S^th about DENMARK

Latest update 26-NOV-2009 (ver. 9.33)

© Owned and edited by
Flemming Ravn Neft, MA & BA

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THE FOLLOWING has been written mostly for web visitors, who have come to my web site from abroad and maybe don't know so much about Denmark, our culture, language, and lifestyle. I have travelled in various countries, mostly in Europe, and I have always been well received. Therefore it is my hope, that you, dear reader, will feel welcome as a guest when visiting us in Denmark. Subject on this homepage:

Political system * Geography * Cities
International cooperation * Commerce * the EU * Religion
Danes abroad * Danish as a language * Literature * Movies * Linguistics
What does it mean to be Danish? - A wise Danish man gave this answer in his youth: "To be Danish is not a question about national symbols. Nor is it a question about anything being established or institutionalized. It is, however, a question of being oneself; and being with myself I only am when rooted with my place and my history. Thus one's national feeling concerns the individual's relationship with himself or herself. An individual is not the first human being in the World. We do have a connection. A history. A point of origin..."

The following is an introduction to the Danish peculiarity - which some call "the very roots of the nation" - like all nations have their peculiarity. However, it is a man-made construction. As ephemeral and artificial such a phenomenon ever is, national identity is, after all, a dynamic process subject to eternal transition and an urge to move forward. One may ask: What is left then; what is the essence of Danish national identity in the midst of transition? Often, common historic and cultural denominators then are brought forth.


Denmark is one of three Scandinavian nations. The history of our three countries are weaved closely together; and there are and have been very many points and events in common. (Our friends in Suomi-Finland are not a part of Skandinavia, howver, a part of the Nordic Commonwealth). Like Norway and Sweden, Denmark is a popular monarchy. Actually, Denmark is one of the oldest kingdoms in the World still to function, and we Danes love our Queen Margrethe, her husband Henry the Prince Consort (born in France), and the royal family all-together. Our country is old and has existed as a free and sovereign nation in more than 1,400 years.

The Queen does not have any "power" as such, but functions as the suprememost figure in Denmark and fulfills the same role that a president does in a republic. Nevertheless, the Queen is a very vital and strong, representative symbol for the nation. In recent years, the Queen and the royal family have made official State visits to various countries, among them the Kingdom of Thailand, Slovenia, Hungary, and Romania - and thereby assuring friendship and commercial ties between Denmark and other lands.

We usually say, that Denmark is a constitutional monarchy. This means that the Head of the royal family is the formal sovereign of our land, since 1972 Queen Margrethe II^nd. Thereby, the People (Folket) is foreseen to be the ruling factor, namely via the parliament (Folketinget), whose 179 seats Danish citizens (from 18 years and over) are to elect by so-called "free, secret and proportional" elections. As an important part of our self-comprehension, we call this reign procedure democracy. This is regulated by the Constitution of 1849 and later minor changes.

In addition, the lobbyism of diverse economical interests and public movements have, of course, tremendous influence on legislation - as well as the constant flow of harmonizing decrees, issued from various levels of the offices in EU - the Euro-State. And these decrees, actually, regulate almost all Life areas, for example how curved cucumbers may be as still to be "legal" - or how many fish the fishermen may fish.

 

MAIN FIGURES IN BRIEF

Areal (Denmark proper)	Cirka 43,094 km2
Population pr. 01-JAN-2001	5,349,212 inhabitants (*)
Average duration of life (2004)	77,4 years (average of men and women together)
Language	D a n i s h  (in various dialects)
BNP pr. inhabitant (2000)	243.000 DKK ~ 35.400 US$ ~ 32.710 €uro (*)
Currency	1 Danish krone (DKK) = 100 ører
Value (100 DKK) 15-JAN-2004	14.96 US$ - 9.28 GB£ - 13.42 €uro (**)
Sovereign (since 1972)	Queen Margrethe II
National anthem	"Der er et yndigt land" - LISTEN
Flag	The Dannebrog, a white rectagular (Protestantic) cross on a red background; same form as the other Nordic flags
Denmark's Constitution	In function since 05-JUN-1849
Religion	Protestant Christians (87 %);   Moslems (ap. 4 %);  Roman-Catholic Christians (½ %);  Buddhists (less than ½ %);  Jews (less than ¼ %);  Other religions and non-confessionals (8¾ %)
(*) Source	Danmarks Statistik
(**) Source	SEB Bank (www.valutakurser.dk)

Geographically, Denmark consists of the headland Jutland (Jylland) - which is a peninsula linked with Europe via Northern Germany - plus more than 500 isles (most of them tiny), which build a "bridge" between Europe and the North. The biggest islands are Zeeland (Sjælland) and the Funen (Fyn). On the 1^st of July 2000, Queen Margrethe of Denmark and King Carl Gustav of Sweden inaugurated the newly built bridge of Øresund, which creates a long wished fix link between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden.

