History of Danish

History Of Danish

Part of a series on
Old Norse
Dialects
  • Old West Norse (Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Greenlandic Norse)
  • Old East Norse (Old Danish, Old Swedish)
  • Old Gutnish
Use
  • Orthography
  • Runic alphabet (Younger Futhark, Medieval)
  • Latin alphabet
  • Grammar
  • Phonology
  • Morphology
Literature
  • Poetry (Alliterative verse)
  • Sagas (Sagas of Icelanders)
  • Edda (Poetic Edda, Prose Edda)
  • First Grammatical Treatise
Ancestors
  • Proto-Indo-European
  • Proto-Germanic
  • Proto-Norse
Descendants
  • Danish
  • Faroese
  • Icelandic
  • Norn (extinct)
  • Norwegian
  • Swedish
See also: English borrowings

The Danish language develops during the Middle Ages out of the Old East Norse, the common predecessor of Danish and Swedish, itself a late form of common Old Norse. The history of Danish can by convention be divided into:

  • Old Danish (Old East Norse), 9th to 11th centuries
  • Middle Danish, 12th to 15th centuries
  • Modern Danish, 16th century to present.

Read more about History Of Danish:  Old Danish, Middle Danish, Modern Danish

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    “Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
    —G.M. (George Macaulay)

    “Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
    —John Dos Passos (1896–1970)