Danish among the 7000

languages of the world.

Unique, bizarre, or just exotic? Kamelåså!

Peter Bakker

Linguist

Aarhus University

Institute for Aesthetics and

Communication

• With infromation and inspiration from:

Center for Børnesprog (child languages),

SDU, Nina Grønnum, Mikael Parkvall,

Jørgen Rischel, Ruben Schachtenhaufen

(schwa.dk), Jakob Steensig, sprogmuseet.dk

Colleague Jakob Steensig:

• ”dansk er et eksotisk sprog”

• Danish is an exotic language

• Why?

• Spoken Danish is hard

• to learn. Why?

What part of the world are

such words common?

• Mbeki

• Mbugu

• Nduke

• Mbo

• Ngos

Africa and Denmark

• nduke

• mbo

• ngos

Why is Danish exotic?

• World record many vowels

• World record many vowels in a row

• Indistinct intonation

• Several uncommon speech sounds (one unique?)

• Danish is unreasonably difficult to master

• Not only for adults, also for children!

For instance:

Air stream: ingressive

• We speak when breathing out

• But the Danes not always:

• ”Ja, nej”

• PULMONIC INGRESSIVE

• Where in the world does this exist?

• What kind of people?

• What situations?

Is Danish a ”small”, maybe

”endangered” language?

• No! There are no Danes who speak a

foreign language with each other

• Not even in international companies where

English is company language

(”koncernsprog”)

Danish words in the world

• Loanwords

• in Greenlandic

• English

• West Africa

• West Indies

• Tristan da Cunha

Greenland

• Wienerbrødi

• Ordbogi

• biili

• Greetings:

• Aluu

• baaj

Danish borrowings in African

and West Indian language • West Indies

• Abekat, bifó, bli, enten, faian, fordiemaek, fostó frokós, giern, hus, ini, kiør, kryb, las, midnat, negti, paske, puf, roto, so, tam (’piske’), tee,tená, werbn

• Ghana

• *agolgo, agOOrO, bèstè, *

blage/blagee, *

blègi/bl,gi, blinjan, dale, *

flaka, * gaflo/gafolo, grò,

hanklè, hanspa, kikji, *

kruku,* kriti, * plesu, *

saksi, sakisi, * sao, * skao,

sròtò , tuski

Can’t they pronounce ”our

language”? Are they deprived?

• Natural process: you adjust words to the new

sound system

• R > l flaka < frakke, sroto < slot

• Words have to end in a vowel: agolgo < agurk

• No two consonants: sakisi < saks

• Vowels change if they do not exist in the

language:

– Pølse > plesu, blyant > blinjan, tysk > tuski

English?

• Once upon a time, there was a young lady in York. She was living with her husband in a small hut. One day she gave birth to a son. They called him Harald. Everyone smiled and seemed to be glad. Her husband was not happy. He found the kid ugly. "I don't trust my wife. It 's awkward. The fellow's sister has no freckles. He is not my kid," he guessed. He wanted to get rid of them: "I kill them.". He took a dirty skirt, raced outside, sprinted to a dead tree and scraped off the bulk of the bark with his knife. He lumped it together with the rags. He took this inside again and put it on the skin of the neck and leg of their dozing kid, kindled it and thus scorched the house. The flames lighted the silver sky and they all died. The husband

wanted to be sly, but was weak.

Can words have two meanings

that are each other’s opposite?

• (to) go off

- The fire alarm went off. (It is sounding.)

- The fire alarm went off. (We can't hear it any longer.)

• sanction means "to allow" and "to prohibit (or punish)"

• seed means "to put seeds in" and "to take seeds out"

Are there extremely many of

these words in Danish? • It seems so:

• ”På bekostning af”

– ”Tal af fysiktimer ændret på bekostning af dansk”

• ”Næste”

– ”Næste fredag”: first Friday or the week after?

• ”Godt”

– ”godt tyve”: more than 20 or less?

• ”patetisk”

– ”en patetisk tale”: positive emotional or ridiculous?

Danish sentence intonation

• Question sentence: rising intonation

– (among others)

• Same for most European languages

– Not Finnish: ”oletteko suomalaiset?” (particle)

• At least one language has falling intonation for questions: Chitimacha (N. America)

• Also: change in word order:

• Kommer Bill ?/ Bill kommer (German, Dutch, French? Il-vient/ Vient-il?)

Danish (yellow) in the world:

question word order:

only 12 languages in the world!

Danish speech sounds

Phonology of a language

• Distinctive speech sounds = how many DISTINCTIVE vowels and consonants are there?

• Those are: contrastive sounds

• Together, these make up the phoneme inventory of a language:

• Consonants and vowels

Bella Coola

clhp’xwlhtlhplhhs+kwts’.

“Then he owned a bunchberry plant”

k’clhhtscw slhxwtlhhts“You had seen that I managed through the

narrow opening”

Segmental inventory

• How many vowels does Danish have?

