Danish language

Danish label reading militærpoliti, "military police", on a police vehicle

About 2000 of Danish non-compound words are derived from the Old Norse language, and ultimately from Proto Indo-European. Of these 2000 words, 1200 are nouns, 500 are verbs, 180 are adjectives and the rest belong to other word classes.[17] Danish has also absorbed a large number of loan words, most of which were borrowed from Middle Low German in the late medieval period. Out of the 500 most frequently used words in Danish, 100 are medieval loans from Middle Low German, as Low German was the other official language of Denmark–Norway.[18] In the 17th and 18th centuries, standard German and French superseded Low German influence and in the 20th century, English became the main supplier of loan words, especially after World War II. Although many old Nordic words remain, some were replaced with borrowed synonyms, as can be seen with æde (to eat) which became less common when the Low German spise came into fashion. As well as loan words, new words are freely formed by compounding existing words. In standard texts of contemporary Danish, Middle Low German loans account for about 16–17% of the vocabulary, Graeco-Latin-loans 4–8%, French 2–4% and English about 1%.[18]

Danish and English are both Germanic languages. Danish is a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse, and English is a West Germanic language descended from Old English. Old Norse exerted a strong influence on Old English in the early medieval period. To see their shared Germanic heritage, one merely has to note the many common words that are very similar in the two languages. For example, commonly used Danish verbs, nouns, and prepositions such as have, over, under, for, give, flag, salt, and kat are easily recognizable in their written form to English speakers.[19] Similarly, some other words are almost identical to their Scots equivalents, e.g., kirke (Scots kirk, i.e., 'church') or barn (Scots bairn, i.e. 'child'). In addition, the word by, meaning "village" or "town", occurs in many English place-names, such as Whitby and Selby, as remnants of the Viking occupation. During the latter period, English adopted "are", the third person plural form of the verb "to be", as well as the corresponding personal pronoun form "they" from contemporary Old Norse.

Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can often understand the others fairly well, though studies have shown that the mutual intelligibility is asymmetric: speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each other. Both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they understand each other's languages.[20] The reason Norwegian occupies a middle position in terms of intelligibility is because of its shared border with Sweden resulting in a similarity in pronunciation, combined with the long tradition of having Danish as a written language which has led to similarities in vocabulary.[21] Among younger Danes, Copenhageners are worse at understanding Swedish than Danes from the provinces. In general, younger Danes are not as good at understanding the neighboring languages as Norwegian and Swedish youths.[20]

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

  Old English

  Crimean Gothic

  Other Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility

By the eighth century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse. This language was generally called the "Danish tongue" (Dǫnsk tunga), or "Norse language" (Norrœnt mál). Norse was written in the runic alphabet, first with the elder futhark and from the 9th century with the younger futhark.[24]

From the seventh century, the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, resulting in the appearance of two dialect areas, Old West Norse (Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). Most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway.[25] A change that separated Old East Norse (Runic Swedish/Danish) from Old West Norse was the change of the diphthong æi (Old West Norse ei) to the monophthong e, as in stæin to sten. This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin. Also, a change of au as in dauðr into ø as in døðr occurred. This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from tauþr into tuþr. Moreover, the øy (Old West Norse ey) diphthong changed into ø, as well, as in the Old Norse word for "island". This monophthongization started in Jutland and spread eastward, having spread throughout Denmark and most of Sweden by 1100.[26]

Through Danish conquest, Old East Norse was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England. Many words derived from Norse, such as "gate" (gade) for street, still survive in Yorkshire, the East Midlands and East Anglia, and parts of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings. The city of York was once the Viking settlement of Jorvik. Several other English words derive from Old East Norse, for example "knife" (kniv), "husband" (husbond), and "egg" (æg). The suffix "-by" for 'town' is common in place names in Yorkshire and the east Midlands, for example Selby, Whitby, Derby, and Grimsby. The word "dale" meaning valley is common in Yorkshire and Derbyshire placenames.[27]

In the medieval period, Danish emerged as a separate language from Swedish. The main written language was Latin, and the few Danish-language texts preserved from this period are written in the Latin alphabet, although the runic alphabet seems to have lingered in popular usage in some areas. The main text types written in this period are laws, which were formulated in the vernacular language to be accessible also to those who were not Latinate. The Jutlandic Law and Scanian Law were written in vernacular Danish in the early 13th century. Beginning in 1350, Danish began to be used as a language of administration, and new types of literature began to be written in the language, such as royal letters and testaments. The orthography in this period was not standardized nor was the spoken language, and the regional laws demonstrate the dialectal differences between the regions in which they were written.[29]

