Jutlandic dialect

Jutlandic, or Jutish (Danish: "jysk"; ), is the western variety of Danish, spoken on the peninsula of Jutland in Denmark.
Generally, the eastern dialects are the closest to Standard Danish, while the southern dialect ("Sønderjysk") is the one that differs the most from the others; therefore it is sometimes described as a distinct dialect. Thus Jutlandic is by that definition actually two different dialects: general or Northern Jutlandic ("nørrejysk"; further divided into western and eastern) and Southern Jutlandic ("sønderjysk"). However, the linguistic variation is considerably more complicated and well over 20 separate minor dialects can be easily found on Jutland. This map shows nine larger dialectal regions which will be discussed in this article. There are major phonological differences between the dialects, but also very noteworthy morphological, syntactic, and semantic variations.
Subdialects.
The different subdialects of Jutlandic differ somewhat from each other, and are generally grouped in three main dialects.
Phonology.
Consonants.
Standard Danish phonology contains nasal, aspirated voiceless and devoiced plosives (labial, alveolar, and velar). Four voiceless fricatives, [f], [s], [ɕ] and [h] are present, as well as approximants: [ʊ̯], [ð̞], [ɪ̯], and [ɐ̯]. There are also three regular and a lateral approximant, [ʋ], [l], [j] and [ʁ]. Below is a table depicting the consonant inventory of Danish. Phonemes that appear in standard Danish are in black and phonemes which are only seen in the dialects of Jutland ("jysk") are in bold. This table only includes phonemes and some allophones.
The major phonological process in Jutlandic consonants is lenition. This is the weakening of originally voiceless consonants in either the coda of a syllable or word as well as intervocallically. The weakening causes voicing as well as the fall from a stop to a fricative and finally to a sonorant. The final step of lenition is then complete apocope. This phenomenon can be seen in all its stages in the Jutlandic dialects, although it shows considerably more variability in the alveolars. The bilabials still have the approximant in one dialect, but no null phoneme and the velars have no sonorants, only a voiceless stop and fricative. The stages of the lenition as well as which dialects they occur in can be seen in the table below. Multiple possibilities for the same stage are shown separated by a semicolon. In Maps 4.0 and 4.2 the spread of the pronunciation of [d] and [g] are shown. The ÷ represents the null or zero morpheme in the maps, the -j and -r are [ɪ̯] and [ɐ̯] respectively and q is the devoiced velar stop [ɡ̊] while ch stands for the fricative [χ]. Vends and Læsø are regions usually belonging to the Northern Jutlandic dialectal region whereas Fjolds is the border region between Germany and Denmark, normally considered part of South Jutlandic ("Sønderjysk").
e.g. In Southern Jutlandic, Scandinavian post-vocalic "p, k" become word-finally, whereas Standard Danish has "b, g", e.g. "søge" 'to seek' = Standard Danish , "tabe" 'lose' = Standard Danish . In the northern part of Southern Jutland, these sounds are voiced fricatives between vowels, i.e. : e.g. "søger" 'seeks' = Standard Danish , "taber" 'loses' = Standard Danish .
Vowels.
Standard Danish has a large vowel inventory and contrasts length on many vowels. Vowels can also be glottalized where the so-called "stød" is present and many change their quality depending on whether or not they are preceded or followed by an /r/.
Jutlandic exhibits many diphthongs, which are not present in standard Danish. The long stressed mid vowels, /e:/, /ø:/, and /o:/ become /iə/, /yə/, and /uə/ respectively in central Jutland as well as South Schleswig dialect, e.g. "ben" = Standard Danish 'leg', "bonde" 'farmer' = Standard Danish (< "bōndi"). South Jutlandic has the same vowel quality for these vowels, but exhibits a tonal distinction, which is present in place of the Danish "stød". Northern Jutlandic raises them without diphthonging them to /i:/, /y:/, and /u:/ respectively. In a small area of Mid Western Jutland called Hards the vowels become diphthonged with a glide, much like in English and are pronounced as /ej/, /øj/, and /ow/. In Northern Jutland /i:/, /y:/, and /u:/ are also diphthonged in two syllable words with a glide. Northern Jutlandic always has the glide present (/ij/, /yj/, /uw/) and North Western Jutlandic tends towards the glide, but it is not present for all speakers. Long "a" and "å" have been raised to and respectively in northern Jutlandic, e.g. "sagde" 'said' = Standard Danish , "gå" 'go, walk' = Standard Danish . Map 2.2 shows the different possible pronunciations for the standard Danish mid, stressed vowels which is further explained in the following table. 
