Danish dialects

[1][2] These can be divided into the traditional dialects, which differ from modern Standard Danish in both phonology and grammar, and the Danish accents, which are local varieties of the standard language distinguished mostly by pronunciation and local vocabulary colored by traditional dialects.

Insular Danish is divided into Zealand, Funen, Møn, and Lolland-Falster dialect areas – each with additional internal variation.

[7] The realization of stød has traditionally been one of the most important isoglosses for classifying geographic dialect areas.

[8] In the dialects with pitch accent, such as the Southern Jutlandic of Als (Synnejysk), stød corresponds to a low level tone, and the non-stød syllable in Standard Danish corresponds to a high rising tone:[10] On Zealand, some traditional dialects have a phenomenon called short-vowel stød (kortvokalstød): some monosyllabic words with a short vowel and a coda consonant cluster have stød when the definite suffix follows: præst [pʁæst] 'priest' but præsten [pʁæˀstn̩] 'the priest'.

[11] In Western Jutland, a second stød, more like a preconsonantal glottal stop, occurs in addition to the one of Standard Danish.

Map of main Danish dialect areas
A map showing the distribution of stød in Danish dialects. Dialects in the pink areas have stød , as in Standard Danish. Dialects in the green areas have tones, as in Swedish and Norwegian. Dialects in the blue areas have neither stød nor tones, as in Icelandic, German, and English.