Denmark has 5.4 mio inhabitants. It is a rather flat country - its highest points are to be fount in Eastern Jutland and are Yding Skovhøj and Ejer Baunehøj (altitude app. 173 and 171 meters respectively).

Due to historical circumstances, the Faeroe Islands and Greenland belong to the Danish "Commonwealth" (Rigsfællesskabet). Greenland and the Faeroe Islands do have autonomy to some extent, however, from time to time, nourish claims to leave the Danish commonwealth. Our friends in Iceland gained autonomy under this Commonwealth in 1918, but withdrew from it on the 17th of June 1944, by proclaiming their own, independent Republic of Iceland on that very day.

The national heraldic of Iceland next to Denmark's national arms. In 1944,
Iceland detached herself from Denmark and proclaimed an independent republic.

Aarhus (Århus) is the capital of the province, the second largest city here with nearly 300,000 inhabitants, and is very well situated near forests and the sea. The third largest city in Denmark is Odense with 185,000 inhabitants - the natal city of the writer and poet Hans Christian Andersen (born 1805). The fourth largest is Alaburg (Ålborg) with 130,000 inhabitants. Towns like Vejle, Kolding, Fredericia, Esbjerg, Horsens, Roskilde, Silkeborg, Randers, Viborg, Naestved, Holstebro, Elsinore (Helsingør), and others have around 50-70,000 inhabitants.

Denmark is a so-called modern welfare state, in the same spirit as its Nordic neighbours and cousins. Every citizen benefits from free health care, generally free education (from preschool to university), is guaranteed pension and high standards of living; yet, this of course is based on the Danes paying a very high income tax. In recent years, standards, however, have gone much down - an uncozy growth in violence and crimes threaten the unity and harmony of the land. At the same time, life expectancy has gone down, and the hospitals do not function properly. It has yet to be seen, whether the new liberal government (Please notice that "liberal" in Danish politics does not mean the same as in American politics. In Denmark, the Liberal Rightist Party is more right-winged than the Conservative Party) can make up for the failures (fiascos) of the former Socialst government, as promised during the election campaigns.

It is true that 15-25 years ago, Denmark had a proud place among the best nations to live in - but now all these scandalous, declining tendencies have made Denmark go backwards on many areas, seen within the frame of an international measure. Luckily, Denmark is still one of the wealthiest nations in the world, as well as rather clean (seen from an environmental and ecological point of view) and socially well organized. So here is still hope!

Number of DOCTORS  per 10,000 inhabitants  in various countries

Spain 38,2  Belgium 34,4  Germany 33,6  Sweden 30,7  Switzerland 29,8  France 29,4  Norway 28,0  Denmark 27,8  Finland 27,7  Austria 26,6  The Netherlands 25,1  The USA 23,7  Canada 21,5  Japan 21,5  Italy 15,4  The United Kingdom 14,8  Source: Jyllands-Posten (newspaper), February 14, 2005

The capital of Denmark is (since 1443) Copenhagen (København), where the parliament (Folketinget) and the departments (ministries) are situated. The main residence of the royal family, namely at the Amalienborg Castle is also situated in Copenhagen. Inner Copenhagen counts 700,000 inhabitants, and Greater Copenhagen 1.3 million people. Copenhagen is an old place of commerce with its own port, founded in the year 1167 by the Bishop Absalon - the original Old Danish name was (Købmanne) Hafn - latinized as Hafnia, meaning "harbour" or "port", namely the "port (havn) of merchandisers (købmænd)". Denmark's first university was established in Copenhagen in 1479 (one of the oldest in Europe). It still exists today and has more than 40,000 students. Copenhagen is a popular host city for conferences and such. In 2001, for example, the European Song Contest was held in Copenhagen with contestants from 23 countries, with Estonia as a winner. The previous year, it was the Olsen Brothers who had assured the Danish victory with the song "Fly on the wings of love".

