Danish Phonology - Vowels

Vowels

Modern Standard Danish has around 20 different vowel qualities. These vowels are shown here in a narrow transcription. In the rest of the article and in IPA transcriptions of Danish in Wikipedia the diacritics are usually omitted:

and occur only in unstressed syllables. With the exception of, and all vowels may be either long and short. Long vowels may have stød, thus making it possible to distinguish 30 different vowels in stressed syllables. However, vowel length and stød are most likely features of the syllable rather than features of the vowel.

These allophones can be analyzed into 11 distinctive vowels, where allophonic alternation mainly depends on whether the vowel occurs before or after /r/. The vowel /ə/ only occurs in unstressed syllables. All other phonemes may occur both stressed and unstressed.

The three way distinction in front rounded vowels /y ø œ/ is upheld only before nasals, e.g. /syns sønˀs sœns/ synes, synds, søns ("seems, sins, sons"). Furthermore, there are only three words where /y/ occurs before a nasal in a stressed syllable, i.e. synes, brynje, hymne ("seems, armor, hymn").

The distribution of and is largely in complementary distribution. However, a two-phoneme interpretation can be justified with reference to the unexpected vowel quality in words like andre, anderledes ("others, different"), and an increasing amount of loanwords.