Danish orthography

Officially, the norms are set by the Danish language council through the publication of Retskrivningsordbogen.

The reform of 1872 replaced the letter ⟨e⟩ by ⟨æ⟩ in some words (Eg> Æg, fegte> fægte, Hjelm> Hjælm; however, for words with ⟨je⟩ the change was reverted in 1889), abolished the distinction of the homophonous words Thing and Ting (however, the distinction between thi and ti was retained), replaced the letter ⟨q⟩ by ⟨k⟩ (Qvinde>Kvinde), deleted the silent ⟨e⟩ after vowels (faae>faa), abolished doubling of vowels to signify vowel length (Steen>Sten), replaced ⟨i⟩ by ⟨j⟩ after vowels (Vei>Vej), deleted the letter ⟨d⟩ in the combinations ⟨dsk⟩ and ⟨nds⟩ except in morpheme borders (Vædske>Væske, Prinds>Prins, but islandsk), and abolished doubling of consonants before other consonants (sikkre>sikre).

[2] In 1889, ⟨x⟩ was abolished from native words and most loanwords: Oxe>Okse, Exempel>Eksempel.

The letter ⟨j⟩ was deleted from the combinations gje, gjæ, gjø, kje, kjæ, kjø: Kjøkken>Køkken.

This change reflected a phonological shift in the spoken language towards dropping the j in these consonant clusters, e.g. Kjøbenhavn>København (Copenhagen).

[6] The former digraph ⟨aa⟩ still occurs in many personal names, e.g. Søren Aabye Kierkegaard as opposed to the would-be modern spelling Søren Åby Kirkegård, as well as in Danish geographical names.

However, in geographical names, ⟨å⟩ is allowed as an alternative spelling: Aabenraa or Åbenrå, Aalborg or Ålborg, Aarhus or Århus.

⟨x⟩ is normally replaced by ⟨ks⟩ in words from Latin, Greek, or French, e.g. eksempel, maksimal, tekst, heksagon, seksuel; but ⟨x⟩ is retained: 1) at the beginning of words of Greek origin, where it sounds /s/, e.g. xylograf, xylofon; 2) before ⟨c⟩ in words of Latin origin, e.g. excellent, excentrisk; 3) in chemical terms, e.g. oxalsyre, oxygen; 4) in loanwords from English, e.g. exitpoll, foxterrier, maxi, sex, taxi; 5) at the end of French loanwords, where it is silent, e.g. jaloux [ɕæˈlu].

For example, many of the Danish families that use the surname Skov (literally: "Woods") spell it Schou.

The transition was made in 1980;[8] before that, ⟨w⟩ was considered to be a variation of ⟨v⟩ and words using it were alphabetized accordingly (e.g.: "Wales, Vallø, Washington, Wedellsborg, Vendsyssel").

An accent on ⟨e⟩ can be used to mark a stressed syllable in one of a pair of homographs that have different stresses, for example en dreng (a boy) versus én dreng (one boy), i.e. to disambiguate the use of en/et as indefinite article) and én/ét as the numeral 'one'.

For example: jeg stód op ("I was standing"), versus jeg stod óp ("I got out of bed"); kopiér ("copy", imperative of verb), versus kopier ("copies", plural of noun).

[9] Most often, however, such distinctions are made using typographical emphasis (italics, underlining) or simply left to the reader to infer from the context, and the use of accents in such cases may appear dated.

[citation needed] The current Danish official spelling dictionary does not use diacritics other than ⟨é⟩ in loanwords: facade [faˈsæːðə], jalapeno [χɑlɑˈpɛnjo, jalaˈpɛnjo], zloty [ˈslʌti];[10] in the spelling rules, it is stated that foreign letters and diacritics may occur in proper names and in words and texts quoted from other languages.