BNP. Even though agriculture does play an important role of Denmark's BNP, only 15 % of our population live in rural districts. The official unemployment rate is around 9%, but in reality this rate is much higher, since the method of making this kind of statistics is unreliable.

Culture. Denmark is a multicultural country, but not multiethnic. Denmark has a variety of cultural offers for its inhabitants.

Number of visits to the cinema per year  per inhabitant in a range of countries

The USA 4,89  Canada 3,50  Spain 3,27  France 2,58  Norway 2,50  The United Kingdom 2,32  Belgium 2,13  Switzerland 2,11  Denmark 2,02  Austria 1,83  Italy 1,81  Germany 1,81  Sweden 1,78  Finland 1,35  The Netherlands 1,15  Japan 1,14  Source: Jyllands-Posten, Januar 10, 2005

Democrazy. November 20th, 2001, we had elections to Parliament (Folketinget), to the regional councils as well as to the municipal councils in Denmark's 275 communes. Ten parties were eligible for the elections to Parliament, however, two of them did not obtain representation. With the final result, Denmark has moved to the right. For the first time since 1929, The Liberal Party (Please notice that "liberal" in Danish politics does not mean the same as in American politics. In Denmark, the Liberal Party is more right-winged than the Conservative Party) is bigger than the Social-Democratic Party, and three liberal-bourgeois parties constitute a majority towards the Center-Socialist opposition. The new right-winged government consists of The Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, supported by the nationalist party "Dansk Folkeparti"

Schematically, we may illustrate how the ten most important Danish political parties situate themselves on a classical (and maybe old-fashioned) political map:

                        *** CLASSIC POLES LEFT:RIGHT ***

  L-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-/0/-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-R

  L-----Ø--------------F------A-----B/-/---Q-----D-----C----O----V------Z-R  Denmark
  L-PDS----------GRÜNE-----------SPD-/-/-----FDP-----------CDU/CSU----NPD-R  Germany
  L----------------------------------/-/-------------------DEMO------REPU-R  the USA
  L----------------------------------/-/Labour-----Liberals--------CONS---R  the UK
  L--------PC----------------PS------/-/---------UDF---------RPR-------FN-R  France

Election for Danish Parliament, 20-NOV-2001 Final result  The whole country  175 seats  A+B+F+Ø       81 94      C+O+V  Parti Number of votes Percent (diff. from 2001) Seats (diff. from 2001) A  Socialdemokraterne Social-Democrats 867.350  25,8   (-3,3) 47   (-5) B  De Radikale Social Liberal Party 308.212  9,2   (+4,0) 17   (+8) C  De Konservative Conservative Party 344.886  10,3   (+1,2) 18   (+2) D  Centrum-Demokraterne Center Party 33.880  1,0   (-0,8) 0   (-) F  Socialistisk Folkeparti People's Socialist Party 201.047  6,0   (-0,4) 11   (-1) K  Kristendemokraterne Christian Democrats 58.071  1,7   (-0,6) 0   (-4) M  Minoritetspartiet Party of Minorities 8.850  0,3   (+0,3) 0   (-) O  Dansk Folkeparti Danish Anti-Immigration Party 444.948  13,3   (+1,3) 24   (+2) V  Venstre, Danmarks Liberale Parti The Liberal Party 974.637  29,0   (-2,2) 52   (-4) Ø  Enhedslisten De Rød-Grønne Red-Green Communist Union 114.123  3,4   (+1,0) 6   (+2)    Outside parties 1.204  0.0   (-0.1) 0   (-)

International cooperation. Denmark has vivid trade relations with countries all over the globe, yet 41% of our export was, in the year 2000, traded with three of our neighbouring countries alone: Germany (18%), the United Kingdom (13%), and Sweden (9%) - for example furniture and architectonical devices of so-called Danish design. The next 21% of our export products arrived in these four countries: the USA (6.1%), Norway (5.6%), the Netherlands (5%), and France (4.8%) (SOURCE: the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, the 10th of September 2001, HI section, page 6).

For many years, Denmark was known for its export of bacon, butter, eggs and other farming products. However, this has changed in recent years. Now, medicine and oil have replaced agricultural products at the top our nation's export list.