Throughout this period, Danish was in contact with Low German, and many Low German loan words were introduced in this period.[30] With the Protestant Reformation in 1536, Danish also became the language of religion, which sparked a new interest in using Danish as a literary language. Also in this period, Danish began to take on the linguistic traits that differentiate it from Swedish and Norwegian, such as the stød, the voicing of many stop consonants, and the weakening of many final vowels to /e/.[31]

The first printed book in Danish dates from 1495, the Rimkrøniken (Rhyming Chronicle), a history book told in rhymed verses.[32] The first complete translation of the Bible in Danish, the Bible of Christian II translated by Christiern Pedersen, was published in 1550. Pedersen's orthographic choices set the de facto standard for subsequent writing in Danish.[33] From around 1500, several printing presses were in operation in Denmark publishing in Danish and other languages. In the period after 1550, presses in Copenhagen dominated the publication of material in the Danish language.[9]

Following the first Bible translation, the development of Danish as a written language, as a language of religion, administration, and public discourse accelerated. In the second half of the 17th century, grammarians elaborated grammars of Danish, first among them Rasmus Bartholin's 1657 Latin grammar De studio lingvæ danicæ; then Laurids Olufsen Kock's 1660 grammar of the Zealand dialect Introductio ad lingvam Danicam puta selandicam; and in 1685 the first Danish grammar written in Danish, Den Danske Sprog-Kunst ("The Art of the Danish Language") by Peder Syv. Major authors from this period are Thomas Kingo, poet and psalmist, and Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, whose novel Jammersminde (Remembered Woes) is considered a literary masterpiece by scholars. Orthography was still not standardized and the principles for doing so were vigorously discussed among Danish philologists. The grammar of Jens Pedersen Høysgaard was the first to give a detailed analysis of Danish phonology and prosody, including a description of the stød. In this period, scholars were also discussing whether it was best to "write as one speaks" or to "speak as one writes", including whether archaic grammatical forms that had fallen out of use in the vernacular, such as the plural form of verbs, should be conserved in writing (i.e. han er "he is" vs. de ere "they are").[34]

The East Danish provinces were lost to Sweden after the Second Treaty of Brömsebro (1645) after which they were gradually Swedified; just as Norway was politically severed from Denmark, beginning also a gradual end of Danish influence on Norwegian (influence through the shared written standard language remained). With the introduction of absolutism in 1660, the Danish state was further integrated, and the language of the Danish chancellery, a Zealandic variety with German and French influence, became the de facto official standard language, especially in writing—this was the original so-called rigsdansk ("Danish of the Realm"). Also, beginning in the mid-18th century, the skarre-R, the uvular R sound ([ʁ]), began spreading through Denmark, likely through influence from Parisian French and German. It affected all of the areas where Danish had been influential, including all of Denmark, Southern Sweden, and coastal southern Norway.[35]

In the 18th century, Danish philology was advanced by Rasmus Rask, who pioneered the disciplines of comparative and historical linguistics, and wrote the first English-language grammar of Danish. Literary Danish continued to develop with the works of Ludvig Holberg, whose plays and historical and scientific works laid the foundation for the Danish literary canon. With the Danish colonization of Greenland by Hans Egede, Danish became the administrative and religious language there, while Iceland and the Faroe Islands had the status of Danish colonies with Danish as an official language until the mid-20th century.[34]

Following the loss of Schleswig to Germany, a sharp influx of German speakers moved into the area, eventually outnumbering the Danish speakers. The political loss of territory sparked a period of intense nationalism in Denmark, coinciding with the so-called "Golden Age" of Danish culture. Authors such as N.F.S. Grundtvig emphasized the role of language in creating national belonging. Some of the most cherished Danish-language authors of this period are existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and prolific fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen.[36] The influence of popular literary role models, together with increased requirements of education did much to strengthen the Danish language, and also started a period of homogenization, whereby the Copenhagen standard language gradually displaced the regional vernacular languages. Throughout the 19th century, Danes emigrated, establishing small expatriate communities in the Americas, particularly in the United States, Canada, and Argentina, where memory and some use of Danish remains today.

Language shift in the 19th century in southern Schleswig

After the Schleswig referendum in 1920, a number of Danes remained as a minority within German territories.[37] After the occupation of Denmark by Germany in World War II, the 1948 orthography reform dropped the German-influenced rule of capitalizing nouns, and introduced the letter ⟨å⟩. Three 20th-century Danish authors have become Nobel Prize laureates in Literature: Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (joint recipients in 1917) and Johannes V. Jensen (awarded 1944).

