Preservation of hv in Danish and Norwegian

Danish and Norwegian preserve the letters hv. They always occur word-initially. However, Swedish does not. In Swedish only the v appears.

Though Danish and Norwegian retain word-initial hv, the glottal fricative is not pronounced. The phonetic value is [v]. However, it was pronounced in the past. Swedish spelling reflects the current pronunciation because only v appears in Swedish spelling.

Here is a list of ten words to compare the Danish and Norwegian words with word-initial hv and Swedish words with word-initial v:

hvad vad (what)

hval val (whale)

hvede hvete vete (wheat)

hverandre varandra (each other)

hvem vem (who)

hvid hvit vit (white)

hvilken vilken (which)

hvor var (where)

hvordan hur (how)

hvorfor varför (why)

The words hvede and hvid are Danish, and hvete and hvit are Norwegian. Many interrogative pronouns begin with hv in Danish and Norwegian. Swedish no longer preserves the word-initial hv which is still present in Danish and Norwegian.