Editing Danish language (section)

== Phonology ==
[[File:Michael Noer - voice - da.flac|thumb|Spoken Standard Danish of a male born 1978 in [[Esbjerg]].]]
{{Main|Danish phonology}}

The sound system of Danish is unusual, particularly in its large vowel inventory. In informal or rapid speech, the language is prone to considerable reduction of unstressed syllables, creating many vowel-less syllables with syllabic consonants, as well as reduction of final consonants. Furthermore, the language's prosody does not include many clues about the sentence structure, unlike many other languages, making it relatively more difficult to perceive the different sounds of the speech flow.{{sfn|Grønnum|2008a}}{{sfn|Grønnum|2008b}} These factors taken together make Danish pronunciation difficult to master for learners, and research shows Danish children take slightly longer in learning to segment speech in early childhood.{{sfn | Trecca | Bleses | Højen | Madsen | 2020}}

=== Vowels ===
Although somewhat depending on analysis, most modern variants of Danish distinguish 12 long vowels, 13 short vowels, and two central vowels, {{IPA|/ə/}} and {{IPA|/ɐ/}}, which only occur in unstressed syllables. This gives a total of 27 different vowel phonemes – a very large number among the world's languages.{{sfn|Haberland|1994|p=319}} At least 19 different diphthongs also occur, all with a short first vowel and the second segment being either {{IPA|[j]}}, {{IPA|[w]}}, or {{IPA|[ɐ̯]}}.{{sfn|Haberland|1994|p=320}} The table below shows the approximate distribution of the vowels as given by {{Harvcoltxt|Grønnum|1998a}} in Modern Standard Danish, with the symbols used in [[Help:IPA/Danish|IPA/Danish]]. Questions of analysis may give a slightly different inventory, for example based on whether r-colored vowels are considered distinct phonemes. {{harvcoltxt|Basbøll|2005|page=50}} gives 25 "full vowels", not counting the two unstressed "schwa" vowels.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
|+ Vowel phonemes
! rowspan="3" |
! colspan="4" | [[Front vowel|Front]]
! colspan="2" rowspan="2" | [[Central vowel|Central]]
! colspan="2" rowspan="2" | [[Back vowel|Back]]
|-
! colspan="2" | {{small|unrounded}}
! colspan="2" | {{small|rounded}}
|-
! {{small|short}}
! {{small|long}}
! {{small|short}}
! {{small|long}}
! {{small|short}}
! {{small|long}}
! {{small|short}}
! {{small|long}}
|-
! [[Close vowel|Close]]
| {{IPA link|i}}
| {{IPA link|iː}}
| {{IPA link|y}}
| {{IPA link|yː}}
|
|
| {{IPA link|u}}
| {{IPA link|uː}}
|-
! [[Close-mid vowel|Close-mid]]
| {{IPA link|e̝|e}}
| {{IPA link|e̝|eː}}
| {{IPA link|ø}}
| {{IPA link|øː}}
| {{IPA link|ə}}
|
| {{IPA link|o}}
| {{IPA link|oː}}
|-
! [[Open-mid vowel|Open-mid]]
| {{IPA link|e|ɛ}}
| {{IPA link|eː|ɛː}}
| {{IPA link|œ̝|œ}}
| {{IPA link|œ̝|œː}}
| {{IPA link|ɐ}}
|
| {{IPA link|ɒ|ɔ}}
| {{IPA link|ɔ̝|ɔː}}
|-
! [[Open vowel|Open]]
| {{IPA link|æ|a}}
| {{IPA link|ɛː|aː}}
|
|
| {{IPA link|ɑ̈|ɑ}}
| {{IPA link|ɑ̈|ɑː}}
| {{IPA link|ɒ}}
| {{IPA link|ɒː}}
|}

=== Consonants ===
The consonant inventory is comparatively simple. {{harvcoltxt|Basbøll|2005|p=73}} distinguishes 17 non-syllabic consonant phonemes in Danish.

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"
!
! [[Labial consonant|Labial]]
! [[Alveolar consonant|Alveolar]]
! [[Palatal consonant|Palatal]]
! [[Velar consonant|Velar]]
! [[Uvular consonant|Uvular]]/<br />[[Pharyngeal consonant|Pharyngeal]]{{sfn|Basbøll|2005|p=130}}
! [[glottal consonant|Glottal]]
|-
! [[Nasal stop|Nasal]]
| {{IPA link|m}}
| {{IPA link|n}}
|
| {{IPA link|ŋ}}
|
|
|-
! [[Stop consonant|Stop]]
| {{IPA link|p}} {{IPA link|b}}
| {{IPA link|t}} {{IPA link|d}}
| 
| {{IPA link|k}} {{IPA link|ɡ}}
|
|
|-
! [[Fricative consonant|Fricative]]
| {{IPA link|f}}
| {{IPA link|s}}
|
|
|
| {{IPA link|h}}
|-
! [[Approximant consonant|Approximant]]
| {{IPA link|ʋ}}
| {{IPA link|l}} {{IPA link|ð}}
| {{IPA link|j}}
|
| {{IPA link|ʁ}}
|
|}