With the exclusive use of rigsdansk, the High Copenhagen Standard, in national broadcasting, the traditional dialects came under increased pressure. In the 20th century, they have all but disappeared, and the standard language has extended throughout the country.[38] Minor regional pronunciation variation of the standard language, sometimes called regionssprog ("regional languages") remain, and are in some cases vital. Today, the major varieties of Standard Danish are High Copenhagen Standard, associated with elderly, well to-do, and well educated people of the capital, and low Copenhagen speech traditionally associated with the working class, but today adopted as the prestige variety of the younger generations.[39][40] Also, in the 21st century, the influence of immigration has had linguistic consequences, such as the emergence of a so-called multiethnolect in the urban areas, an immigrant Danish variety (also known as Perkerdansk), combining elements of different immigrant languages such as Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish, as well as English and Danish.[39]

Within the Danish Realm, Danish is the national language of Denmark and one of two official languages of the Faroe Islands (alongside Faroese). A Faroese variant of Danish is known as Gøtudanskt. Until 2009, Danish had also been one of two official languages of Greenland (alongside Greenlandic). Danish is widely spoken in Greenland now as lingua franca, and an unknown portion of the native Greenlandic population has Danish as their first language; a large percentage of the native Greenlandic population speaks Danish as a second language since its introduction into the education system as a compulsory language in 1928. Danish was an official language in Iceland until 1944, but is today still widely used and is a mandatory subject in school taught as a second foreign language after English. Iceland was a territory ruled by Denmark–Norway, one of whose official languages was Danish.[41] About 10% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their first language owing to immigration.[5]

No law stipulates an official language for Denmark, making Danish the de facto official language only. The Code of Civil Procedure does, however, lay down Danish as the language of the courts.[42] Since 1997, public authorities have been obliged to observe the official spelling by way of the Orthography Law. In the 21st century, discussions have been held regarding creating a language law that would make Danish the official language of Denmark.[43]

Learn Danish banner in Flensburg, Germany, where it is an officially recognized regional language

In addition, a noticeable community of Danish speakers is in Southern Schleswig, the portion of Germany bordering Denmark, and a variant of Standard Danish, Southern Schleswig Danish, is spoken in the area. Since 2015, Schleswig-Holstein has officially recognized Danish as a regional language,[6][7] just as German is north of the border. Furthermore, Danish is one of the official languages of the European Union and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council.[44] Under the Nordic Language Convention, Danish-speaking citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs.[44]

The more widespread of the two varieties of written Norwegian, Bokmål, is very close to Danish, because standard Danish was used as the de facto administrative language until 1814 and one of the official languages of Denmark–Norway. Bokmål is based on Danish, unlike the other variety of Norwegian, Nynorsk, which is based on the Norwegian dialects, with Old Norwegian as an important reference point.[15] Also North Frisian[45] and Gutnish (Gutamål) were influenced by Danish.[46]

There are also Danish emigrant communities in other places of the world who still use the language in some form. In the Americas, Danish-speaking communities can be found in the US, Canada, Argentina and Brazil.[8]

Although somewhat depending on analysis, most modern variants of Danish distinguish 12 long vowels, 13 short vowels, and two central vowels, /ə/ and /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.[61] At least 19 different diphthongs also occur, all with a short first vowel and the second segment being either [j], [w], or [ɐ̯].[62] The table below shows the approximate distribution of the vowels as given by Grønnum (1998a) in Modern Standard Danish, with the symbols used in IPA/Danish. Questions of analysis may give a slightly different inventory, for example based on whether r-colored vowels are considered distinct phonemes. Basbøll (2005:50) gives 25 "full vowels", not counting the two unstressed "schwa" vowels.

The consonant inventory is comparatively simple. Basbøll (2005:73) distinguishes 16 non-syllabic consonant phonemes in Danish.

