Danish Phonology - Stress

Stress

Unlike the neighboring Mainland Scandinavian languages Swedish and Norwegian, the prosody of Danish does not have phonemic pitch. Stress is phonemic and distinguishes words like billigst "cheapest" and bilist "car driver". The main rules for the position of the stress are:

1. Inherited words are normally stressed on the first syllable.
2. The prefixes be-, for-, ge-, u- are unstressed, e.g. for’stå "understand", be’tale "pay", u'mulig "impossible" (NB there is also a stressed for- in nouns corresponding to the verbal prefix fore-).
3. In many compound adjectives, especially those ending in -ig and -lig, the stress is replaced from the first to the second syllable, e.g. vidt’løftig "circumstantial", sand'synlig "probable".
4. Words of French origin are stressed on the last syllable (except /ə/), e.g. renæ’ssance, mil’jø.
5. Words of Greek and Latin origin are stressed according to the Latin accent rules, i.e. stress on the penultimate if it is long or else on the antepenultimate, e.g. Ari’stoteles, Ho’rats.
6. The learned suffixes -aner, -ansk, -ance, -a/ens, -a/ent, -ere, -i, -ik, -ion, -itet, -ør are stressed, e.g. finge’rere, situa’tion, poli’tik, århusi’aner. The preceding syllable is stressed before the learned suffixes -isk, -iker, -or, e.g. po’lemisk, po’litiker, radi’ator. The suffix -or is stressed in the plural: radia’torer (colloquial: radi’atorer).
7. Verbs lose their stress (and stød, if any) in certain positions:

With an object without a definite or indefinite article: e.g. ’Jens ’spiser et ’barn "Jens eats a child" ~ ’Jens spiser ’børn "Jens eats children".

In a fixed phrase with an adverb or an adverbial: ’Helle ’sov ’længe "Helle slept for a long time" ~ ’Helle sov ’længe "Helle slept late".

Before the direction adverbs af, hen, hjem, ind, indad, ned, nedad, op, opad, over, ud, udad, under (but not the location adverbs henne. inde, nede, oppe, ovre, ude): e.g. han ’går ’ude på ’gaden "he walks on the street" ~ han går ’ud på ’gaden "he walks into the street".