The four troublemakers in Danish Orthography

1. The fourtroublemakers in Danish Orthography Harvard October 2014 / Henrik Jørgensen, Aarhus Universitet

2. The fourTroublemakers • The theme of mylecture is where the main problems arelocatedifyoutry to use the orthography as a guide to the pronunciation of Danish. The four most importanttroublemakersarethese: • 1) The letters ptk – bgdnormallyassociated with the occlusives • 2) The vowel letters, esp. thosecovering short vowels • 3) Vowellength • 4) The glottal stop

3. The fourtroublemakers • The configuration of the interface of sound and writing is utterlymisleading to foreignerstrying to learnpronunciation. • This experience has been made in severalcontexts. • Danish has the reputation of beingdifficult. Sinceitsgrammar in almostanyrespectworkslikeSwedish and Norwegian, it must have to do with the relation betweenwriting and sound. But compare with English!

4. Whydoes the troubleoccur? • All applications of the alphabetcontainpeculiar adaptions and compromises, and some of themmayseemodd, likeHungarian ’s’ = [sj] and ’sz’ = [s]. • Orthographies with a long tradition accumulateinconsequences and unsystematiccorrespondencesdue to sound developments independent of the writing. This phenomenon is sometimescalled ”Orthographicdepth”

5. Brief history of the Danish orthography • The Danish orthography is established in the earlyMiddle Age, around 1200 or perhaps evenearlier. Earliest manuscripts are from around 1275-1300. • The orthographywas not regulated, but seems to have beenrelatively stable from the beginning. • The reformation and the introduction of printingtechniquesaround 1525-1550 bringsabout a stable but not codified tradition. The emphasis is on the dialects of Sealand in general, Copenhagen in particular

6. Brief history of the Danish orthography • The most importantregulationsareundertakenafter 1650. The tradition becomesquite stable after ”Danske Lov” (Lawbook of Denmark) 1683. • 1775 introduction of Danish language in High Schools along with Latin and Greek. Spelling is regulatedofficially, but nodictionary is provided. • 1872 first official dictionary of Danish spelling. • 1892 and 1948: minor reforms

7. Occlusive letters • One of the main problems in Danish is the distributionalassymetry of manyconsonant letters. Quitemany letters areassociateddifferent sounds, according to whethertheyareplacedbefore or after the vocalicnucleus of the syllable. • Part of the reason for this is economy. There is a different set of sound before and after the vocalicnucleus; thusrecyclingmaybeneccessary. • Anotherreason: the sounds have developed in the differentcontextsafter the writing tradition wasestablished. • My mainsources for the following arguments: Basbøll (2004, 2007), Becker-Christensen 1988, Jervelund 2007, and aboveallsKatlev 1980.

8. Occlusives ’p’, ’t’ and ’k’ -: bound variation; /: free variation; \ non-standard variation

9. Occlusives’b’, ’d’ and ’g’

10. Occlusives • The letters must alwaysbeinterpreted in relation to the position in the syllable. • This is also true of the letters ’R’, ’V’ and ’J’; hence it is not unusual in Danish • The main problem is thta the distance between the realized sounds and the letter is so strong. When letters like ’D’, ’G’ and partily ’T’ change from front to back position, theyalsochange in threephonetic registers: • From punctual to continuous • From unvoiced to voiced • From contoid to vocoid

11. Asymmetry of occlusives – ’B’

12. Asymmetry of the occlusives – ’D’ 12

13. Asymmetry of the occlusives – ’G’

14. Short vowels • As it has beennotedquiteoften (Basbøll og Wagner 1985, Jervelund 2007), the long vowelsarequiteregularin most cases. The short vowel, on the otherhand, arecomplex:

15. Short vowels

16. Short vowels

17. Prosody I: vowellength • Becker-Christensen 1988: 87 gives thismainruleconcerningvowellength: • I: In syllablesending in a vowel and syllables with onepostvocalicconsonant: the vowel is LONG. • II: In syllables with two post-vocalicconsonants: the vowel is SHORT • This ruleapplies to monosyllabicwords and wordsending in a stressedsyllable • The rulemayfirstbeappliedwhen all inflections and derivatives have been removed • This doesmakelife more complicated, sinceyou have to know the details of morphology in order to use the rule.

18. Prosody I: vowellength • Becker-Christensen (1988: 91) gives a number of exceptions to rule II: • Vowel is long before -rd and –ds, and beforegC: Bord, kreds, ligne, fugl, flegma, karl, vejr • Vowel is long beforecertain double consonants: næbbet, læggen, skægget, ægget, sjette, otte, ætten, bredde, vidde. • Vowel is long beforecertaincombinations of letters: vable, æble, skæbne, væbne, erobre, sagte (adv), ens, besk, slesk, træsk, påske, bæst, faste, kiste, hoste, pruste, puste (the two last onesmaybeboth long and short).

