. In case of the alveolar plosive, in this position it may be either aspirated and affricated or just aspirated.

According to, all consonants are realized as lenis.

In syllable coda, and  are normally pronounced  and. In slow and careful speech  is often = ).  forms a diphthong with the preceding tautosyllabic vowel: e.g. stor "big", næring "nourishment" .  and  coalesce into the long vowels  and  respectively. ,  and  are all rendered as , e.g. læger "doctors" = lære "teach, learn; doctrine" = lærer "teaches, learns; teacher".

, and   are normally rendered as the vowels,  and. , are pretty close to  and, e.g. leve "live" = Leo. and especially are frequently assimilated to  (in the case of  normally, but not exclusively, with an indication of a rounding at the outset), e.g. meget "much, very", Strøget "a central shopping street". In Jutlandic Standard Danish, the word-final phoneme is, so these words are normally pronounced , in that variety.

Vowels
Modern Standard Danish has around 20 different vowel qualities. These vowels are shown here in a narrow transcription. In the rest of the article and in IPA transcriptions of Danish in Wikipedia the diacritics are usually omitted.

The vowel system is unstable, and the contemporary spoken language is experiencing a merger of more of these phonemes. The following vowel pairs may be merged:
 * with
 * with
 * with
 * with
 * with
 * with
 * with

The following vowels are allophones. Phonemes are discussed below.
 * Stressed vowels
 * is close front unrounded .      John Wells's impression is that it is slightly centralized.
 * is close near-front rounded.
 * is close back rounded.
 * has been variously described as near-close front unrounded      and close-mid front unrounded.
 * call the close-mid realization conservative.
 * state that the short version is more open than the long one, but according to, in conservative Danish the difference is very small.
 * is close-mid near-front rounded.
 * state that the short version is more open than the long one, but according to, in conservative Danish the difference is very small.
 * is close-mid back rounded.
 * The short version is more open than the long one, and, in conservative Danish, also more central.
 * In Herning, long tends to be diphthongized to  or.
 * has been variously described as close-mid front unrounded,    mid front unrounded   and open-mid front unrounded.
 * call the mid realization conservative.
 * state that the short version is more open than the long one, but according to, in conservative Danish the difference is very small.
 * has been variously described as mid near-front rounded    and slightly lowered mid near-front rounded.
 * state that the short version is more open than the long one, but according to, in conservative Danish the difference is very small.
 * is near-open near-back somewhat rounded.
 * states that many Standard Copenhagen speakers of his generation generally pronounce as  ( in narrow IPA), and that it is the main variant among younger speakers of Standard Copenhagen.
 * has been variously described as slightly advanced mid back rounded, mid near-back rounded   and slightly lowered mid back rounded.
 * The short version is more open than the long one, and, in conservative Danish, also more central.
 * is open-mid front unrounded.
 * state that the short version is more open than the long one.
 * has been variously described as slightly retracted near-open front unrounded    and near-open front unrounded . For certain older or upper-class speakers, it may be somewhat lower.
 * is near-open near-front rounded.
 * includes an additional phoneme, namely, which phonetically is open-mid near-front rounded .  writes that "Nina Grønnum uses two different symbols for the vowels in these and similar words: gøre she transcribes with  (semi-narrow transcription) and  (narrow transcription), and grøn she transcribes with  (semi-narrow transcription) and  (narrow transcription). Clearly, there is variation within Standard Danish on this point, cf. the end of the present s. 2.2."
 * has been variously described as open central unrounded,   somewhat raised open central unrounded , advanced open back unrounded  and slightly raised open back unrounded.
 * call the back realization conservative.
 * state that the short version is more open than the long one, but according to, in conservative Danish the difference is very small.
 * has been variously described as somewhat lowered open-mid back rounded    and somewhat raised open advanced back rounded.