Denmark is a member state of the United Nations and of the Nordic Council. Denmark is also a proud founding member state of NATO (since 1949).

Many Danish towns have friendship-towns abroad. Among others, the City of Århus has these following friendship-towns:

Bergen in Norway

Gothenburg in Sweden

Petach Tikva in Israel

Julianehåb (Qaqortoq) in Greenland

Åbo (Turku) in Finland

Hamburg in Germany

Rotterdam in the Netherlands

Birmingham in the UK

Saint Petersburg in Russia

Harbin (Harping) in China

EU. Almost half of the population believe in a federative citizenship in the Euro-State (European Union) together with the other fourteen member states (a number to be expanded soon), whereas the other half of the Danes would like Denmark to keep our full national sovereignty as a free national state. On September the 28th 2000, we Danes were called to a referendum to decide whether Denmark should give up on Danish Crowns (DKK) as an independent and thousand-year-old independent currency - or whether to join the euro-currency of the European Federation.

The day of the vote was a real "thriller", and at the final vote (which had a remarkably high participation, 87%), 53,1% of the electorate voted for the keeping of DKK, and only 46,9% voted in favour for the euro. Thus Denmark remains outside the euro-currency, together with Sweden and the UK. According to commentators, the main reason for the outcome of the referendum was "people's overwhelming lack of confidence in the politicians who are in favour of the euro". An analogue kind of scepticism was expressed in Ireland, when a majority of the Irish electorate rejected the Nice Treaty, on the 8th of June 2001. Also the Swedes rejected the Euro at a referendum in September 2003.

In the Autumn 2002, Denmark assumed Presidency of the European Union. With great success, Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Liberal Party), conducted the Union Enlargement to the East which opened up for EU membership for ten new countries from the 1st of May 2004: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Cyprus, Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Malta).

The Rune Stone at Yelling

Denmark became a Protestant country at the Lutheran Reformation, in 1536. Denmark became christianized in the 10^th century, which the rune stone set at Yelling testifies, whereby the old faith in ases (Nordic gods) was strongly reduced. Denmark came under Papal power, however, in 1536, the Danes broke off from the Roman-Catholic Church. In its place, a public Protestant (Lutheran) State church (Folkekirken) was established. Around 83.1 % of the population adhere to the State Church which functions under the patronage of the Queen. Adherence to the State Church has declined during the last 20 years (from 94 % in 1984), due to heavy immigration from culturally non-analogous countries outside Europe as well as growing secularization among the Danes ourselves. Same secularization tendencies, by the way, can be observed in the USA and many in other Western countries in the core population.

Around 2% of our population belong to diverse reformed churches such as the Methodists, the Pentecostal Church, the Seventh Day Adventists, and the Baptists. Around 35,000 Danes belong to the Roman Catholic Church, which has communities, day schools and churches in many towns and cities. Also in Århus, where 3,000 people from 89 different nationalities belong to the Catholic community (many of them origin from Italy, Viet-Nam, Germany, France, and Poland).

In fact, most of the various religions that exist in the World, can be found in Denmark. This includes the Orthodox Church, the Holy Assyrian Church of the East, Judaism (Progressive as well as Orthodox, app. 2,400 members), Buddhism (various branches with 16 centres and temples; app. 18,000 Buddhists), Hinduism (including Hare Krishna), Taoism, Islaam, Shamanism, and many others. Many of these religions form independant communities that are State recognized, which means that ceremonies like weddings and namegivings, undertaken by their religious authorities, are juridically valid before the State.

The ancient Nordic lore, the Asatru (Odinism), has experienced a minor renaissance in recent years. The unusual, hefty growth of a religion like Islaam is due to massive immigration during the recentmost 15 years, which has made Islaam the second largest religion in Denmark with app. 207,000 adherents (4 % of the population). Moreover, 5,000 Danes are said to have converted to Islaam during the recentmost 20 years. In Denmark, there exist 118 religious communities, whereof 17 different Moslem communities, recognized by the Danish State.

Immigration has made many new religions find their way to Denmark and to the Danes as well. 500,000 people and their children (10 % of the entire population) of Denmark have immigrated to Denmark. NOW, however, is an immigration stop (except for people from the EU or culturally related countries like Norway, Iceland etc.).

