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?
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Mbeki
Mbugu
Nduke
Mbo
Ngos
Africa and Denmark
• nduke
• mbo
• ngos
Why is Danish exotic?
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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
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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
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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
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Mit
Midt
Mæt
Bær
Mat
lak
nyt
øst
høns
gør
drøv
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Du
Jo
På
Vor
så
WALS: 563 languages
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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
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/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.
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(how? Just be patient)
• In all there are at least 42 distinct vowel
sounds in Danish!
Distinctive vowel length in
Danish
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Hvile
Mene
Pæne
Kane
Hyle
Søle
Høne
Kugle
Kone
Låse
ville
minde
penne
kande
hylde
sølle
hønse
kulde
kunde
losse
Danish beats Finnish!
Triple vowel length!
• Assimilation
– Lige
/li:i/
suge /su:u/
• Quantity (1, 2, 3 morae)
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Sybord
Nissefar
Skod
Faldne
sygdom
smittefare
skodde
faldende
sygedag
kinafarere
skoddede
Developments in
phoneme inventory:
weakening of consonants!
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Language changes in Danish (versus Swedish)
Gata
gade
Danish: ”monotonous vocalic utterances”
Endings of words disappear
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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:
• d>ø
• R>ø
(hard)
(/d/ has disappeared: stød?)
(/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
• Er en dyrskueuge uudholdelig?
• /dyesgu:uu:u uuδhol?lli/
3 x lll
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
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Viser (verb)
Benet (noun)
Væsen
Hvalen
Synet (N)
Køber (V)
Musen (af mus)
Mosen (af mos)
Låsen
viser (noun)
benet (adjective)
hvæsen
valen
synet (participle)
køber (N)
musen (af muse)
mosen (af mose)
dåsen
Number of vowels?
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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
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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
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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?)