Danish and Norwegian alphabet

The Danish and Norwegian alphabet is a special version of the Latin alphabet that people use to write their languages. Since 1917 for Norwegian and 1948 for Danish, both languages have used a set of 29 letters. Some letters, like ⟨c⟩, ⟨q⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨x⟩, and ⟨z⟩, are not used in everyday words from their own languages. Instead, these letters often appear in words borrowed from other languages.

In Norwegian, borrowed words are usually changed to fit the sounds of the language. But in Danish, there is a stronger habit to keep the original spellings of borrowed words. This means you might see words with ⟨c⟩ in Danish that would be changed to ⟨s⟩ in Norwegian. For example, Norwegian uses "sentrum" while Danish uses "centrum".

Family names can also include these "foreign" letters. For instance, some Danish families with the name meaning "forest" might spell it as "Schou" instead of "Skov". The Danish and Norwegian alphabet differs from the Swedish alphabet mainly in how certain vowel sounds are written. Swedish uses ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩, while Danish and Norwegian use ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨ø⟩. Also, the order in which these letters appear in dictionaries is different in Swedish compared to Danish and Norwegian.

Letters and their names

The Danish and Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters and has been like this since 1917 for Norwegian and 1948 for Danish. Five letters — ⟨c⟩, ⟨q⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨x⟩, and ⟨z⟩ — are not used in native words. In Norwegian, these letters appear mainly in loanwords, where the spelling is often changed to fit the language’s sounds. The list of letters shows their order and names, though these names do not always match the sounds they make in words.

Ordering

When sorting words in Danish, there are some special rules. The digraph ⟨aa⟩ is treated like ⟨å⟩ when it makes one vowel sound. If it makes two syllables, it is sorted like two ⟨a⟩ letters. Also, if two words are the same except for capitalization, the capitalized version comes first. Foreign names with letters like ⟨ä⟩ or ⟨ö⟩ are sorted as ⟨æ⟩ or ⟨ø⟩.

Diacritics

Danish orthography allows the use of an acute accent to help tell words apart that sound the same but have different meanings. For example, en dreng means "a boy," while én dreng means "one boy."

Nynorsk uses several letters with diacritic signs, like ⟨é⟩ and ⟨è⟩, to clarify meanings. For example, ein gut means "a boy," while éin gut means "one boy." Bokmål rarely uses diacritics, except in a few words like fôr (meaning "fodder") to tell them apart from similar-looking words.

History

The letter ⟨å⟩ was introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing ⟨aa⟩. It came from the Swedish alphabet, where it has been used since the 16th century. In Danish, ⟨å⟩ was introduced in 1948. Originally, there was a proposal to place it at the beginning of the alphabet, but it was later decided to put it at the end, just like in Norwegian.

In both Danish and Norwegian today, ⟨w⟩ is recognized as a separate letter from ⟨v⟩. In Danish, this change happened in 1980. Before that, ⟨w⟩ was seen as just a variation of ⟨v⟩. Even now, the Danish version of the Alphabet song still says the alphabet has 28 letters, but ⟨w⟩ is now considered an official letter.

Computing standards

In computing, several coding standards have supported the Danish and Norwegian alphabet. These include DS 2089 for Danish and NS 4551-1 for Norwegian, which were later part of the international standard ISO 646. Other standards include IBM PC code page 865, ISO 8859-1, and Unicode.