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Danish and Norwegian alphabet

February 17, 2023

For broader coverage of this topic, see Danish orthography and Norwegian orthography.

The Danish and Norwegian alphabets, together called the Dano-Norwegian alphabet, is the set of symbols, forming a variant of the Latin alphabet, used for writing the Danish and Norwegian languages. It has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian) and 1948 (Danish):

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Æ Ø Å
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z æ ø å

The letters c, q, w, x and z are not used in the spelling of indigenous words. They are rarely used in Norwegian, where loan words routinely have their orthography adapted to the native sound system. Conversely, Danish has a greater tendency to preserve loan words' original spellings. In particular, a c that represents /s/ is almost never normalized to s in Danish, as would most often happen in Norwegian. Many words originally derived from Latin roots retain c in their Danish spelling, for example Norwegian sentrum vs Danish centrum.

The "foreign" letters also sometimes appear in the spelling of otherwise-indigenous family names. For example, many of the Danish families that use the surname Skov (meaning 'forest') spell it Schou.

The difference between the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Swedish uses the variant Ä instead of Æ, and the variant Ö instead of Ø, similarly to German. Also, the collating order for these three letters is different in Swedish: Å, Ä, Ö. Æ and Ä are sorted together in all Scandinavian languages, as well as Finnish, and so are Ø and Ö.

Letters and their names

The Danish alphabet read by a Dane.

The below pronunciations of the names of the letters do not necessarily represent how the letters are used to represent sounds. The list includes the number of each letter when following official ordering.

Letter Number Danish name Norwegian name
A a 1 [ɛˀ] [ɑː]
B b 2 [pe̝ˀ] [beː]
C c 3 [se̝ˀ] [seː]
D d 4 [te̝ˀ] [deː]
E e 5 [e̝ˀ] [eː]
F f 6 [ef] [ɛfː]
G g 7 [ke̝ˀ] [ɡeː]
H h 8 [hɔˀ] [hoː]
I i 9 [iˀ] [iː]
J j 10 [jʌð] [jeː] or [jɔdː]
K k 11 [kʰɔˀ] [koː]
L l 12 [el] [ɛlː]
M m 13 [em] [ɛmː]
N n 14 [en] [ɛnː]
O o 15 [oˀ] [uː]
P p 16 [pʰe̝ˀ] [peː]
Q q 17 [kʰuˀ] [kʉː]
R r 18 [ɛɐ̯] [ærː]
S s 19 [es] [ɛsː]
T t 20 [tsʰe̝ˀ] [teː]
U u 21 [uˀ] [ʉː]
V v 22 [ve̝ˀ] [veː]
W w 23 [tʌpəlve̝ˀ][a] [ˈdɔ̀bːl̩tˌveː][a]
X x 24 [eks] [ɛks]
Y y 25 [yˀ] [yː]
Z z 26 [set] [sɛtː]
Æ æ 27 [eˀ] [æː]
Ø ø 28 [øˀ] [øː]
Å å 29 [ɔˀ] [oː]
The Norwegian alphabet read by a Norwegian, with the three most common pronunciations of R.
  1. ^ a b i.e. 'double v'.

Ordering

Danish

When sorting in alphabetical order in Danish, the numbers provided in the list above is used. Some peculiarities exist, however.

  • The digraph aa is sorted as if it was 'å' if it represents one vowel sound. This means it is sorted like two adjacent cases of a when it represents two syllables, e.g. as a result of a compound (e.g. klimaanlæg 'air conditioner'). It does not matter which vowel sound is represented, meaning that words like afrikaans 'Afrikaans' and kanaanæer 'Canaanite' should be sorted as if they have an å despite not containing any sounds commonly represented by å. If two entries contain the exact same letters except å and aa, the form with å comes first.
  • If two entries only differ in capitalization, but otherwise contain the exact same letters, the word with capitalization comes first.
  • Accents are not taken into account, except when it is the only difference, in which case the form without an accent comes first.
  • A number of rules for which letter an unofficial letter should count as exist, depending on the sound it represents. In the case of an official vs. unofficial letter being the only difference in the whole entry, the word with an official letter comes first.
  • For expressions of multiple words (e.g. a capella), one can choose between ignoring the space or sorting the space, the lack of any letter, first.[1]

