Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Danish Writing System



The Danish writing system is based on the 26-letter Latin alphabet with an additional three letters - Æ/æ, Ø/ø, and Å/å - placed at the end.

Below are some of the prominent features of the Danish writing system:
Danish underwent a major orthography reform in 1948, which led to the introduction of the Å/å character as a replacement for aa. The old usage of aa can still be found in Danish names and historical documents. According to the Wikipedia, the Æ/æ character "represents a simple vowel...the same phoneme is represented in Swedish by the letter 'Ä', and in German by 'A-Umlaut.'"1 The Ø/ø character, on the other hand, represents a unique vowel in Danish and Norwegian and its equivalent in the Turkish, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, and German alphabets is the letter "Ö."2
Additional resources on the Danish writing system can be found on the Web at:
1 "Æ" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C6
[Accessed December 2, 2004]
2 "Æ" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8
[Accessed December 2, 2004]

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