Many of these phonemes have quite different allophones in onset and coda where intervocalic consonants followed by a full vowel are treated as in onset, otherwise as in coda.[64] Phonetically there is no voicing distinction among the stops, rather the distinction is one of aspiration.[62] /p t k/ are aspirated in onset realized as [pʰ, tsʰ, kʰ], but not in coda. The pronunciation of t, [tsʰ], is in between a simple aspirated [tʰ] and a fully affricated [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.[65]

/v/ is pronounced as a [w] in syllable coda, so e.g. /ɡraːvə/ (grave) is pronounced [kʁɑːwə].[66]

[ʋ, ð] often have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as approximants. Danish [ð] differs from the similar sound in English and Icelandic, in that it is not a dental fricative but an alveolar approximant which is frequently heard as [l] by second language learners.[62]

The sound [ɕ] is found for example in the word /sjovˀ/ "fun" pronounced [ɕɒwˀ] and /tjalˀ/ "marijuana" pronounced [tɕælˀ]. Some analyses have posited it as a phoneme, but since it occurs only after /s/ or /t/ and [j] does not occur after these phonemes, it can be analyzed as an allophone of /j/, which is devoiced after voiceless alveolar frication. This makes it unnecessary to postulate a /ɕ/-phoneme in Danish.[67] Jutlandic dialects often lack the sound [ɕ] and pronounce the sj cluster as [sj] or [sç].

In onset /r/ is realized as a uvu-pharyngeal approximant, [ʁ], but in coda it is either realized as a non-syllabic low central vowel, [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 /r/ as guttural – the so-called skarre-r – distinguishes the language from those varieties of Norwegian and Swedish that use trilled [r]. Only very few, middle-aged or elderly, speakers of Jutlandic retain a frontal /r/ which is then usually realised as a flapped [ɾ] or approximant [ɹ].

A pitch trace of the sentence Håndboldspil er meget belastende 'Handball playing is very demanding'.

Danish is characterized by a prosodic feature called 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.[68] The occurrence is also dependent on stress, and some varieties also realize it primarily as a tone.[69] The stød has phonemic status, since it serves as the sole distinguishing feature of words with different meanings in minimal pairs such as bønder ("peasants") with stød, versus bønner ("beans") without stød. The distribution of stød in the vocabulary is related to the distribution of the common Scandinavian pitch accents found in most dialects of Norwegian and Swedish.[70]

Stress is phonemic and distinguishes words such as billigst /ˈbilisd/ "cheapest" and bilist /biˈlisd/ "car driver".[71]

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.[72] In interaction, pitch can mark e.g. the end of a story[73] and turn-taking.[74]

Nouns are inflected for number (singular vs. plural) and definiteness, and are classified into two grammatical genders. Only pronouns inflect for case, and the previous genitive case has become an enclitic. A distinctive feature of the Nordic languages, including Danish, is that the definite articles, which also mark noun gender, have developed into suffixes. Typical of Germanic languages plurals are either irregular or "strong" stems inflected through umlaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem) (e.g. fod/fødder "foot/feet", mand/mænd "man/men") or "weak" stems inflected through affixation (e.g. skib/skibe "ship/ships", kvinde/kvinder "woman/women").[76]

Standard Danish has two nominal genders: common and neuter; the common gender arose as the historical feminine and masculine genders conflated into a single category. Some traditional dialects retain a three-way gender distinction, between masculine, feminine and neuter, and some dialects of Jutland have a masculine/feminine contrast. While the majority of Danish nouns (ca. 75%) have the common gender, and neuter is often used for inanimate objects, the genders of nouns are not generally predictable and must in most cases be memorized. The gender of a noun determines the form of adjectives that modify it, and the form of the definite suffixes. [77]

Definiteness is marked by two mutually exclusive articles: either a postposed enclitic or a preposed article which is the obligatory way to mark definiteness when nouns are modified by an adjective.[78] Neuter nouns take the clitic -et, and common gender nouns take -en. Indefinite nouns take the articles en (common gender) or et (neuter). Hence, the common gender noun en mand "a man" (indefinite) has the definite form manden "the man", whereas the neuter noun et hus "a house" (indefinite) has the definite form, "the house" (definite) huset.[77] [79]

Indefinite:

• Jeg så et hus: "I saw a house"

Definite with enclitic article:

• Jeg så huset: "I saw the house"

Definite with preposed demonstrative article:

• Jeg så det store hus:[nb 1] "I saw the big house"

The plural definite ending is -(e)ne (e.g. drenge "boys > drengene "the boys" and piger "girls" > pigerne "the girls"), and nouns ending in -ere lose the last -e before adding the -ne suffix (e.g. danskere "Danes" > danskerne "the Danes"). When the noun is modified by an adjective, the definiteness is marked by the definite article den (common) or det (neuter) and the definite/plural form of the adjective: den store mand "the big man", det store hus "the big house".[80][79]

