The Danish Writing System

The Danish writing system is based on the 26-letter Latin alphabet with an additional three letters - Æ/æ, Ø/ø, and Å/å - placed at the end.

The Danish Language
Translation into Danish
Danish Translators

Below are some of the prominent features of the Danish writing system:

Danish underwent a major orthography reform in 1948, which led to the introduction of the Å/å character as a replacement for aa. The old usage of aa can still be found in Danish names and historical documents. According to the Wikipedia, the Æ/æ character “represents a simple vowel...the same phoneme is represented in Swedish by the letter ‘Ä’, and in German by ‘A-Umlaut.’”¹ The Ø/ø character, on the other hand, represents a unique vowel in Danish and Norwegian and its equivalent in the Turkish, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, and German alphabets is the letter “Ö.”²

Additional resources on the Danish writing system can be found on the Web at:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/danish.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_alphabet

For information on The Danish Language, please see our Quick Facts Library.

¹ "Æ" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C6
[Accessed December 2, 2004]

¹ "Æ" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8
[Accessed December 2, 2004]