Outside of these diphthongs arising from changes in pronunciation from standard Danish long vowels, there are also the following diphthongs: [ow], [ɔw], [ej], [æj] [ɒw] [iw]/[yw], [ew]/[øw] and [æw]/[œw]. [ow] and [ɔw] are both present in Vends, North Western Jutlandic and Mid-Western Jutlandic but only one occurs in Østjysk, South Jutlandic and Southern Jutlandic. There is a tendency towards [ɔw], but in Mid-Eastern Jutlandic [ow] can be found instead. The same sort of alternation is also seen with [ej] and [æj]. In Mid-Western Jutlandic, Northern Jutlandic and North Western Jutlandic both diphthongs exist. In Mid-Eastern Jutlandic there is an alternation between the two, but each speaker only has one. In Southern Jutlandic and South Jutlandic only [æj] is found. [ɒw] is present as a diphthong in all of Jutland with the exception of the island of Fanø (off of South western Jutland), but has different pronunciations depending on length of the segments. The remaining diphthongs show a distribution based on rounding. In the majority of Jutland the unrounded diphthong is rounded. In South Eastern Jutland the rounded one is unrounded and only in certain parts of Sønderjylland are both diphthongs preserved. Map 2.7 shows the rounding alternation for the front, close diphthong [iw]/[yw].
An interesting phenomenon in western South Jutlandic and Mid-Western Jutlandic, North Western Jutlandic as well as Northern Jutlandic is the so-called "klusilspring". The "klusilspring" can be seen as a modified "stød" that only occurs on high vowels (/i:/, /y:/, and /u:/). These long vowels are shortened and then followed by a "klusil", or plosive, or in some cases a spirant. (See Map 2.1) In Vends (Northern Jutlandic) and western South Jutlandic the three pronunciations become: [itj], [ytj], and [uk] and they have the same pronouciation but followed by a schwa if not in the coda. An area in North Western Jutlandic designated on the map as Him-V has instead [ikj], [ykj] and [uk] and in Mid-Western Jutlandic it is similar with the /u:/ also containing a glide [ukw] and in all three cases a schwa is inserted if it is not in the coda of the syllable. The rest of North Western Jutlandic along the coast has the schwa as well but a fricative instead of a stop, so the sounds are [iɕ], [yɕ], and [uɕ]. In the rest of the Jutlandic dialects the vowel quality is overall the same, with gliding in North Western Jutlandic (Han-V and Han-Ø) on the map and only unrounded front vowels in Djurs dialect.
"Stød".
As mentioned earlier, the "klusilspring" is an alternative of the "stød" that occurs only with high vowels. In the other mainland Scandinavian languages as well as South Jutlandic, there are two different tonemes which distinguish between words that were originally one or two syllables. Tone 1 is a simple rising then falling tone in most dialects and tone 2 is more complex, e.g. "hus" 'house' = Standard Danish ~ "huse" 'houses' = Standard Danish . In standard Danish as well as Jutlandic, tone 1 is replaced with a nonsegmental glottalization and tone 2 disappears entirely. Glottalization can only occur on vowels or sonorants and only in one or two-syllable words and is realized in transcription as a [']. However, in two-syllable words the second syllable must be a derivational morpheme as the historical environment of tone 1 was one-syllable words and tone 2 only occurred on two-syllable words. Due to apocope and the morphology, both tones and the "stød" can now be found on one- and two-syllable words. There can be multiple "stød" segments per word, if the word is a compound, which separates its phonetically from the tonemes of Swedish, Norwegian and South Jutlandic, which can only occur once over the whole word. However, in contrast to the standard Danish "stød", the Jutlandic "stød" does not usually occur in monosyllabic words with a sonorant + voiceless consonant. Only Djurs dialect and the city dialect of Aarhus have the "stød" in this environment. As mentioned before, most of north west Jutland does not have a "stød" after short high vowels, and instead has the "klusilspring". The "stød" is still present on sonorants and mid and low vowels in the proper environment. Western Jutlandic also has a "stød" on the vowel in originally two-syllable words with a geminate voiceless consonant such as {tt}, {kk}, or {pp} e.g. "katte" 'cats' = Standard Danish ; "ikke" 'not' = Standard Danish .
Grammar.
