The Danish and Norwegian alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian) and 1955 (Danish), although Danish did not officially recognize the W as a separate letter until 1980.
| Majuscule Forms (also called uppercase or capital letters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | Æ | Ø | Å |
| Minuscule Forms (also called lowercase or small letters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z | æ | ø | å |
|
|
|||
|
Use: Other topics: |
|||
|
|
|||
|
Variants: Use: Other topics: |
|||
- (Listen to a Danish speaker recite the alphabet in Danish.)
The letters c, q, w, x and z are not used in the spelling of indigenous words. They are rarely used in Norwegian, where loan words routinely have their orthography adapted to the native sound system. Conversely, Danish has a greater tendency to preserve the original spelling of loan words. In particular, a 'c' that represents /s/ is almost never normalized to 's' in Danish, as would most often happen in Norwegian. Many words originally derived from Latin roots retain 'c' in their Danish spelling, for example Norwegian sentrum vs Danish centrum.
The "foreign" letters also sometimes appear in the spelling of otherwise-indigenous family names. For example, many of the Danish families that use the surname Skov (literally: "Forest") spell it Schou.
Read more about Danish And Norwegian Alphabet: History, Computing Standards
Famous quotes containing the word alphabet:
“I wonder, Mr. Bone man, what you’re thinking
of your fury now, gone sour as a sinking whale,
crawling up the alphabet on her own bones.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)