Diacritics

Danish

Danish orthography has no compulsory diacritics, but allows the use of an acute accent (accent aigu) for disambiguation. Most often, an accent on e marks a stressed syllable in one of a pair of homographs that have different stresses, for example en dreng 'a boy' versus én dreng 'one boy', or alle 'all, every, everyone' versus allé 'avenue'. Less often, any vowel including å (where it is however recommended to avoid diacritics) may be accented to indicate stress on the word, as this can disambiguate the meaning of the sentence or ease the reading otherwise. For example: jeg stód op 'I was standing' versus jeg stod óp 'I got out of bed' (i.e. unit accentuation). Alternatively, some of these distinctions can be made using typographical emphasis (italics, underlining). The Retskrivningsordbogen dictionary explicitly allows the use of further diacritics when quoting names from other languages.[2] This also means that the ring above å and the strike through ø are not regarded as diacritics, as these are separate letters.

Norwegian

Nynorsk uses several letters with diacritic signs: é, è, ê, ó, ò, â, and ô. The diacritic signs are not compulsory,[3] but can be added to clarify the meaning of words (homonyms) that would otherwise be identical. One example is ein gut ("a boy") versus éin gut ("one boy"). Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics, most notably ü, á, à and é,[citation needed] following the conventions of the original language. The Norwegian vowels æ, ø and å never take diacritics.

Bokmål is mostly spelled without diacritic signs. The only exception is one word of Norwegian origin, namely fôr, to be distinguished from for (see below) as well as any subsequent compound words, eg kåpefôr (coat lining) and dyrefôr (animal feed). There are also a small number of words in Norwegian which use the acute accent. The words are allé (avenue), diaré (diarrhea), kafé (cafe), idé (idea), entré (entrance), komité (committee), kupé (compartment), moské (mosque), supé (supper), trofé (trophy) and diskré (discreet).[3] An acute accent can also be used to differentiate en (a) from én (one) eg. én gutt (one boy) en gutt (a boy).

The diacritic signs in use include the acute accent, grave accent and the circumflex. A common example of how the diacritics change the meaning of a word, is for:

  • for (preposition. for or to), pronounced [ˈfɔrː]
  • fór (verb. went, in the sense left), pronounced [ˈfuːr]
  • fòr (noun. furrow, only Nynorsk), pronounced [ˈfɔːr]
  • fôr (noun. fodder), pronounced [ˈfuːr], the circumflex indicating the elision of the edh from the Norse spelling (foðr → fôr; veðr → vêr)
  • fôr (noun lining, as in a garment)

Also used is the cedille, but only on a c in loanwords, indicating the c should be pronounced as an s.[4]

  • Françoise
  • provençalsk
  • Curaçao

A macron-like diacritic can be used for decorative purposes both in handwritten and computed Bokmål and Nynorsk or to denote vowel length such as in dū (you), lā (infinitive form of to let), lēser (present form of "to read") and lūft (air). The diacritic is entirely optional, carries no IPA value and is seldom used in modern Norwegian outside of handwriting.

History

The letter Å (HTML å) was introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing Aa or aa. The new letter came from the Swedish alphabet, where it has been in official use since the 16th century.[5] Similarly, the letter Å was introduced in Danish in 1948, but the final decision on its place in the alphabet was not made. The initial proposal was to place it first, before A. Its place as the last letter of the alphabet, as in Norwegian, was decided in 1955.[6] The former digraph Aa still occurs in personal names, and in Danish geographical names. In Norway, geographical names tend to follow the current orthography, meaning that the letter å will be used. Family names may not follow modern orthography, and therefore retain the digraph aa where å would be used today. Aa remains in use as a transliteration, if the letter is not available for technical reasons. Aa is treated like Å in alphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent letters A, meaning that while a is the first letter of the alphabet, aa is the last. In Norwegian (but not in Danish), this rule does not apply to non-Scandinavian names, so a modern atlas would list the German city of Aachen under A, but list the Danish town of Aabenraa under Å. In Danish, the aa rule is applied, as long as it denotes one sound, for example German Aachen or Dutch kraal, but if it denotes 2 sounds like in ekstraarbejde (extra work), the two as are sorted as two.