Many of these phonemes have quite different [[allophone]]s in [[Syllable onset|onset]] and [[Syllable coda|coda]] where intervocalic consonants followed by a full vowel are treated as in onset, otherwise as in coda.{{sfn|Basbøll|2005|p=43}} Phonetically there is no voicing distinction among the stops, rather the distinction is one of aspiration.{{sfn|Haberland|1994|p=320}} {{IPA|/p t k/}} are aspirated in onset realized as {{IPA|[pʰ, tsʰ, kʰ]}}, but not in coda. The pronunciation of ''t'', {{IPA|[tsʰ]}}, is in between a simple aspirated {{IPA|[tʰ]}} and a fully affricated {{IPA|[tsʰ]}} (as has happened in German with the second [[High German consonant shift]] from ''t'' to ''z''). There is dialectal variation, and some [[Jutlandic]] dialects may be less affricated than other varieties, with Northern and Western Jutlandic traditional dialects having an almost unaspirated ''dry t''.{{sfn|Puggaard|2021}}

{{IPA|/v/}} is pronounced as a {{IPA|[w]}} in syllable coda, so e.g. {{IPA|/ɡraːvə/}} ({{lang|da|grave}}) is pronounced {{IPA|[kʁɑːwə]}}.{{sfn|Basbøll|2005|p=64}}

{{IPA|[ʋ, ð]}} often have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as [[approximant]]s. Danish {{IPA|[ð]}} differs from the English sound that is conventionally transcribed with the same IPA symbol, in that it is not a dental fricative but an alveolar [[approximant]] which is frequently heard as {{IPA|[l]}} by second language learners.{{sfn|Haberland|1994|p=320}}

The sound {{IPA|[ɕ]}} is found for example in the word /sjovˀ/ "fun" pronounced {{IPA|[ɕɒwˀ]}} and {{IPA|/tjalˀ/}} "marijuana" pronounced {{IPA|[tɕælˀ]}}. Some analyses have posited it as a phoneme, but since it occurs only after {{IPA|/s/}} or {{IPA|/t/}} and {{IPA|[j]}} does not occur after these phonemes, it can be analyzed as an [[allophone]] of {{IPA|/j/}}, which is devoiced after voiceless alveolar frication. This makes it unnecessary to postulate a {{IPA|/ɕ/}}-phoneme in Danish.{{sfn|Grønnum|2005|pp=305–306}} Jutlandic dialects often lack the sound {{IPA|[ɕ]}} and pronounce the ''sj'' cluster as {{IPA|[sj]}} or {{IPA|[sç]}}.

In onset, {{IPA|/r/}} is realized as a [[voiced uvular fricative|uvular-pharyngeal approximant]], {{IPA|[ʁ]}}, but in coda it is either realized as a non-syllabic [[near-open central vowel|low central vowel]], {{IPA|[ɐ̯]}} or simply coalesces with the preceding vowel. The phenomenon is comparable to the ''r'' in German or in [[non-rhotic]] pronunciations of English. The Danish realization of {{IPA|/r/}} as guttural – the so-called ''skarre-r'' – distinguishes the language from those varieties of Norwegian and Swedish that use trilled {{IPA|[r]}}. Only very few, middle-aged or elderly, speakers of Jutlandic retain a frontal {{IPA|/r/}} which is then usually realised as a flapped {{IPA|[ɾ]}} or approximant {{IPA|[ɹ]}}.

=== Prosody ===
[[File:Danish pitch.png|thumb|A pitch trace of the sentence {{lang|da|Håndboldspil er meget belastende}} 'Handball playing is very demanding'.]]
Danish is characterized by a [[prosody (linguistics)|prosodic]] feature called {{lang|da|[[stød]]}} ({{lit|thrust}}). This is a form of laryngealization or [[creaky voice]]. Some sources have described it as a [[glottal stop]], but this is a very infrequent realization, and today phoneticians consider it a phonation type or a prosodic phenomenon.{{sfn|Fischer-Jørgensen|1989}} The occurrence is also dependent on stress, and some varieties also realize it primarily as a tone.{{sfn|Kyst|2008}} The {{lang|da|[[stød]]}} has phonemic status, since it serves as the sole distinguishing feature of words with different meanings in [[minimal pair]]s such as {{lang|da|bønder}} ("peasants") with {{lang|da|stød}}, versus {{lang|da|bønner}} ("beans") without {{lang|da|stød}}. The distribution of {{lang|da|stød}} in the vocabulary is related to the distribution of the common Scandinavian [[pitch accent]]s found in most dialects of [[Norwegian phonology#Accent|Norwegian]] and [[Swedish phonology#Stress and pitch|Swedish]].{{sfn| Basbøll|2005|pp=83–86}}

[[stress (linguistics)|Stress]] is phonemic and distinguishes words such as {{lang|da|billigst}} {{IPA|/ˈbilisd/}} "cheapest" and {{lang|da|bilist}} {{IPA|/biˈlisd/}} "car driver".{{sfn|Rischel|2012|p=811}}

[[Intonation (linguistics)|Intonation]] reflects the stress group, sentence type and prosodic phrase. In Copenhagen Standard Danish, the pitch pattern reaches its lowest peak within the stress group on the stressed syllable followed by its highest peak on the following unstressed syllable, after which it declines gradually until the next stress group.{{sfn|Grønnum|1998b}}
In [[Interactional linguistics|interaction]], pitch can mark e.g. the end of a story{{sfn|Mikkelsen|Kragelund|2015}} and turn-taking.{{sfn|Steensig|2001}}