A Short History of the Danish Language
Origins: Proto-Norse (c. 200–800 AD)
Danish began as a dialect of a common Nordic language, known from sparse runic inscriptions across Denmark, Norway and Sweden. During this period, old Indo-European stem vowels disappeared, and several distinctly Nordic sound changes occurred. For example, initial j was lost (German jung = Danish ung), and ht became t(t) (German Nacht = nat).
Old Danish (800–1100)
The Viking Age language was still essentially common Nordic. It is called “Danish” mainly because Denmark, Norway and Sweden became separate kingdoms in this period. The first real split came in the 800s, when East Norse (Danish and Swedish) simplified the diphthongs æi, au, øy. Compare Norwegian laus with Danish løs.
Grammatically, the language had:
- three genders
- four cases
- full verb inflection for person and number
- a new Nordic passive ending in -sk, derived from sik (‘self’)
Word order was mostly like today’s, though modifiers often followed the noun. Traces survive in names like Gorm den Gamle and in fadervor. The vocabulary had at least 5,000 inherited words. Christianity brought many loanwords, often from Latin via English and German missionaries, such as kirke, præst and skrive.
Middle Danish (1100–1525)
Danish became a distinct national written language. In the 1100s it went through uniquely Danish sound changes:
- Unstressed vowels weakened to ə: kaste vs. Swedish kasta.
- p, t, k after vowels softened to b, d, g: reb, mad, bog vs. Swedish rep, mat, bok.
The grammar was greatly simplified. Masculine and feminine merged into a common gender, the case system collapsed, and person inflection on verbs almost disappeared. Word order was still flexible.
Over 1,500 words were borrowed, mostly from Low German through Hanseatic merchants and German nobility. Examples include borger, krig, bukser, blive and dog. Low German also brought new affixes that became productive in Danish, such as be-, for-, -hed and -eri. A common written norm developed, based mainly on the dialect of Zealand. The Jutlandic Law (1241), preserved in copies like the Flensburg manuscript from c. 1300, is a key source and shows clear dialect features.
Modern Danish (after 1525)
By the Reformation, the grammar was close to today’s. Sentence structure stabilized by the early 1700s, and plural verb forms disappeared from the 1870s on.
Spelling milestones:
- An unhistorical silent d was introduced in words like mand and kvinde.
- Official spelling rules were set in 1889–92.
- In 1948, capitalized nouns were abolished and aa became å.
The vocabulary kept growing:
- High German after the Reformation (erfare, -mæssig)
- French from around 1700 (avis, nervøs)
- English especially after 1945 (weekend, teste)
- Ongoing Latin and Greek borrowings and coinages
Low German remains the strongest foreign influence, making up perhaps 16–17% of the words in ordinary modern text, compared with at most about 1% from English.
The Danish-speaking area shrank with the loss of Scania, Halland and Blekinge in 1658 and with German expansion in the south. In Norway, Danish replaced Old Norwegian as the written language during the union (1380–1814). Stylistically, a Latin-influenced chancery style long dominated written Danish. A more speech-like prose emerged with H.C. Andersen and was later adopted by journalists, and the civil service began phasing out the chancery style around 1970.
Sources: https://lex.dk/det_danske_sprogs_historie