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The Danish and Norwegian alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1955 (Norwegian since 1917):

'Majuscule Forms' (also called 'uppercase' or 'capital letters')

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Æ

Ø

Å

'Minuscule Forms' (also called 'lowercase' or 'small letters')

a

b

c

d

e

f

g

h

i

j

k

l

m

n

o

p

q

r

s

t

u

v

w

x

y

z

æ

ø

å

: ()
The letters c, q, w, x and z are only used in loanwords. Some also spell their otherwise Scandinavian family names using these letters.

Contents

Diacritics

History

Computing standards

See also

References

Diacritics

Norwegian (especially the Nynorsk variant) also uses several letters with diacritic signs: é, è, ê, ó, ò, â, and ô. The diacritic signs are not compulsory ^[1], but are often added to clarify the meaning of the word. One example is ''ein gut'' (a boy) versus ''éin gut'' (one boy). Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics, most notably ü, á and à.
The diacritic signs in use include the acute accent, grave accent and the circumflex. A common example of how the diacritics change the meaning of a word, is ''for'' (all examples in Norwegian Nynorsk):

★ for (preposition. ''For or to'')

★ fór (verb. ''Went'')

★ fòr (noun. ''Furrow'')

★ fôr (noun. ''Fodder''. ''Food for animals'')

History

The letter ''Å'' (HTML å) was introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing ''Aa''. Similarly, the letter ''Å'' was introduced in Danish in 1948, but the final decision on its place in the alphabet was not made. The initial proposal was to place it first, before ''A''. Its place as the last letter of the alphabet, as in Norwegian, was decided in 1955^[2]. The former digraph ''Aa'' still occurs in names and old documents and is still the correct transliteration, if the letter is not available for technical reasons. ''Aa'' is treated like ''Å'' in alphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent letters ''A''. This rule does not apply to non-Scandinavian names, so a modern dictionary would list the German city of Aachen under ''A'' but list the Danish town of Aabenraa under ''Å''.
The difference between the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Swedish uses the variant ''Ä'' instead of ''Æ'' (HTML Æ), and the variant ''Ö'' instead of ''Ø'' (HTML Ø) — similar to German. Also, the collating order for these three characters is different: ''Å, Ä, Ö''.
Some scholars have argued that ''Ä/Æ'' and ''Ö/Ø'' are mere glyph variants of the same letters and should thus be encoded the same.
In current Danish and Norwegian, ''W'' is recognized as a separate letter from ''V''. In Danish, the transition was made in 1980; before that, the ''W'' was merely considered to be a variation of the letter ''V'' and words using it were alphabetized accordingly (e.g.: "Wales, Vallø, Washington, Wedellsborg, Vendsyssel"). A common Danish children's song about the alphabet still states that the alphabet has 28 letters; the last line reads ''otte-og-tyve skal der stå'', i.e. "that makes twenty-eight". However, today the letter "w" is considered an official letter.

Computing standards

In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:

★ DS 2089 (Danish) and NS 4551-1 (Norwegian), later established in international standard ISO 646

★ IBM PC code page 865

★ ISO 8859-1

★ Unicode

See also

★ Kjell

★ Danish phonology

★ Norwegian language: Sound system

★ Futhark, the Germanic runes used formerly

★ Swedish alphabet

References

1. Norwegian language council: The use of accents (in Norwegian) http://www.sprakrad.no/Raad/Skriveregler_og_grammatikk/Aksentteikn/
2. Einar Lundeby: "Bolle-å-ens plass i det danske alfabet" [The placing of Å in the Danish alphabet] in Språknytt, 1995/4. http://www.sprakrad.no/Trykksaker/Spraaknytt/Arkivet/Spraaknytt_1995/Spraaknytt_1995_4/Bolle-aa-ens_plass_i_det_dans/