 * Unstressed vowels
 * is mid central.
 * may be any of the following: near open central unrounded, retracted mid central unrounded , or simply the same as stressed . states that  -  merger is probably the normal case.  transcribes both  and  as.
 * is a lax, relatively close unrounded neutral front vowel. It is an assimilatory variant of.
 * is a lax, relatively close rounded neutral back vowel, which may be realized the same as short . It is an assimilatory variant of.


 * Non-syllabic vowels
 * is a non-syllabic, lax, relatively close unrounded neutral front vowel. Nina Grønnum transcribes it the same as.
 * is a non-syllabic, lax, relatively close rounded neutral back vowel. Nina Grønnum transcribes it as.
 * is a non-syllabic, central retracted neutral vowel (pharyngeal glide), which may be a non-syllabic equivalent of . Nina Grønnum transcribes it as.

and occur only in unstressed syllables. With the exception of, , and  all vowels may be either long and short. Long vowels may have stød, thus making it possible to distinguish 30 different vowels in stressed syllables. However, vowel length and stød are most likely features of the syllable rather than features of the vowel.

These allophones can be analyzed into 11 distinctive vowels, where allophonic alternation mainly depends on whether the vowel occurs before or after. The vowel only occurs in unstressed syllables. All other phonemes may occur both stressed and unstressed.

The three way distinction in front rounded vowels is upheld only before nasals, e.g.  synes, synds, søns ("seems, sin's, son's"). Furthermore, there are only three words where occurs before a nasal in a stressed syllable, i.e. synes, brynje, hymne ("seems, armor, hymn").

The distribution of and  is largely in complementary distribution. However, a two-phoneme interpretation can be justified with reference to the unexpected vowel quality in words like andre, anderledes ("others, different"), and an increasing number of loanwords.

Long and short vowels
Long vowels occur in syllables which were originally open, i.e. there was not more than one short consonant after the vowel. Since the long consonants have been shortened, vowel quantity has become phonological: bane "course" ≠  bande "swear",  ile "hasten" ≠  ilde "badly".

There are long vowels in some syllables which were originally closed, especially in neuters of adjective stems ending in and  (e.g. pænt "nice" ) and in the preterites and participles of verb stems ending in,  and  (e.g.  spiste "ate" ,  fødte "gave birth to" ).

The distinction between long and short vowels is neutralised before tautosyllabic that are all realized as vocoids in coda position.

Current developments
Before labials and velars, is  in most varieties: in other positions, it is  in the conservative speakers.

, the regular allophone of after  is  before labials and alveolars in the language of most younger speakers, thus neutralizing the distinction between  and  before these consonants. Before velars, it is often realised as a diphthong by younger speakers; the difference between strække  "stretch" and strejke  "strike", the only minimal pair, is practically non-existent.

Stress
Unlike the neighboring Mainland Scandinavian languages Swedish and Norwegian, the prosody of Danish does not have phonemic pitch. Stress is phonemic and distinguishes words like billigst "cheapest" and bilist  "car driver". The main rules for the position of the stress are:


 * 1) Inherited words are normally stressed on the first syllable.
 * 2) The prefixes be-, for-, ge-, u- are unstressed, e.g. for’stå "understand", be’tale "pay", u'mulig "impossible" (NB there is also a stressed for- in nouns corresponding to the verbal prefix fore-).
 * 3) In many compound adjectives, especially those ending in -ig and -lig, the stress is replaced from the first to the second syllable, e.g. vidt’løftig "circumstantial", sand'synlig "probable".
 * 4) Words of French origin are stressed on the last syllable (except ), e.g. renæ’ssance, mil’jø.
 * 5) Words of Greek and Latin origin are stressed according to the Latin accent rules, i.e. stress on the penultimate if it is long or else on the antepenultimate, e.g. Ari’stoteles, Ho’rats.
 * 6) The suffixes borrowed from Romance languages -aner, -ansk, -ance, -a/ens, -a/ent, -ere, -i, -ik, -ion, -itet, -ør are stressed, e.g. finge’rere, situa’tion, poli’tik, århusi’aner. The preceding syllable is stressed before the latinate suffixes -isk, -iker, -or, e.g. po’lemisk, po’litiker, radi’ator. The suffix -or is stressed in the plural: radia’torer (colloquial: radi’atorer).
 * 7) Verbs lose their stress (and stød, if any) in certain positions:
 * With an object without a definite or indefinite article: e.g. ’Jens ’spiser et ’brød "Jens eats a loaf" ~ ’Jens spiser ’brød  "Jens eats bread".
 * In names, only the surname is stressed, e.g. Johanne Luise Heiberg.
 * In a fixed phrase with an adverb or an adverbial: ’Helle ’sov ’længe "Helle slept for a long time" ~ ’Helle sov ’længe  "Helle slept late".
 * Before the direction adverbs af, hen, hjem, ind, indad, ned, nedad, op, opad, over, ud, udad, under (but not the location adverbs henne, inde, nede, oppe, ovre, ude): e.g. han ’går ’ude på ’gaden "he walks on the street" ~ han går ’ud på ’gaden  "he walks into the street".

Stød
The original pitch tone has been replaced by an opposition between syllables with and without the stød. The stød is not a separate phoneme, but a suprasegmental feature that may accompany certain syllables; those with a long vowel or that end with a voiced consonant.

The stød is phonemic since many words are kept apart on the basis of the presence or absence of the stød alone, e.g. løber "runner" ≠ løber "runs", ånden "breathing"  ≠ ånden "the spirit".

It is impossible to predict the presence or absence of the stød; it has to be learned. However there are some main rules:


 * 1) Original monosyllabic words have stød. Words that ended in consonant + r, l, n in Old Danish have the stød even though an anaptyctic vowel was later developed. The postposed definite article, which has become an inseparable part of the word, does not influence the word.
 * 2) All umlauting plurals in -er (ODan. -r) have the stød, e.g. hænder "hands".
 * 3) Most presents from strong verbs (ODan. -r) have the stød, e.g. finder "finds". Many of the presents of verbs with a preterite in -te have the stød as well (but not the presents of verbs with a preterite in -ede).
 * 4) Monosyllabic words that originally ended in a short vowel + a single n, r, l, v, ð, g do not have the stød. However, when the definite suffix is added, the stød "returns", e.g. ven ~ vennen  "friend".
 * 5) Stød is frequently avoided in words with the combinations rp, rt, rk, rs, e.g. vers "verse", kort  "card, map"/"short".
 * 6) Most (non-derived) words in -el, -er have the stød. Most words in -en do not have the stød. Nomina agentis in -er do not have the stød.
 * 7) All words with the unstressed prefixes be-, for-, ge- have the stød.
 * 8) There is stød in most compounds that have a replacement of the stress from first to the second syllable.
 * 9) There is frequently the stød in the second part of compound verbs.
 * 10) Monosyllables regularly lose the stød when they are the first part of a compound: mål "target, goal" ~ målmand  "goalkeeper". The vowel is sometimes shortened: tag  "roof" ~ tagterrasse  ”roof terrace”
 * 11) Words of Greek or Latin origin have the stød on a stressed antepenultimate syllable or a stressed last syllable. A stressed penultimate syllable has the stød if the word ends in -er.

Text sample
The sample text is a reading of The North Wind and the Sun.

Orthographic version
Nordenvinden og solen kom engang i strid om, hvem af dem der var den stærkeste. Da så de en vandringsmand, der kom gående, svøbt i en varm kappe. Og de enedes om, at den der først kunne få kappen af ham skulle anses for den stærkeste. Først tog nordenvinden fat, og han blæste og blæste, men jo mere han blæste, des tættere holdt manden kappen sammen om sig. Til sidst måtte nordenvinden give fortabt. Så tog solen fat. Og han skinnende og skinnende, og til sidst fik manden det for varmt og måtte tage kappen af. Da måtte nordenvinden indrømme, at solen var den stærkeste af de to.