Danish dialects

Danish dialects are the regional and local varieties of the Danish language. Danish dialects 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. Traditional dialects are now mostly extinct in Denmark, with only the oldest generations still speaking them. Danish traditional dialects are divided into three main dialect areas: Jutlandic dialect, Insular Danish and Bornholmian. Bornholmian is the only Eastern Danish dialect spoken in Denmark, since the other Eastern Danish dialects were spoken in areas ceded to Sweden and subsequently assimilated to Standard Swedish. Jutlandic is further divided into Southern Jutlandic and Northern Jutlandic, with Northern Jutlandic subdivided into North Jutlandic and West Jutlandic. Insular Danish is divided into Zealand, Funen, Møn and Lolland-Falster dialect areas - each with addition internal variation.

The realization of stød has traditionally been one of the most important isoglosses for drawing up geographic dialect areas. There are four main regional variants of stød: in Southeastern Jutlandic, Southernmost Funen, Southern Langeland and Ærø, there is no stød but rather a form of pitch accent. South of a line (Danish: Stødgrænsen "the stød boundary") going through central South Jutland, crossing Southern Funen and central Langeland and north of Lolland-Falster, Møn, Southern Zealand and Bornholm there is neither stød nor pitch accent. In most of Jutland and on Zealand there is stød, and in Zealandic traditional dialects and regional language there are often more stød occurrences than in the standard language. In Zealand the stød line divides Southern Zealand (without stød), an area which used to be directly under the Danish crown, from the rest of the island that used to be the property of various noble estates.

In the dialects that have pitch accent, such as the Southern Jutlandic of Als (Synnejysk), stød corresponds to a low level tone whereas the non-stød syllable in Standard Danish corresponds to a high rising tone. For example, in the following pairs:

On Zealand some traditional dialects have a phenomenon called short vowel stød (kortvokalstød), in which some monosyllabic words with a short vowel and a coda consonant cluster takes a stød when followed by the definite suffix. For example, præst [pʁæst] "priest", but præsten [pʁæˀstn̩] "the priest".

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