Why Danish sounds funny to Scandinavians

Danish

sounds

strange. Like a throat tube. As if the Danes were holding back a cough. Or maybe they have a potato stuck in their throat. Obviously... that's what everyone tells me. But why? Why does Danish sound so

funny

to people? I recently discovered how Swedes, Norwegians and Danes can communicate without changing languages. But this was neither fair nor uniform: some languages ​​were easier to understand than others. The Internet enthusiastically pointed out one language in particular: Danish. I send a video and they tell me that the Danish is a throat probe. I go on social media and read about the potato around their neck.

I visit a discussion forum and it is a "drowned goose". One study tells me that Swedish children consider Danish to be uglier and stranger than Danes consider Swedish. Of course, some of them are "naughty pranks" and "good-natured." But even if I take it all with a grain of salt-marinated herring, I still have to ask: What makes Danish sound so ridiculous? Maybe I could add my own theory. I blame the Danish butter on their pretzels. But no, this is NativLang, so you know what we have to do: examine the history of the Danish language to find out what makes the pronunciation of this particular language stand out.

In other words, Danish is very difficult to learn to pronounce. You'll hear me try, but will anyone be kind enough to back me up? Red porridge with cream. Phew, okay! Let's travel back in time to 1,300 years ago: in Denmark, an Indo-European Germanic language with a special Nordic accent was spoken, which we call Old Norse. For them it was "Dǫnsk tunga", dansktungen (the Danish language). Throughout Scandinavia it is a time characterized by togetherness. Wherever you go, Nordic

sounds

Nordic. But soon these Danish languages ​​become extinct and rise to Viking status. During the Viking Age, something will change.

It starts in Denmark. A Dane, probably many Danes, but at least this one, decides "I want to pronounce my vowels differently", which leads to East Old Norse becoming different from West Old Norse. It's the beginning of a trend, the perfect setting for the rest of our story: Hello everyone, there was another sound change in Denmark. At this time, more than a thousand years ago, we can officially call it "Danmǫrk", the border area of ​​the Danes. See! This rune stone says so. The Vikings calm down. The Middle Ages finds its way. At this point, Scandinavia is a continuum of dialects that can easily trace their origins back to East and West Old Norse.

Oh, and the all-too-often forgotten Old Guninian on its own island, where the vowels sometimes didn't match either West or East Old Norse. Although officially, this is a Latin era. There is not much written in Nordic. Until Denmark starts behaving medievally and writing the Scanian Law. Thanks to the scribes who copied it, this law is available in several versions, including this cool rune version. His word shows another Danish change: unstressed vowels become weaker. This is why very prominent endings in Swedish and Norwegian become /ə/, /ə/, /ə/ in Danish! Meanwhile, the Hanseatic League unites to dominate the northern coast of the continent, leading to a war and many new Middle Low German words.

Or Mittelniederdeutsch. Hey. Meanwhile, another change occurs in Danish: the consonants become softer and soften into i /matr/ for food. This is lenition. It is a normal change (ask the Spanish), but curiously the Danes do it at the end of syllables. Consonants and unstressed vowels are weakened, but stressed vowels are doubled. When counting, Danish ends with more distinct vowels than possibly any other language. So this is a Danish that will be different. We're on the trail of something. But on the "sounds ridiculous" scale, so far it would count as "laughter." Until now. The year is 1526. A Swede writes that the Danes sound "as if they were about to cough", "stir the words in their throats", "twist them and chain them together".

What is this hoarseness? It will not be known for the next two centuries, after which a Danish grammarian will write in Concordia res parvæ crescunt... (Second Danish spelling test). (Hey, at least my Latin works; plus, it's a bold title.) Well, this book describes how Danes pronounce many syllables with "a little hiccup." A small setback with a name in bold, a "blow." The shock in the throat is not a single sound. That sums up a whole process. A complicated process with many phases and a lot of anatomy that happens in your throat. But it is not in all syllables either.

These do not have it: "tear", "do". But these have: "wound", "die". It has been called squeaky, cough-like, and let's not forget, a constant stream of very small hiccups. And it's essential if you ever want to master the real Danish accent. At the same time this author writes about hiccups, another sound change is taking place in Denmark. However, for once it's not Denmark's fault. The Dane had retained a rolling Nordic "R". But a new "R" is spreading across France and Germany, a dramatic change that deserves its own story, the so-called "skarre-R" (R-throat). Instead of a curled /r/ on the tip of the tongue, it's a /ʁ/ at the back of the mouth.

Denmark suffered a severe case of this virus, the symptoms of which include changing words such as /rœðgrœð/. to this: red porridge. The result is an even stronger Danish. We're almost there. Almost, because they have all the right sounds... in Copenhagen. But Scandinavia is a rich mosaic of dialects. Sweden will maintain its many varieties, including a pre-Swedish form of Gutnisk. Norwegian is still not spoken in Norway. But in Denmark, the old dialects, some of which have never been shocked, will see a final change: most traditional dialects will disappear. We ended up with almost all of Denmark speaking one language, a language with the simplest grammatical endings in Scandinavia, weakened consonants, perhaps the largest number of vowels in the world, and small hiccups and /ʁ/s.

And that's how the Danes went from speaking Norse like everyone else to sounding incredibly strange. Or strangely incredible. Stay tuned and subscribe to learn the language.