Besides, New Age theories and practices are widely spread in the population - including Theosophy, dr. Vogels nature medicine and healing, yoga, astrology, acupuncture, ayurvedic medicine, biodynamic (anthroposophy) and ecological farming. Also, Denmark is a pioneering country within the field of wind energy. We are good at producing windmills; and we make a lot of research in solar energy. This is really cool, for everyone knows that nuclear energy is high risk and hazardous, and can damage the health of entire populations as well as Nature.

CONSTITUTION and LIBERTY

The Danish Constitution of June 1849 (Grundloven) assures freedom of confession as well as other basic citizens' rights. Therefore there exist various bigger and smaller religious minority communities - although it always arises to intense debates, whether the State should support and recognize certain more recently formed religious groups or sects. Moreover, there are ongoing debates whether to make a division between the State Church and the State itself, so that the Luthern Church can function independently of the State like in other countries (for instance France).

In general, liberty refers to these four kinds:

Liberty of religion - in Denmark there are 118 religious communities recognized byt the Danish authorities, whereof 17 are Moslem communities

Liberty of expression - the right to express oneself, under responsability

Liberty of assembling - the right to demonstrate

Liberty of organizing - the right to found an organization or a political party

Only every 8th individual on this earth has such liberties, that is 12 ½ % of the Earth's population; and such liberties are the cornerstone of democrazy.

The Danish people celebrate their confessional and other rights on Constitution Day every year, which is on the 5th of June - our national day. The Constitution prescribes freedom of assembly and utterance for the Danes - and, moreover, equal rights between men and women, which in principle means equal wages for the same work. The individual, personal - and inalienable - freedom rights are the cornerstone of every democratic society. So should they be in Denmark, for without real personal freedom, life is not really worth living.

(1)

Home and away. The two black-white photos show Århus around 1920-25 in motives: (1) from Aagade near the Saint Clemens Bridge, and (2) from Søndergade (which is now a part of the walking street), respectively. Saint Clemens, by the way, is the Patron Saint of Aarhus. As a philologist by education and as a linguist, it is quite natural for me, in the following dissertation about Denmark, to take my starting point from a linguistic point of view.

Denmark is an ancient trade and shipping nation, and the Dane has travelled in all parts of the world. App. 100 years ago, many Danes emigrated due to poverty and love of adventure - most of them to the USA, Canada and Argentina. The China Towns of the Chinese are well-knows in many countries. Although Danish emigration never has reached such kind of big proportions, Danes have left trace of them many places around the world. The photo below shows a party from the Danish colony Solvang in California with an old-fashioned mill which almost functions as an archetypical symbol of what is Danish.

Also in our days, quite a few Danish try their luck abroad - often due to wealth and love of adventure. They exile themselves from a regime with as they say "the highest tax pressure in the whole world" and a "bigbrotherly, bureaucratic over-regulation of the personal life" (I wonder whether these ideals of the former Danish Socialist government are implemented after the East-German Stasi-model?) - and settle down in countries like England, Spain, and France. The emigrants have tight bonds with their families in Denmark and keep their Danish identity - language, religion, and culture - at least in the first generations after their emigration.


Solvang - a Danish community in California, USA
The mother tongue of the Danes is Danish. Danish actually stems from Zealand around Copenhagen, where it also developed into modern day Danish. In addition our country actually has many dialects, whereof the language of Jutland, Juttish ("jydsk"), in a way might be considered a language a part with its own grammar, yet closely related to Danish (and English). Now, it is only spoken by a minority of people in Jutland, but it has remained mostly as "funny" words and a characteristic (slow?) tone in modern standard Danish, thus absorbed my modern day Danish. In Denmark, there exist a variety of local and regional dialects, which contribute to diversify our language in its expressions. Every county has its own dialect.

I know several languages and understand that each and everyone of these languages has its own glorious story, particular splendour and linguistic richness. As a philologist I do exactly love words. But even though I nourrish a great love the various languages, which I speak, plus I have insight in other languages, too - I am, after all, content that exactly Danish is my mother tongue, since it gives access to a richness and diversity of nuances of its own (read: literature and science), and it is close to a World language like English (by way of linguistic kinship, described here below). As it happens, I am actually fond of all languages.

