Norwegian and Standard Danish has two genders and the definite form of nouns is formed by the use of suffixes, while Western Jutlandic has only one gender and the definite form of nouns uses an article before the noun itself, in the same fashion as West Germanic languages. Danish. German is a native language of Germany and is frequently spoken throughout Europe. Danish and German: Language Similarities and Differences Vikings spoke a similar language, Old Norse, which is what they have in common. Category. Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish. His interests include linguistics and literature. [92], Verbs can be divided into two main classes, the strong/irregular verbs and the regular/weak verbs. Scandinavia and the Netherlands are in a similar location along the North Sea coast in Europe, and like most countries in the area share many cultural and political values and characteristics. This indefinite article can be found in the German language in the same way that the indefinite articles ein and eine are. Following the loss of Schleswig to Germany, a sharp influx of German speakers moved into the area, eventually outnumbering the Danish speakers. Danish is much less close to German than it is to North Germanic languages like Swedish and Norwegian. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are the only three languages capable of being considered truly Scandinavian. Usually the sentence material occupying the preverbal slot has to be pragmatically marked, usually either new information or topics. Dutch and Danish belong to quite different groups within the Germanic conglomerate of languages and dialects; they have never been mutually intelligible (except to the level that all Germanic languages are). There is a personal pronoun in Swedish known as hen. [77] [79]. Verbs aren't marked for person or number. However, when comparing terms, its very clear that they have a lot in common. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can often understand the others fairly well, though studies have shown that the mutual intelligibility is asymmetric: speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each other. The present participle ends in -ende (e.g. Linguists refer to the Proto-Germanic language used by Danish and German as their ancestor. Beginning in 1350, Danish began to be used as a language of administration, and new types of literature began to be written in the language, such as royal letters and testaments. [20], The Danish philologist Johannes Brndum-Nielsen divided the history of Danish into a period from 800 AD to 1525 to be "Old Danish", which he subdivided into "Runic Danish" (800-1100), Early Middle Danish (11001350) and Late Middle Danish (13501525). Its word order is V2, with the finite verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence. Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs slightly, particularly with the phonetic spelling of loanwords;[107] for example the spelling of station and garage in Danish remains identical to other languages, whereas in Norwegian, they are transliterated as stasjon and garasje. Learning Danish will help you understand Swedish and Norwegian more easily.