Danish and Norwegian alphabet

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

In Norwegian, borrowed words are often changed to match the sounds of the language. 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 example, some Danish families with a 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 of these letters in dictionaries is different in Swedish compared to Danish and Norwegian.

Letters and their names

The Danish and Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters. This has been true since 1917 in Norwegian and 1948 in Danish. Five letters — ⟨c⟩, ⟨q⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨x⟩, and ⟨z⟩ — are not used in native words. In Norwegian, these letters are found 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 special rules. The digraph ⟨aa⟩ is treated like ⟨å⟩ if 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 writing uses an acute accent to help tell apart words that sound the same. For example, en dreng means "a boy," while én dreng means "one boy."

Nynorsk uses letters with diacritic signs, like ⟨é⟩ and ⟨è⟩, to make meanings clear. For example, ein gut means "a boy," while éin gut means "one boy." Bokmål rarely uses these signs, except in a few words like fôr, which means "fodder."

History

The letter ⟨å⟩ was added to the Norwegian alphabet in 1917. It replaced ⟨aa⟩. It came from the Swedish alphabet, where it has been used since the 1500s. In Danish, ⟨å⟩ was added in 1948. At first, people thought it should go at the start of the alphabet. But it was placed at the end, like in Norwegian.

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

Computing standards

In computing, many systems support the Danish and Norwegian alphabet. These include DS 2089 for Danish and NS 4551-1 for Norwegian. These are also part of the international standard ISO 646. Other systems include IBM PC code page 865, ISO 8859-1, and Unicode.