(2)
Danish belongs to the Northern Germanic Languages. It is a modern version of the Vikings' tongue, which the Vikings themselves called dönsk tunga (Danish tongue) (550-1250 AD). This ancient Nordic language, wherefrom also English partially evolved, was spoken in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Faeroe Islands, Iceland and other places in the North. The influence of Danish on English originates from a time (787-1066), when sailing Vikings from mainly Denmark and Norway invaded the British Isles and held major parts of England occupied (for example during the Dane Law).

The language of the Vikings influenced English very much, and still today it is easy to identify loan words from Ancient Norse in daily day spoken English such as: NOUNS: calf (kalv), cow (ko), egg (æg), hound (hund), house (hus), king (konge), kingdom (kongerige), stool (stol); VERBS: eat (æde), give (give), like (kunne lide), see (se); and ADJECTIVES: blue (blå), free (fri), grim (grim), high (høj) and red (rød). Many towns in Eastern England end in -by og -thorp which also clearly is a remnant of their connection with the Vikings.

In its days, Ancient Norse was written with runes. Runes were the earlymost alphabet, created among the Scandinavian people, which at that time still formed a historic and national unity. Some people believe, that runes partially were used for magical purposes, for example to chase away witches. Most of what we know about runes has been transferred to us because of the runic inscriptions on big stones, whereof the beautiful Yelling Stone above the grave of King Gorm the Olde (at Jelling, near Vejle) is the most famous.

Another famous runic inscription on one of the two Gallehus gold horns (from around year 400 a.D.) reads "Ek hlewagastiR holtijaR horna tawido", i.e. "I Hlewagast, of Holte's lineage, this horn made" (notice that the verb is placed at the end of the sentence like in modern days' German). The language of that epoch has contributed with words and spirit to which actually founded a Norse literature, whereof Havamal (Hávimál) and several of the sagas are among the earliest known writings.

There have existed close political, cultural and linguistic bonds between the peoples of the North in nearly 2000 years. The Norwegian linguist Einar Haugen writes that "non-Scandinavians occasionally are astonished to hear Danes, Norwegians and Swedes conversing, each in their own language, without interpreters. The fact that some degree of mutual intelligibility exists between these languages (...) has led some to suggest that together they should really be regarded as only one language" (source: Bernard Comire: "The Major Languages of Western Europe", Routledge, London 1987, page 147).

From the 13th Century onwards, the Scandinavian languages have diversified. For our part, we distinguish between old Danish (1250-1550 AD) and modern Danish (1550-). Yet Danish remains closely related to the other Nordic languages. Nowadays our language is spoken by Denmark's 5 million inhabitants, and, by way of linguistic kinship, it is understood by many of the some 22 million people who live within the geographical area of Nordic Council (Nordisk Råd).

We, of course, also wholly or partially understand their languages in the Nordic countries, maybe except for Finnish, Lapponic, and Samic - they belong to a totally different, but very interesting, language family, called the Finno-Ugric, whereto also Estonian and Hungarian belong. Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) belongs to the Inuit-Eskimo Language Family together with Inuit languages, spoken in Canada and Alaska. However, the languages of the Inuit people (Eskimos) are not related with the languages of red-Indian peoples in America.

Einar Haugen explains that Danish and Norwegian particularly share a common lexicology (words), while Norwegian and Swedish share a common phonology (pronunciation). He writes that "when Norwegians and Swedes communicate orally, they can tell what word is being spoken, though they may be uncertain of its meaning. When Norwegians and Danes communicate, they have to listen hard to be sure which word the other is using, but once they get that, they usually know what it means" (SOURCE: ibid., page 151).

Danish is written in the Roman alphabet. The biggest difference between the English and the Danish alphabet is that the Danish alphabet has three additional letters (vowels) - Æ, Ø and Å - totally 29 letters. Since the spelling reform of 1948, our alphabet has been expanded with the Swedish and Norwegian letter Å, thus replacing what used to be spelled as "AA". Therefore the city of Aarhus now is written Århus. Æ is pronounced like E in English "egg", Ø like I in "first", and Å like O in "lord". The letters C, Q, W, Z and X are used in foreign loanwords only.