19. Prosody I: vowellength • Exceptions to rule I, e.g. short vowel in VC-structureswithoutglottal stop (Becker-Christensen 1988: 92): • In front of occlusives: Hat, nok, kat, gok, tit, flok, klik, smuk, flot, glat, at, sat • In front of nasals: han, hun, man, som • In front of semi-vowels: og, jeg, dig, sig, er, var, rav, drev, rev, jer, vor • In front of đ: glad, mad, had, mad, gud, bed, fred • Pronouns and otherfunctionwordsarewellrepresented in thisgroup: og, jeg, dig, sig, er, var, at, som, det, sit (but not den, sin), jer, vor.

20. Prosody I: Vowellength • Inflectional forms causeexceptions to rule II (short vowelwhenfollowed by twoconsonants) : • Mast (sb. short / vb. ’mase’ long) • Læst (sb. short / vb. ’læse’ long) • Lyst (sb. short / vb. ’lyse’ long) • Kyst (sb. short /vb. ’kyse’ long) • Øst (sb. short / vb. ’øse’ long)

21. Prosody I: Vowellength • Short vowel in syllablesending in a vowelarequitefrequent in central vocabulary (Becker-Christensen 1988: 93): • Manypersonalpronouns: du, vi, I, de (De) • Manyinterjections: ja, ha, hurra, fy, nå, oho, hallo • Adverbs, conjunctions etc.: nu, da, så, thi, jo • Severalloanwords: • The solmisationdo, re, mi, fa, la • French loanwords: cha-cha-cha, gaga, charpi, fait acccompli, hotel garni, kepi, maki ( including the French-inspiredpronunciationHelsinKI), art deco, yoyo, vue/vy, revy, (portemonnæ, adjø,) miljø – but pø om pø - !

22. Prosody II: The glottal stop • No constellation of letters signals the glottal stop in anyconsequentway (Basbøll 2007: 90). • The glottal stop is distributedaccording to the weight of the syllable, cp. Basbøll (1988, 1998, 2007). Therefore the otherprosodic features (vocaliclenghtcombined with the voicedness of the postvocalicconsonants) determinewhere the glottal stop mayoccur. However the orthography gives noclues to all this. • The factthat the glottal stop is concomitantwthother factors is probably the mainreasonwhythisphenomenon never attracted the interest of orthograhers (exceptHøysgaard in the 18th century).

23. Problems that the ortographers never caredabout • If Jutland had remained the corearea of the kingdom (as it was in early medieval times), thingswould have taken a differentway. • Dialects in Jutland have apocope, i.e. Old Norsemonosyllables and bisyllables form onemonosyllabicgroup. • Apocope is nowspreadinginto Standard Danish, thusfacingus with a problem. • Most modernmonosyllabicloanwordsare from English, wheresimilarapocope forms are standard; suchwordscannotbeaccommodatedto modern Danish orthography.

24. Syllabic types in Jutlanddialects • Viggo Sørensen (2007) identifiesthreemonosyllabic types in Standard Danish: • Words with vocalicglottal stop (bro, sne, gry, fad, nøl) • Words with consonaticglottal stop (land, rend, vom) • Words without a glottal stop (hat, sæt, blot, rat) • Basically the orthographyleavesnoclues as to which of these types you have to do with, exceptwhat I mentionedbefore. The orthographicconstellation (-)VC is represented in all threeword types, as youwillsee.

25. Syllabic types in Jutlanddialects • In the Jutlanddialectsyouwill find 7 syllabic types: • Words with a tonal accent (only relevant in Southern Jutland) • Words with vocalicglottal stop • Words with consonanticglottal stop • Words without a glottal stop • Words with a long vowelwithoutglottal stop • Words with long consonant • Words with West Jutlandglottalization • This is a general matrix. Fewdialects have type 1, and the use of 7 is alsorestricted. The central areas do with types 2-6.

26. Prosody II: The Glottal Stop • In Jutlandpresence/absence of Glottal Stop or similarprosodic oppositions are the onlydistinctions of singular vs. plural with manymonosyllabicwords: • Hus [hu’s] – [hu;s] • Ben [bie’n] – [bi;en] • Gren [græ’n] – [græ;n] • Bro [bro’w] – [bro;w] • Most Jutlanddialects have a syllabic type unknown to Standard Danish until the monosyllabic English loanwords arrived: monosyllables with a long vowelwithoutglottal stop.