• Wrong answer: 9. Yes, Danish has nine

vowel symbols/letters – more than other

languages: a e i o u å ø æ y

• Better answer: Grønnum claims 16 vowels.

• Diederichsen: 40+

• How does that compare to other languages?

16 short vowel phonemes in Danish

• Mit nyt

• Midt øst

• Mæt høns

• Bær gør

• Mat drøv

• lak

• Du

• Jo

• På

• Vor

• så

WALS: 563 languages

• World Atlas of Language Structures (wals.info)

• 92 have an inventory of: fewer than 4 vowels

• 288 have an inventory of: 5 or 6

• 183 have an inventory of: 7-14

• No languages with more than 14

• Danish is not in the WALS sample here

• How are the systems distributed globally?

Take the front rounded vowels

• /y/ nyt

• /ø/ øst

• /œ/ høns

• /Œ+/ gør

• /Œ/ drøv

• Where in the world do we find front

rounded vowels?

16 vowels of Danish

• These vowels can be modified.

• (how? Just be patient)

• In all there are at least 42 distinct vowel

sounds in Danish!

Distinctive vowel length in

Danish • Hvile ville

• Mene minde

• Pæne penne

• Kane kande

• Hyle hylde

• Søle sølle

• Høne hønse

• Kugle kulde

• Kone kunde

• Låse losse

Danish beats Finnish!

Triple vowel length!

• Assimilation

– Lige /li:i/ suge /su:u/

• Quantity (1, 2, 3 morae)

– Sybord sygdom sygedag

– Nissefar smittefare kinafarere

– Skod skodde skoddede

– Faldne faldende

Developments in

phoneme inventory:

weakening of consonants!

• Language changes in Danish (versus Swedish)

• Gata gade

• Danish: ”monotonous vocalic utterances”

• Endings of words disappear

– Weakening of stops (voicing) (k > g, t > d etc.)

– Weakening of fricatives (g>w, u eller til Ø, d > blød d)

– Disappearance of some sounds like /r/, /g/, etc.

– Weakening of vowels (a i u > schwa)

– Schwa-reduction (schwa > Ø)

Some processes: deletion,

compensatory lengthening, etc.

• Hård: (hard)

• d > ø (/d/ has disappeared: stød?)

• R > ø (/r/ has disappeared: r-colouring of vowel)

• lengthening

• Hårdere: (harder)

• assimilation of schwa to <å>: /h’ååå/ triple length?

What if more <å>s follow?

• Årelade (”bloodlet”: starts with two <åå>)

• <at>: is often pronounced as O <å>:

• Rapid speech: <hårdere at årelade>

• H’åååå’åålæδ

Looooooong vowel and

consonant sequences

in Danish • August Bille løber stærkt 3 x lll

• Er en dyrskueuge uudholdelig?

• /dyesgu:uu:u uuδhol?lli/

Jørgen Rischel (2003)

• ”some of us may worry that this trend of

development could make it even more difficult (..)

for elders to understand their younger relatives,

and for foreigners to learn the new language”

• ”danger of increasing intelligibility of the spoken

language that seems imminent even in

communication between persons the same age”

• ”our segmental phonology may be facing serious

endangerment”

Stød (creaky vowel) as

distinctive part of vowels • Viser (verb) viser (noun)

• Benet (noun) benet (adjective)

• Væsen hvæsen

• Hvalen valen

• Synet (N) synet (participle)

• Køber (V) køber (N)

• Musen (af mus) musen (af muse)

• Mosen (af mos) mosen (af mose)

• Låsen dåsen

Number of vowels?

• Place/manner of articulation:

• 16 short ones

• Many can be long as well

• Many can be glottalized as well (stød)

• Sometimes two different vowels in a row:

haj, hej, jeg.

• All in all 42 distinct vowel sounds!

Many syllables without stress

in a row

• Banalitet 3

• Situationist 4

• Generalisation 5

• Kommensurabilitet 6

• Usammenlignelighed 6

• Difficult to say for foreign language speakers with

fixed stress:

• Riciagade

Can we still understand Danish?

Jørgen Rischel:

• ”Presumably, our mother tongue will

always preserve an esoteric quality for those

who STILL manage to speak and EVEN

understand it in the future”

– (my emphasis)

Language understanding: Danish

vs. US English (children)

Danish versus other languages

• When Italian children know

145 words

• and Spanish children

160 words

• and American children

175 words

• Danish children know

105 words……

Danish (red) and 10 other

languages:

Danish children are slowest!

Why do Danish children do it

differently?

• Social situation

• The sound system of the language

Uti vår hage...

•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

Danish phonology: some rarities

• Pulmonic ingressive (rare)

• Glottalized vowels (rare, unique in Europe)

• Soft d: unique in the world

• Vowel length: common

• Triple length of vowels and ”consonants”: rare

• Many vowels

• Many front rounded vowels (Danish gold medal?)