Danish

Danish belongs to the group of North Germanic languages, also known as "Scandinavian languages," a subgroup of the Germanic languages within the Indo-European family. Spoken by approximately 6 million people, the majority residing in Denmark, it is also spoken by around 50,000 people in the northern part of Germany, particularly in the Schleswig-Holstein region, where it is a minority language. Danish serves as the official language in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. In Iceland, which was part of Denmark until 1944, Danish is studied as one of the main foreign languages alongside English, Norwegian, and Swedish.

The modern Danish language emerged from an older dialect during the 13th century, gradually becoming distinct from other Scandinavian languages, especially with the first translation of the Bible in 1550. This translation defined a unique orthography different from Swedish, which is why written Danish remained more easily understandable for Swedes than its spoken form. Danish is characterized by a pronounced tendency to eliminate many sounds, making it challenging for foreigners to master.

Danish is an East Scandinavian language, much like Swedish. While Norwegian is classified as a West Scandinavian language along with Faroese and Icelandic, a more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility suggests that Icelandic and Faroese form a branch of Insular Scandinavian, whereas Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish are considered part of the Continental Scandinavian branch. Written Danish and Norwegian Bokmål are quite similar, although their phonetics and metrics differ slightly. Speakers of any of these three languages can easily understand the other two, but studies have shown that Norwegians usually understand Danish and Swedish better than Danes and Swedes understand each other. Moreover, Danes and Swedes understand Norwegian best, after their native language. During the 18th and 19th centuries, higher schools in Denmark were the primary source of advanced education for Norwegian students, which explains the special influence Danish has on Bokmål (the "book language" - scholarly language).

Throughout the 8th century, the Germanic language spoken in Scandinavia, known as Proto-Scandinavian, underwent several changes and evolved into Old Norse. This language, in turn, experienced further modifications that didn't spread across the entire Scandinavian region, leading to the emergence of two similar dialects: Old West Norse (spoken in Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (in Denmark and Sweden).

The Eastern dialect is referred to as Runic Swedish in Sweden and Runic Danish in Denmark, but until the 12th century, the dialects were identical. They are called "runic" because most surviving texts were written in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Scandinavian, which was written in the old Futhark alphabet, Old Norse used the younger Futhark, which had only 16 letters. Due to the limited number of runes, some were used to represent multiple phonemes; for instance, the rune for the vowel "u" was also used for the vowels "o," "ø," and "y," while the rune for "i" was used for "e" as well.

One change that separated the Eastern and Western dialects of Old Norse was the transformation of the diphthong "æi" (which became "ei" in Old West Norse) into the monophthong "e"; for example, "stæin" became "sten." This shift can be observed in runic inscriptions, where "stæin" was read in the past, but later became "stin." Additionally, the diphthong "au" changed to "ø" (as in "dauðr" became "døðr"). This change is evident in runic inscriptions as a shift from "tauþr" to "tuþr." Furthermore, the diphthong "øy" (which is "ey" in the Western dialect) changed to "ø."

In the 12th century, the dialect of Denmark began to diverge from that of Sweden. The changes in the language spread unevenly in Denmark, leading to a series of dialects with minor differences.

At one time, Danish was widely spoken in the northeastern part of the United Kingdom. Many words derived from Danish, such as "gate" (originally "gade") for "street," are still in use in Yorkshire and other eastern parts of England, a remnant of the colonization by Danish Vikings. The city of York was once the Danish settlement of Jorvik.

The first Danish translation of the Bible was published in 1550.