27. A specialorthography for Jutland • In general there has beenlittleinterest in a specialJutlandorthography, eventhough the languagetaught in the schools must have seemedextremelystrange to little kids in Jutland 200 yearsago. • However, Steen Steensen Blicher (1782-1848) devicedan orthography for his short stories in Jutlanddialects.

28. Syllabic types in Jutlanddialects • Blicher’streatment of the prosody (after Viggo Sørensen 2007): • V +/- C : nospecialmarking • V: + GS +/- C : Ve (bar = baer; dør = døer) • V + C + GS: VCh (vild = vilh; nem = nemh) • V: +/- C : Vh(C) (plade = plahd; tørre = tahr) • V + C: : VCC (nar = narr, levne = löwnn) • V + C + West Jutlandglottal stop: like 5

29. Syllabic types in JutlandOrthography • Certainaspects of Blicher’sorthographyareinconsistent. It seemsirregular to signal the glottal stop in vowels with ’e’, but with ’h’ with consonants, particularlywhen ’h’ with vowelssignifylenght. • On the otherhandmany of his orthographicdevices ring an echo of orthography in earlymodern times (1500-1700, partlyalsoolder). (Please do not assumethat his use of thesedevicesalsosiginifesanythingaboutpronunciationbefore Blicher!). • For Jutlanddialect speakers, his orthographywas, and may still be, intuitivelyuseful. However, for anyattempt at a modernspelling reform designed to eliminate the troublemakers, Blicher’spraxismayonlybe a curiousity.

30. Conclusion • The four problem areasthat I have tried to identify in this talk, the occlusive letters, the sort vowels, the vowellenght, and the glottal stop, are the mainreasonswhyorthography is a very bad guide to Danish pronunciation. • The problem areasaresometimesinternalmatters; littleinherentlyunstressedwordsnormally have a well-establishedorthographic form, and it is quitelikelythat it does not converge with the maintendencies in the sound/writing interface. • Yet another problem areaare the numerousloanwords. German and French loanwordsarenormallyquitewellintegrated in the orthography. The English loanwords, on the other side, present unsurmountable problems to the orthographic system and noattempt is made in integratethem at all.

31. Whatshouldthe Danish orthographers do? • Obviously a regulation, especially of the prosodic form, is tempting – in theory. In reality things look differently: • A thorough reform willchange the orthography to a degreewherecontact with other Scandinavians and olderwritten matter willbecomealmostimpossible. • My experience with Danish students is thatthey find prosodyextremelydifficult to hear, althoughparadoxicallythey must perceive the effects of it. • Therearevariationalphenomena and developmentsunderway; thusthere is noreallyconsistent norm to codify.

32. And therefore ---- • - nothingwillhappen, in spite of the miserable state of affairs. • In the 18th century, the phantasticgrammarian Jens Petersen Høysgaarddeclaredthat it does not fit a languagewell to have a lot of complicatedrules, whosemaineffect is to irritatechildren, elderlypeople and foreignerstrying to learn the language. But it seemsdifficult to followHøysgaard’slovelypiece of advice in thesematters.

33. References • Hans Basbøll 1988: ”Mellem moræ og fonologi: nyt om stødet i moderne rigsdansk”. MUDS 2, Århus universitet p. 37-48 • Hans Basbøll 1998: ”Nyt om stødet i moderne rigsdansk – om samspillet mellem lydstruktur og ordgrammatik.” Danske Studier s. 33-86 • Hans Basbøll 2004: ”Et klassifikationssystem for stavemåder”. Jørgensen & Jørgensen (red.): På godt dansk. Festskrift til Henrik Galberg Jacobsen. Århus: Wessel og Huitfeldt s. 29-36 • Hans Basbøll 2007: The Phonology of Danish. Oxford. Oxford UniversityPress • Hans Basbøll & Johannes Wagner 1985: KonrastivePhonologie des Deutschen und Dänischen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag • Christian Becker-Christensen 1988: Bogstav og lyd , bd. 1. Kø’benhavn: Gyldendal

34. References • Anita AagerupJervelund 2007: Sådan staver vi. København: Dansklærerforeningens Forlag og Dansk Sprognævn • Jan Katlev 1980: ”Diverse lingvistiske parametre i retskrivningsspørgsmålet”. SAML 6, s. 173-200 • Viggo Sørensen 2007: ”Når forfatterne skriver jysk – og hvad det fortæller om skriftsprog og lydskrift” Ord og sag 27, s. 44-61