In current Danish and Norwegian, W is recognized as a separate letter from V. In Danish, the transition was made in 1980[citation needed]; before that, the W was merely considered to be a variation of the letter V and words using it were sometimes alphabetized accordingly (e.g., Wandel, Vandstad, Wanscher, Varberg in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, 1904).[7] The Danish version of the Alphabet song still states that the alphabet has 28 letters; the last line reads otte-og-tyve skal der stå, i.e. "that makes twenty-eight". However, today, the letter "w" is considered an official letter.

Computing standards

 
Danish keyboard with keys for Æ, Ø, and Å. On Norwegian keyboards, Æ and Ø trade places, having the corresponding places of Ä and Ö in the Swedish keyboard.

In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:

See also

References

  1. ^ Retskrivningsordbogen (in Danish). Copenhagen: Dansk Sprognævn. 2012. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  2. ^ Retskrivningsordbogen. Copenhagen: Dansk Sprognævn. 2012. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  3. ^ a b "Aksentteikn". Språkrådet (in Norwegian Nynorsk). Retrieved 2022-02-02.
  4. ^ "Aksent: Akutt-tegnet (Accent aigu), gravistegnet (Accent grave) og cirkumfleks (Accentus circumflexus). Korrekturavdelingen".
  5. ^ Pettersson, Gertrud (1996), Svenska språket under sjuhundra år: en historia om svenskan och dess utforskande, Lund: Studentlitteratur, ISBN 91-44-48221-3. P. 139.
  6. ^ Einar Lundeby: "Bolle-å-ens plass i det danske alfabet" [The placing of Å in the Danish alphabet] in Språknytt, 1995/4. http://www.sprakrad.no/Toppmeny/Publikasjoner/Spraaknytt/Arkivet/Spraaknytt_1995/Spraaknytt-1995-4/Bolle-aa-ens_plass_i_det_dans/
  7. ^ Dansk Biografisk Leksikon. XVIII. Bind. Ubbe–Wimpffen. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel. 1904. Retrieved February 10, 2020.

