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Danish Danish (Da-dansk.ogg dansk (help·info); IPA is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany where it holds the status of minority language. Danish also holds official status and is a mandatory subject in school in the Danish territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which now enjoy limited autonomy. In Iceland and the Faroe Islands, Danish is taught as a compulsory foreign language in schools. There are also Danish language communities in Argentina, the U.S. and Canada. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Norse dialect group, while Norwegian is classified as a West Norse language together with Faroese and Icelandic. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish, Norwegian and Swedish into a Mainland Scandinavian group while Icelandic and Faroese are placed in a separate category labeled Insular Scandinavian.  The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century: Old West Norse dialect Old East Norse dialect Old Gutnish dialect Crimean Gothic Old English Other Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility Writing system The oldest preserved examples of written Danish (from the Iron and Viking Ages) are in the Runic alphabet. The introduction of Christianity also brought the Latin alphabet to Denmark, and at the end of the High Middle Ages the Runes had more or less been replaced by the Latin letters.  As in Germany, the Fraktur types were still commonly used in the late 19th century (until 1875, Danish children were taught to read Fraktur letters in school), and most books were printed with Fraktur typesetting even in the beginning of the 20th century. Also as in German, nouns were capitalized until after World War II. The modern Danish alphabet is similar to the English one, with three additional letters: æ, ø, and å, which come at the end of the alphabet, in that order. A spelling reform in 1948 introduced the letter å, already in use in Norwegian and Swedish, into the Danish alphabet to replace the letter aa; the old usage still occurs in some personal and geographical names and old documents (for example, the name of the city of Aalborg is spelled with Aa following a decision from the City Council in the 1970s). When representing the å sound, aa is treated just like å in alphabetical sorting, even though it looks like two letters. When the letters are not available (e.g., in URLs), they are replaced by ae (Æ, æ), oe (Ø, ø) or o, and aa (Å, å), respectively. The same spelling reform changed the spelling of a few common words, such as the past tense vilde (would), kunde (could) and skulde (should), to their current forms of ville, kunne and skulle (making them identical to the infinitives in writing, as they are in speech), and did away with the practice of capitalising all nouns, which German still does. Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs somewhat. Religion  According to official statistics from April 2008, 82.0% of the population of Denmark are members of the Lutheran state church, the Danish National Church (Den Danske Folkekirke), also known as the Church of Denmark. If immigrants and descendants of immigrants are excluded from the statistics, the member rate is even higher, approximately 90.3%. According to article 6 of the Constitution, the Royal family must belong to this Church. 3% of the Danish population adhere to Islam, and other religions in Denmark include non-Lutheran Christian denominations. The oldest state-recognised religious societies and churches are the following: * The Catholic Church in Denmark recognised by the state since 1682 * The Reformed Church recognised by the state since 1682. * Det Mosaiske Troessamfund, the main Jewish organisation in Denmark, recognised by the state since 1682.  Forn Sidr (English: The Old Way), based on the much older, native religion, is one of the most recently recognised by the state, gaining official status in November 2003. Religion, religious societies and churches do not need to be state-recognised in Denmark and can be granted the right to perform weddings etc. without this recognition. According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2005, 31% of Danish citizens responded that "they believe there is a god", whereas 49% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 19% that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force". According to a 2005 study by Zuckerman, Denmark has the third highest proportion of atheists and agnostics in the world, estimated to be between 43% and 80%.  Dictionary: Christianity in Denmark coming soon! Danish Bible: Dette er Biblen pÃ¥ dansk http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/index.php?action=getVersionInfo&vid=11&lang=15 |
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