Writing system and pronunciation

The Danish alphabet has 29 letters, with the non-Latin æ,ø,å at the end. The letter 'y' corresponds with umlaut ü, and q,w,x are only used in foreign words. As umlaut vowels, Æ and ø are already special (corresponding to ä and ö in some other languages), but the 'circle-a' (bolle-å), really defines Danish as a Scandinavian language.

It is difficult to say when the Vikings' Old Norse turned into Danish, but as the oldest monarchy in the world Denmark can proudly look back at an unbroken line of 54 kings (and nowadays, queens), each speaking a little bit more Danish (and some, alas, Low-German). The son of the official first king, Gorm den Gamle (Gorm the Old) - or rather, his mason - used Runic script to honor his parents (and himself) on the famous Jellinge stones some 1050 years ago:

haraltr (Harald) * kunukR (king) * baþ (asked) * kaurua (carve) * kubl (kumle-stone) * þausi * aft (after) * kurm faþur sin (Gorm father his) * auk aft (and after) * þąurui (Thyra) * muþur (mother) * sina (his) * sa (this) haraltr (Harald) * ias (who) * sąR (himself) * uan (won) * tanmaurk ala (Denmark all) * auk nuruiak (and Norway) * auk tani karþi kristną (and Danes made Christian)

The Danish sound system has a strong bias towards vowels, with 17 consonants outnumbered by 15 short vowels, 12 long vowels and 25 diphthongs. A famous example is the sentence æ ø i æ å, meaning 'the island in the river' in Western dialects. Often, consonants are only used to modify vowel tone or length, and are not pronounced as such. Thus, 'g' is silent in kugle ([ku:le], 'globe'), and diphtong-creating in mig ([mai], 'me'). The most special sound in Danish is a glottal stop, as in Arabic, but usually realized only as a kind of creaky voice. The glottal stop corresponds to a tonal accent in Swedish and can be the only feature distinguishing two words, as in hun ([hun], 'she') and hund ([hun'], 'dog'). Because the glottal stop isn't marked in writing, it is hard to learn and a fairly safe "spy test" for native speakers. Another very special feature of Danish is the inspirational 'yes', pronounced while breathing in: ja. It's a supportive device used by the listener in a conversation, signaling attention, consent and sympathy. Women use it much more than men, and some even manage short sentences on an in-breath.