External links

  • Type Danish and Norwegian characters online

February 17, 2023
danish, norwegian, alphabet, broader, coverage, this, topic, danish, orthography, norwegian, orthography, together, called, dano, norwegian, alphabet, symbols, forming, variant, latin, alphabet, used, writing, danish, norwegian, languages, consisted, following. For broader coverage of this topic see Danish orthography and Norwegian orthography The Danish and Norwegian alphabets together called the Dano Norwegian alphabet is the set of symbols forming a variant of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Danish and Norwegian languages It has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 Norwegian and 1948 Danish Majuscule forms also called uppercase or capital letters A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z AE O AMinuscule forms also called lowercase or small letters a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ae o aThe letters c q w x and z are not used in the spelling of indigenous words They are rarely used in Norwegian where loan words routinely have their orthography adapted to the native sound system Conversely Danish has a greater tendency to preserve loan words original spellings In particular a c that represents s is almost never normalized to s in Danish as would most often happen in Norwegian Many words originally derived from Latin roots retain c in their Danish spelling for example Norwegian sentrum vs Danish centrum The foreign letters also sometimes appear in the spelling of otherwise indigenous family names For example many of the Danish families that use the surname Skov meaning forest spell it Schou The difference between the Dano Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Swedish uses the variant A instead of AE and the variant O instead of O similarly to German Also the collating order for these three letters is different in Swedish A A O AE and A are sorted together in all Scandinavian languages as well as Finnish and so are O and O Contents 1 Letters and their names 2 Ordering 2 1 Danish 3 Diacritics 3 1 Danish 3 2 Norwegian 4 History 5 Computing standards 6 See also 7 References 8 External linksLetters and their names Edit source source The Danish alphabet read by a Dane The below pronunciations of the names of the letters do not necessarily represent how the letters are used to represent sounds The list includes the number of each letter when following official ordering Letter Number Danish name Norwegian nameA a 1 ɛˀ ɑː B b 2 pe ˀ beː C c 3 se ˀ seː D d 4 te ˀ deː E e 5 e ˀ eː F f 6 ef ɛfː G g 7 ke ˀ ɡeː H h 8 hɔˀ hoː I i 9 iˀ iː J j 10 jʌd jeː or jɔdː K k 11 kʰɔˀ koː L l 12 el ɛlː M m 13 em ɛmː N n 14 en ɛnː O o 15 oˀ uː P p 16 pʰe ˀ peː Q q 17 kʰuˀ kʉː R r 18 ɛɐ aerː S s 19 es ɛsː T t 20 tsʰe ˀ teː U u 21 uˀ ʉː V v 22 ve ˀ veː W w 23 tʌpelve ˀ a ˈdɔ bːl tˌveː a X x 24 eks ɛks Y y 25 yˀ yː Z z 26 set sɛtː AE ae 27 eˀ aeː O o 28 oˀ oː A a 29 ɔˀ oː source The Norwegian alphabet read by a Norwegian with the three most common pronunciations of R a b i e double v Ordering EditDanish Edit When sorting in alphabetical order in Danish the numbers provided in the list above is used Some peculiarities exist however The digraph aa is sorted as if it was a if it represents one vowel sound This means it is sorted like two adjacent cases of a when it represents two syllables e g as a result of a compound e g klimaanlaeg air conditioner It does not matter which vowel sound is represented meaning that words like afrikaans Afrikaans and kanaanaeer Canaanite should be sorted as if they have an a despite not containing any sounds commonly represented by a If two entries contain the exact same letters except a and aa the form with a comes first If two entries only differ in capitalization but otherwise contain the exact same letters the word with capitalization comes first Accents are not taken into account except when it is the only difference in which case the form without an accent comes first A number of rules for which letter an unofficial letter should count as exist depending on the sound it represents In the case of an official vs unofficial letter being the only difference in the whole entry the word with an official letter comes first For expressions of multiple words e g a capella one can choose between ignoring the space or sorting the space the lack of any letter first 1 Diacritics EditDanish Edit Danish orthography has no compulsory diacritics but allows the use of an acute accent accent aigu for disambiguation Most often an accent on e marks a stressed syllable in one of a pair of homographs that have different stresses for example en dreng a boy versus en dreng one boy or alle all every everyone versus alle avenue Less often any vowel including a where it is however recommended to avoid diacritics may be accented to indicate stress on the word as this can disambiguate the meaning of the sentence or ease the reading otherwise For example jeg stod op I was standing versus jeg stod op I got out of bed i e unit accentuation Alternatively some of these distinctions can be made using typographical emphasis italics underlining The Retskrivningsordbogen dictionary explicitly allows the use of further diacritics when quoting names from other languages 2 This also means that the ring above a and the strike through o are not regarded as diacritics as these are separate letters Norwegian Edit Nynorsk uses several letters with diacritic signs e e e o o a and o The diacritic signs are not compulsory 3 but can be added to clarify the meaning