The Danish Language

Standard Danish (rigsdansk) is the language based on dialects spoken in and around the capital, Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish and Norwegian, Danish does not have more than one regional speech norm. More than 25% of all Danish speakers live in the metropolitan area of the capital and most government agencies, institutions and major businesses keep their main offices in Copenhagen, something that has resulted in a very homogeneous national speech norm. In contrast, though Oslo (Norway) and Stockholm (Sweden) are quite dominant in terms of speech standards, cities like Bergen, Gothenburg and the Malmö-Lund region are large and influential enough to create secondary regional norms, making the standard language more varied than is the case with Danish. The general agreement is that Standard Danish is based on a form of Copenhagen dialect, but the specific norm, as with most language norms, is difficult to pinpoint for both laypeople and scholars.

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark and in the region of Southern Schleswig in northern Germany, where it holds minority language status. There are also significant Danish-speaking communities in USA, Canada and Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas around 15-20% of the population of Greenland speaks Danish as their home language.