Danish language

Sounds

The sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. The vowel system is quite large with 12 separate vowels that also feature contrast in length, making up a total of 24 vowel phonemes. Danish is also prone to a considerable reduction and assimilation of both consonants and vowels even in formal standard language. Another rare feature is the presence of a prosodic feature called stød in Danish (lit. "push; thrust"), which is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice, or (in very careful speech) a glottal stop, and can in certain minimal pairs be the only distinguishing feature. Stød is a Danish development of the common Scandinavian word accents found in most dialects of Norwegian and Swedish, including the national standard languages, but which are tonal accents.

Related Topics:
Assimilation - Stød - Creaky voice - Glottal stop - Minimal pair - Norwegian - Swedish - Standard language - Tonal

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Vowels

Consonants

Prosody

Unlike the neighboring Mainland Scandinavian languages Swedish and Norwegian, the prosody of Danish does not have phonemic pitch. Stress is phonemic in and distinguishes words like such as "cheapest" and "car driver".

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