There are three different types of regular plurals: Class 1 forms the plural with the suffix -er (indefinite) and -erne (definite), Class 2 with the suffix -e (indefinite) and -ene (definite), and Class 3 takes no suffix for the plural indefinite form and -ene for the plural definite.[81]

Most irregular nouns have an ablaut plural (i.e. with a change in the stem vowel), or combine ablaut stem-change with the suffix, and some have unique plural forms. Unique forms may be inherited (e.g. the plural of øje "eye", which is the old dual form øjne), or for loan words they may be borrowed from the donor language (e.g. the word konto "account" which is borrowed from Italian and uses the Italian masculine plural form konti "accounts").[82][83]

Possessive phrases are formed with the enclitic -s, for example min fars hus "my father's house" where the noun far carries the possessive enclitic.[84] This is however not an example of genitive case marking, because in the case of longer noun phrases the -s attaches to the last word in the phrase, which need not be the head-noun or even a noun at all. For example, the phrases kongen af Danmarks bolsjefabrik "the king of Denmark's candy factory", where the factory is owned by the king of Denmark, or det er pigen Uffe bor sammen meds datter "that is the daughter of the girl that Uffe lives with", where the enclitic attaches to a stranded preposition.[85][86]

Like all Germanic languages, Danish forms compound nouns. These are represented in Danish orthography as one word, as in kvindehåndboldlandsholdet, "the female national handball team". In some cases, nouns are joined with s as a linking element, originally possessive in function, like landsmand (from land, "country", and mand, "man", meaning "compatriot"), but landmand (from same roots, meaning "farmer"). Some words are joined with the linking element e instead, like gæstebog (from gæst and bog, meaning "guest book"). There are also irregular linking elements.

As does English, the Danish pronominal system retains a distinction between nominative and oblique case. The nominative form of pronouns is used when pronouns occur as grammatical subject of a sentence (and only when non-coordinated and without a following modifier[87]), and oblique forms are used for all non-subject functions including direct and indirect object, predicative, comparative and other types of constructions. The third person singular pronouns also distinguish between animate masculine (han "he"), animate feminine (hun "she") forms, as well as inanimate neuter (det "it") and inanimate common gender (den "it").[88]

• Jeg sover: "I sleep"
• Du sover: "you sleep"
• Jeg kysser dig: "I kiss you"
• Du kysser mig: "you kiss me"

Possessive pronouns have independent and adjectival uses, but the same form.[89] The form is used both adjectivally preceding a possessed noun (det er min hest "it is my horse"), and independently in place of the possessed noun (den er min "it is mine"). In the third person singular, sin is used when the possessor is also the subject of the sentence, whereas hans ("his"), hendes (her) and dens/dets "its" is used when the possessor is different from the grammatical subject.[90][91]

• Han tog sin hat: He took his (own) hat
• Han tog hans hat: He took his hat (someone else's hat)

Danish verbs are morphologically simple, marking very few grammatical categories. They do not mark person or number of subject, although the marking of plural subjects was still used in writing as late as the 19th century. Verbs have a past, non-past and infinitive form, past and present participle forms, and a passive, and an imperative.[92]

Verbs can be divided into two main classes, the strong/irregular verbs and the regular/weak verbs.[78] The regular verbs are also divided into two classes, those that take the past suffix -te and those that take the suffix -ede.[93]

The infinitive always ends in a vowel, usually -e (pronounced [ə]), infinitive forms are preceded by the article at (pronounced [ɒ]) in some syntactic functions.[93] The non-past or present tense takes the suffix -r, except for a few strong verbs that have irregular non-past forms. The past form does not necessarily mark past tense, but also counterfactuality or conditionality, and the non-past has many uses besides present tense time reference.[94]

The present participle ends in -ende (e.g. løbende "running"), and the past participle ends in -et (e.g. løbet "run"), -t (e.g. købt "bought"). The Perfect is constructed with at have ("to have") and participial forms, like in English. But some transitive verbs form the perfect using at være ("to be") instead, and some may use both with a difference in meaning.

• Hun har gået. Flyet har fløjet: She has walked. The plane has flown
• Hun er gået. Flyet er fløjet: She has left. The plane has taken off
• Hun havde gået. Flyet havde fløjet: She had walked. The plane had flown
• Hun var gået. Flyet var fløjet: She had left. The plane had taken off

The passive form takes the suffix -s: avisen læses hver dag ("the newspaper is read every day"). Another passive construction uses the auxiliary verb at blive "to become": avisen bliver læst hver dag.[94][95]

The imperative form is the infinitive without the final schwa-vowel, with stød potentially being applied depending on syllable structure.:

• løb!: "run!"

