Danish
Danish is a member of the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, branch of the Indo-European
family of languages. It is spoken by over 5 million people, mostly in Denmark,
where it is the official language but also in Greenland, the Faeroe Islands
and Iceland. Like the other Scandinavian languages, Danish is derived from Old
Norse, and by the first half of the 12th century it could be distinguished from
the parent tongue. Around.1700 the spelling and pronunciation of the language
began to be standardized, and a Modern Standard Danish can be said to have existed
since about 1800, although there are still a number of dialects. Although the
vocabulary of Danish is substantially native, many words have been borrowed
from other languages, notably from Low German in the 14th to 16th century.;
from High German, Latin, and French in the 16th to 19th centuries.; and more
recently from English. Danish is very similar to Norwegian and Swedish, and
because of the large number of similar and identical words in these three languages,
a knowledge of any one of these languages makes it possible to understand the
spoken and written forms of the other two. Since about 1100, Danish has used
the Roman alphabet, to which three symbols have been added: å (written
as aa before 1948), æ, and ø.
Sources:
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Other Local Resources:
UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art
Balboa Park House
of Pacific Relations
International web radio
Landmark
Theaters: foreign films
House of Denmark
The Folk Dancer