The Danish language is spoken only outside of Sweden.
Danish -LSB- ˈdeɪnᵻʃ -RSB- -LRB- dansk -LSB- ˈdanˀsɡ -RSB- ; dansk sprog , -LSB- ˈdanˀsɡ ˈsbʁɔʊˀ -RSB- -RRB- is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people , principally in Denmark and in the region of Southern Schleswig in northern Germany , where it has minority language status .. Denmark. Denmark. Germanic. Germanic languages. North Germanic. North Germanic languages. North Germanic language. North Germanic languages. Southern Schleswig. Southern Schleswig. Germany. Germany. minority language. minority language. There are also minor Danish-speaking communities in Norway , Sweden , Spain , the United States , Canada , Brazil and Argentina .. Norway. Norway. Sweden. Sweden. Spain. Spain. United States. United States. Canada. Canada. Brazil. Brazil. Argentina. Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas , around 15 -- 20 % of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their home language .. Greenland. Greenland. language shift. language shift. home language. First language. Along with the other North Germanic languages , Danish is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples that lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Era .. Germanic. Germanic languages. North Germanic. North Germanic languages. Old Norse. Old Norse. Germanic peoples. Germanic peoples. Scandinavia. Scandinavia. Viking Era. Viking Age. Danish , together with Swedish , derives from the East Norse dialect group , while the Middle Norwegian language before the influence of Danish and Norwegian Bokmal are classified as West Norse along with Faroese and Icelandic .. Middle Norwegian. Middle Norwegian. Norwegian Bokmal. Bokmal. Faroese. Faroese language. Icelandic. Icelandic language. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish , Norwegian and Swedish as Mainland Scandinavian while Icelandic and Faroese are classified as Insular Scandinavian .. Faroese. Faroese language. Icelandic. Icelandic language. mutual intelligibility. mutual intelligibility. Until the 16th century , Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions .. Scania. Scania. standard variety. standard language. With the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of printing , a standard language was developed which was based on the educated Copenhagen dialect .. Protestant Reformation. Protestant Reformation. introduction of printing. History of printing. Copenhagen. Copenhagen. It spread through use in the education system and administration though German and Latin continued to be the most important written languages well into the 17th century .. Following the loss of territory to Germany and Sweden , a nationalist movement adopted the language as a token of Danish identity , and the language experienced a strong surge in use and popularity with major works of literature produced in the 18th and 19th centuries .. Germany. Germany. Sweden. Sweden. Today , traditional Danish dialects have all but disappeared , though there are regional variants of the standard language .. Danish dialects. Danish dialects. The main differences in language are between generations , with youth language being particularly innovative .. Danish has a very large vowel inventory comprising 27 phonemically distinctive vowels , and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon stød , a kind of laryngeal phonation type .. phonemically distinctive. phonemes. vowel. vowel. prosody. Prosody ( linguistics ). stød. stød. laryngeal phonation type. glottal consonant. Due to the many pronunciation differences that set apart Danish from its neighboring languages , particularly the vowels , difficult prosody and `` weakly '' pronounced consonants , it is sometimes considered to be a difficult language to learn and understand , and there is some evidence that small children are slower to acquire the phonological distinctions of Danish .. prosody. Prosody ( linguistics ). The grammar is moderately inflective with strong -LRB- irregular -RRB- and weak -LRB- regular -RRB- conjugations and inflections .. inflective. Fusional language. Nouns and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender .. As in English , Danish only has remnants of a former case system , particularly in the pronouns , and it has lost all person marking on verbs .. case system. grammatical case. Its syntax is V2 , with the finite verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence .. V2 word order