The numerals are formed on the basis of a vigesimal system with various rules. In the word forms of numbers above 20, the units are stated before the tens, so 21 is rendered enogtyve, literally "one and twenty".

The numeral halvanden means 1+1⁄2 (literally "half second", implying "one plus half of the second one"). The numerals halvtredje (2+1⁄2), halvfjerde (3+1⁄2) and halvfemte (4+1⁄2) are obsolete, but still implicitly used in the vigesimal system described below. Similarly, the temporal designation (klokken) halv tre, literally "half three (o'clock)", is half past two.

One peculiar feature of the Danish language is that the numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 are (as are the French numerals from 80 through 99) based on a vigesimal system, meaning that the score (20) is used as a base unit in counting. Tres (short for tre-sinds-tyve, "three times twenty") means 60, while 50 is halvtreds (short for halvtredje-sinds-tyve, "half third times twenty", implying two score plus half of the third score). The ending sindstyve meaning "times twenty" is no longer included in cardinal numbers, but may still be used in ordinal numbers. Thus, in modern Danish fifty-two is usually rendered as tooghalvtreds from the now obsolete tooghalvtredsindstyve, whereas 52nd is either tooghalvtredsende or tooghalvtredsindstyvende. Twenty is tyve (derived from Old Danish tiughu, a haplology of tuttiughu, meaning 'two tens'[96]), while thirty is tredive (Old Danish þrjatiughu, "three tens"), and forty is fyrre (Old Danish fyritiughu, "four tens",[97] still used today as the archaism fyrretyve).[98] Thus, the suffix -tyve should be understood as a plural of ti (10), though to modern Danes tyve means 20, making it hard to explain why fyrretyve is 40 (four tens) and not 80 (four twenties).

For large numbers (one billion or larger), Danish uses the long scale, so that the short-scale billion (1,000,000,000) is called milliard, and the short-scale trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is billion.

Danish basic constituent order in simple sentences with both a subject and an object is Subject–Verb–Object.[99] However, Danish is also a V2 language, which means that the verb must always be the second constituent of the sentence. Following the Danish grammarian Paul Diderichsen[100] Danish grammar tends to be analyzed as consisting of slots or fields, and in which certain types of sentence material can be moved to the pre-verbal (or foundation) field to achieve different pragmatic effects. Usually the sentence material occupying the preverbal slot has to be pragmatically marked, usually either new information or topics. There is no rule that subjects must occur in the preverbal slot, but since subject and topic often coincide, they often do. Therefore, whenever any sentence material that is not the subject occurs in the preverbal position the subject is demoted to postverbal position and the sentence order becomes VSO.[101]

• Peter (S) så (V) Jytte (O): "Peter saw Jytte"

but

• I går så (V) Peter (S) Jytte (O): "Yesterday, Peter saw Jytte"

When there is no pragmatically marked constituents in the sentence to take the preverbal slot (for example when all the information is new), the slot has to take a dummy subject "der".[102]

• der kom en pige ind ad døren: there came a girl in through the door, "A girl came in the door"

Haberland (1994, p. 336) describes the basic order of sentence constituents in main clauses as comprising the following 8 positions:

Position 0 is not part of the sentence and can only contain sentential connectors (such as conjunctions or interjections). Position 1 can contain any sentence constituent. Position 2 can only contain the finite verb. Position 3 is the subject position, unless the subject is fronted to occur in position 1. Position 4 can only contain light adverbs and the negation. Position 5 is for non-finite verbs, such as auxiliaries. Position 6 is the position of direct and indirect objects, and position 7 is for heavy adverbial constituents.[101]

Questions with wh-words are formed differently from yes/no questions. In wh-questions the question word occupies the preverbal field, regardless of whether its grammatical role is subject or object or adverbial. In yes/no questions the preverbal field is empty, so that the sentence begins with the verb.

Wh-question:

• hvem så hun?: whom saw she, "whom did she see?"
• så hun ham?: saw she him?, "did she see him?"

In subordinate clauses, the word order differs from that of main clauses. In the subordinate clause structure the verb is preceded by the subject and any light adverbial material (e.g. negation).[103] Complement clauses begin with the particle at in the "connector field".

• Han sagde, at han ikke ville gå: he said that he not would go, "He said that he did not want to go"

Relative clauses are marked by the relative pronouns som or der which occupy the preverbal slot:

• Jeg kender en mand, som bor i Helsingør:[104] "I know a man who lives in Elsinore"