Linguistic kinship. Danish is most closely related with (chronology according to kinship, percentages according to my own estimation): Norwegian (Bokmål, 90%), Juttish (Jydsk, 87%), Burgondholmish (Bornholmsk, 84%), Swedish (82%), Neo-Norwegian (Nynorsk, 79%), Faeroese (75%), and Icelandic (71%). In second row, Danish is closely related with German (66%), Dutch (61%), English (60% (*)) Frisian (60%), Flemish (60%), Luxemburgish (53%), Alsatian (48%), and Afrikaans (47%), as well as Yiddish (33%), and Gothic (23%),

(*) Linguistically seen, English is much more closely related to Juttish (85%) than Danish (only 60%), since many of the Vikings who, around year 1000, brought the dönsk tunga into England stemmed from Angel, which is South and Southern Jutland (Denmark). Remeniscences thereof can be seen in English grammer even today. For instance, Juttish as well as English uses only one grammatical gender (sexus communis), whereas Danish (in the same way as Dutch) has two genders (namely sexus communis and neuter) - and Old Norse, German and Icelandic have three (masculinum, femininum, and neuter) like Latin and Greek.

As all Germanic languages, Danish is furthermore related with the Romance languages (all of which are evovled from Latin - for instance French and Italian, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese), (for example Lithuanian and Latvian), the Slavonic languages (for example Russian, Czech and Bulgarian), modern Greek (dhimotiki) and Ancient Greek (koiné, language of the New Testament), the Celtic languages (for example Gaelic in Ireland, Welsh in Wales and Breton in Brittany in France), Albanian, Armenian, Kurdish, Farsi (Persian), Georgian, Urdu, Hindi and a variety of languages and dialects in India (including Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil as well as the very ancient and extinct languages Sanskrit and Pali which you may call for the "latin of the Indian people", for holy scriptures like the Vedas are written in Sanskrit), and many others.

Thus, Danish is one of the newermost developments within the tremendously widespread "family" of Indo-European Languages. On the other hand, however, linguists still have to determine the linguistic kinship of two European languages, namely Bascic (euskara) and Etruscian.

Other language families include the Semitic, comprising among others classical Hebrew (language of the Bible), Ivrit (revived modern Hebrew, as spoken in Israel today), Syriac and West-Aramaic (the tongue of Jesus), and Araabic in various regional dialects; the Mongol-Altaic language family, comprising among others Turkish, and the Azerbajdjani and Turkmeni languages; and the Burmeto-Tibetan language family. Interesting to experience how the good Lord has created so many different nations and given each of them their own language and geographical extension (dwellings).

Hans Christian Andersen
Literature. Well! Denmark does form a little language area, but Danish is a varied and fine literary language, and it has been the language of many great Danes, men and women. I will mention a few of the Danes, for whom the Danish language has served as a means to grasp and describe deeper things in Existence: for example the authors Henrik Pontoppidan (who shared the 1917 Nobel Prize for Literature with Karl Gjellerup); of Karen Blixen ("Out of Africa"), Hans Scherfig, Ludvig Holberg (born in Bergen, now Norway), Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Piet Hein, Martin Andersen Nexø, Jørn Riel, Peter Høeg, and the siblings Thit and Johannes V. Jensen - just to mention a few who are known outside Denmark.

Movies. In recent years, quite some Danish men and women have gained renown for film making, in Denmark and abroad, and have been awarded prizes in the USA (Oscar) as well as in Cannes. This includes the following film directors: Thomas Vinterberg ("Every Family Has A Secret" - in Danish Festen - and other movies); Susanne Bier ("Freud Moves Out" and other movies); Lars von Trier ("Dancer in the Dark", "The Idiots", "Dogville", and other movies); as well as Bille August ("Pelle The Conquerer" and other movies).

Great Souls. Now, being in the realm of great names within Danish culture, I shall not forget some of my personal heroes: Rasmus Rask, Otto Jespersen, and Kristian Sandfeld - all three of them skilled forerunners within the field of language science, were Danes and spoke Danish. Danish was also, we are proud to remember, the mother tongue of poet and fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen and of Protestant Existence philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Their Voices of Past still vibrate and continue to inspire us - like soulful writers in all languages and peoples in their "circles", so to speak. A language contains the richness of the people who speak it...

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Any suggestion, advice or help, pls send an e-mail...

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© Flemming Ravn Neft ~ http://neft.homepage.dk/flexheim.htm