of words homonyms that would otherwise be identical One example is ein gut a boy versus ein gut one boy Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics most notably u a a and e citation needed following the conventions of the original language The Norwegian vowels ae o and a never take diacritics Bokmal is mostly spelled without diacritic signs The only exception is one word of Norwegian origin namely for to be distinguished from for see below as well as any subsequent compound words eg kapefor coat lining and dyrefor animal feed There are also a small number of words in Norwegian which use the acute accent The words are alle avenue diare diarrhea kafe cafe ide idea entre entrance komite committee kupe compartment moske mosque supe supper trofe trophy and diskre discreet 3 An acute accent can also be used to differentiate en a from en one eg en gutt one boy en gutt a boy The diacritic signs in use include the acute accent grave accent and the circumflex A common example of how the diacritics change the meaning of a word is for for preposition for or to pronounced ˈfɔrː for verb went in the sense left pronounced ˈfuːr for noun furrow only Nynorsk pronounced ˈfɔːr for noun fodder pronounced ˈfuːr the circumflex indicating the elision of the edh from the Norse spelling fodr for vedr ver for noun lining as in a garment Also used is the cedille but only on a c in loanwords indicating the c should be pronounced as an s 4 Francoise provencalsk CuracaoA macron like diacritic can be used for decorative purposes both in handwritten and computed Bokmal and Nynorsk or to denote vowel length such as in du you la infinitive form of to let leser present form of to read and luft air The diacritic is entirely optional carries no IPA value and is seldom used in modern Norwegian outside of handwriting History EditThe letter A HTML amp aring was introduced in Norwegian in 1917 replacing Aa or aa The new letter came from the Swedish alphabet where it has been in official use since the 16th century 5 Similarly the letter A was introduced in Danish in 1948 but the final decision on its place in the alphabet was not made The initial proposal was to place it first before A Its place as the last letter of the alphabet as in Norwegian was decided in 1955 6 The former digraph Aa still occurs in personal names and in Danish geographical names In Norway geographical names tend to follow the current orthography meaning that the letter a will be used Family names may not follow modern orthography and therefore retain the digraph aa where a would be used today Aa remains in use as a transliteration if the letter is not available for technical reasons Aa is treated like A in alphabetical sorting not like two adjacent letters A meaning that while a is the first letter of the alphabet aa is the last In Norwegian but not in Danish this rule does not apply to non Scandinavian names so a modern atlas would list the German city of Aachen under A but list the Danish town of Aabenraa under A In Danish the aa rule is applied as long as it denotes one sound for example German Aachen or Dutch kraal but if it denotes 2 sounds like in ekstraarbejde extra work the two as are sorted as two In current Danish and Norwegian W is recognized as a separate letter from V In Danish the transition was made in 1980 citation needed before that the W was merely considered to be a variation of the letter V and words using it were sometimes alphabetized accordingly e g Wandel Vandstad Wanscher Varberg in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon 1904 7 The Danish version of the Alphabet song still states that the alphabet has 28 letters the last line reads otte og tyve skal der sta i e that makes twenty eight However today the letter w is considered an official letter Computing standards Edit Danish keyboard with keys for AE O and A On Norwegian keyboards AE and O trade places having the corresponding places of A and O in the Swedish keyboard In computing several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet DS 2089 Danish and NS 4551 1 Norwegian later established in international standard ISO 646 IBM PC code page 865 ISO 8859 1 UnicodeSee also EditDanish Braille Danish orthography Danish phonology Futhark the Germanic runes used formerly Icelandic orthography Norwegian Braille Norwegian orthography Norwegian phonology Spelling alphabets Swedish Braille Swedish alphabet Swedish orthographyReferences Edit Retskrivningsordbogen in Danish Copenhagen Dansk Sprognaevn 2012 Retrieved 25 July 2022 Retskrivningsordbogen Copenhagen Dansk Sprognaevn 2012 Retrieved 25 July 2022 a b Aksentteikn Sprakradet in Norwegian Nynorsk Retrieved 2022 02 02 Aksent Akutt tegnet Accent aigu gravistegnet Accent grave og cirkumfleks Accentus circumflexus Korrekturavdelingen Pettersson Gertrud 1996 Svenska spraket under sjuhundra ar en historia om svenskan och dess utforskande Lund Studentlitteratur ISBN 91 44 48221 3 P 139 Einar Lundeby Bolle a ens plass i det danske alfabet The placing of A in the Danish alphabet in Spraknytt 1995 4 http www sprakrad no Toppmeny Publikasjoner Spraaknytt Arkivet Spraaknytt 1995 Spraaknytt 1995 4 Bolle aa ens plass i det dans Dansk Biografisk Leksikon XVIII Bind Ubbe Wimpffen Copenhagen Gyldendalske Boghandel 1904 Retrieved February 10 2020 External links EditType Danish and Norwegian characters online Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Danish and Norwegian alphabet amp oldid 1122605045, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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