One of the hallmarks of the Scandinavian languages is the postclitic definite marker. For example: "en mand" 'a man', "mand-en" 'the man'. In standard Danish this postclitic marker is only used when there is no adjective present, but if there is an adjective, a definite article is used instead: "den store mand" 'the big man'. Further, standard Danish has a two gender system, distinguishing between the neuter ("intetkøn, -et)" and "other" ("fælleskøn, -en") genders. In Jutland, however, very few dialects match the standard in these two aspects. There are dialects with one, two and three genders, as well as dialects lacking the postclitic definite marker entirely.
Gender.
Originally the Scandinavian languages, like modern German as well as Icelandic, had three genders. These three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter are still present in many dialects, notably most dialects of Norwegian. However, in all standard versions of the mainland Scandinavian languages, there are only two genders (Norwegian has three genders, but in Bokmål – one of two written standards – feminine nouns may be inflected like the masculine nouns, making it possible to use only two genders). The masculine and feminine fell together, taking the masculine article (or the feminine in Insular Danish), and the neuter stayed separate. Three genders remain in northern Jutland and far in the east, which could potentially be explained through dialect contact with both Norwegian and Swedish dialects which preserve all three genders. The loss of all gender distinction in the west, though, is unique to Jutlandic. Note though that West Jutlandic still have two noun classes, "n"- and "t"-words like standard Danish, they are just not genders. "t"-words in West Jutlandic are limited to mass nouns.
Article.
The definite marker is also not consistent in the Jutlandic dialects. In the west, where only one gender is present, as well as in all of Southern Jutlandic and South Jutlandic, the definite marker is a free morpheme that comes before the noun. It is not, however, the same as the free morpheme found in standard Danish when an adjective precedes a noun. It is phonetically realised as [æ].
There are also small areas in Jutland where predicate adjectives as well as adjectives in indefinite noun phrases have gender congruence in the neuter form. In South Schleswig dialect, easternmost Djurs dialect and on the island of Samsø, adjectives take a -"t" ending which patterns with standard Danish: for example, "et grønt glas" and "glasset er grønt". [æt gʁœːnt glas; glas.ət æ gʁœːnt] 'a green glass; the glass is green' In Vends (Northern Jutlandic) there is no congruence on adjectives in indefinite noun phrases, but the -"t" is still present in predicate adjectives. The variability in the examples also reflects differences between number of genders, postclitic versus enclitic article and apocope. [æ gʁœn' glas; glast æ gʁœnt] (same gloss) In the rest of Jutland, as a result of apocope, the -"t" disappears completely: [ æt (æn) gʁœn' glas; glas.ə(t) (æ glas) æ gʁœn'] (same gloss).
Semantics.
The presence of a separate free morpheme definite marker in the western Jutlandic dialects [æ] has come to cause a contrastive semantic meaning difference with the standard Danish dem. Nouns that can be analyzed as mass nouns, as opposed to count nouns can take the [æ] article before an adjective. If the noun is, however, meant to be a count noun it uses the standard Danish plural article "dem". An example of this would be "dem små kartofler" versus "æ små kartofler" 'the small potatoes'. "Dem små kartofler" refers to the small potatoes in a set, i.e. those 5 small potatoes on the table. "Æ små kartofler" refers instead to a mass noun, meaning potatoes that are generally small. It is like saying "the yellow potatoes" in English. It can either mean yellow potatoes as a whole, a mass noun or the yellow potatoes sitting on the table, as opposed to the red ones.
There is also a tendency to use "hans" or "hendes" instead of the "correct" "sin" when referring to the subject of the sentence. This means there is no longer a distinction between whether the possessive pronoun refers to the subject of the sentence or a third person, however, use of a word like "egen/t" 'own' can paraphrastically accomplish the same thing.
Sociolinguistics.
Today the old dialects, tied as they were to the rural districts, are yielding to new regional standards based on Standard Danish. Several factors have contributed to this process. The dialects, especially in the northernmost, western and southern regions, are often hard to understand for people originating outside Jutland.
The dialects also enjoy little prestige both nationally (the population of Zealand like to believe that the Jutlanders are slower not only in speech but also in thought) and regionally (the dialect is associated with rural life).
The Danish cultural, media and business life revolves around Copenhagen, and Jutland has only in recent decades seen substantial economic growth. In the 20th century dialects were usually suppressed by media, state institutions, and schools. In recent decades, a more liberal attitude towards dialects has emerged, but since the number of speakers has decreased, and almost all of the remaining dialect speakers master a regional form of Standard Danish as well, dialects are still being ignored.
Characteristics.
The new Jutlandic "regiolects" differ from the Copenhagen variety primarily by a distinct accent: