Comparison of Danish and Norwegian Plurals

Danish and Norwegian are classified as North Germanic languages. They are closely related, especially in their written forms. However, plurals in the two languages sometimes differ.

Many plurals are identical in the two languages. Examples include blomster (flowers), dyr (animals) and ord (words). Nevertheless, many plurals are different.

Here is a list of ten plurals which differ in the two languages. The word on the left is Danish and the one on the right is Norwegian:

blade blader (leaves)

børn barn (children)

dage dager (days)

fugle fugler (birds)

hatte hatter (hats)

heste hester (horses)

hunde hunder (dogs)

huse hus (houses)

knive kniver (knives)

lande land (countries)

Many Danish plurals with the ending -e have the ending -er in Norwegian. This pattern occurs with plurals such as dage/dager and knive/kniver. A few Norwegian plurals which are the same in singular and plural have an -e in Danish. This is the case with hus/huse and land/lande. With the plurals børn/barn, the Norwegian plural is the same as the singular, but the Danish plural exhibits a change in the vowel.

Though Danish and Norwegian plurals are often identical, they can differ. Many Danish plurals with -e have -er in Norwegian. In Danish, -e is a common plural ending, but in Norwegian it is not. Plural endings in Norwegian are thus more regular than they are in Danish.

Unreleased Plosives

In English word-final plosives can be released or unreleased. The two articulations are not phonemic. Whether one releases the consonant or not, the meaning is the same. In other positions of the word, the consonant is always released.

Word-final plosives do not need to be released in English, but in French they do. However, in Vietnamese and Cantonese, word-final plosives must be unreleased. The rules for released and unreleased plosives vary from one language to another.

In words such as cap, look and red, the word-final plosive may be unreleased. However, in word-initial position such as big, cook and time, the plosive is always released. Word-initial plosives have greater airflow and are more perceptually salient.

English plosives can be unreleased at the end of the word. The unreleased articulation is especially common in casual conversation. At the beginning of the word, however, English plosives are always released.

English Words With Greek and Latin Roots

Many English words have Greek and Latin roots. These roots are not only present in English, but in many other languages. Though English is a Germanic language, the influence of Greek and Latin is significant.

The following words have Greek roots:

auto (self) autobiography, automobile

chron (time) chronic, chronology

micro (small) microbe, microscope

nym (name) antonym, synonym

pseudo (false) pseudonym, pseudoscience

The following words have Latin roots:

bene (good) benefactor, benevolent

cent (one hundred) century, percent

mater (mother) maternal, maternity

multi (many) multicultural, multimedia

pater (father) paternal, paternity

The influence of Greek and Latin is evident in English. They were the languages of two empires, the Greek and Roman. Though these empires no longer exist, the number of  English words with Greek and Latin roots is nevertheless extensive.

Vowel Deletion in Swedish

The basic syllable type is CV. As a result, many languages delete vowels to preserve this structure. This is certainly the case in Swedish. Let us look at examples.

The plural forms of flicka (girl) and klocka (clock) are flickor (girls) and klockor (clocks). The final vowel of flicka and klocka is deleted. It is the vowel on the left.

However, with the definite article, the vowel on the right deletes. This can be exemplified with bro (bridge) and öga (eye). The definite article for singular nouns is -en or -et. The suffix -en is for common nouns, and -et is for neuter nouns. The noun bro has common gender, and öga has neuter gender.

The Swedish word bron means the bridge, and the word ögat means the eye. Vowel deletion occurs, but in this case the vowel on the right deletes. 

One explanation for the different types of vowel deletion may be connected to the variants of the definite article and the plural. The definite article of singular nouns has two forms, -en and -et. Even with vowel deletion, the two are easily distinguished.

However, the plural marker has more variants. The plural of dag (day) is dagar. One of the plural variants in Swedish is -ar. It could be that in words such as flicka, right-vowel deletion is needed to preserve the plural variant -or and thus avoid confusion with -ar.

Vowel deletion is very common, and it can be analyzed as a syllable structure process. Swedish has two types of vowel deletion, one which deletes vowels on the left and another which deletes vowels on the right. Left vowel deletion occurs with noun plurals, and right vowel deletion occurs with singular nouns and the definite article suffix.

Gregorian Calendar

The Gregorian Calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. It is the calendar that is used in most of the world. Prior to the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar, the Julian Calendar was in use. One of the changes introduced by the Gregorian Calendar was a small reduction in the number of leap years.

Although the Gregorian Calendar is named after Pope Gregory XIII, it is an adaptation of a calendar designed by Luigi Lilio. He was an Italian astronomer, doctor and philosopher. He died in 1576, six years before his calendar was officially introduced.

The Gregorian Calendar replaced the Julian Calendar. Before the Julian Calendar, the Roman Calendar was used. Other calendars include the Persian and Mayan.

Order of German Verbs

German word order is different from that of English. Two differences are German V2 movement and the verb at the end of the dependent clause. However, German also has sentences in which many verbs are placed at the end of the sentence.

German V2 movement places the verb after the first constituent of the sentence. In German the sentence Today he can't come is Heute kann er nicht kommen. The verb kann (can) follows the adverb heute (today).

German places verbs at the end of dependent clauses. The sentence I know that she is sick is Ich weiẞ, dass sie krank ist in German. In the German sentence, the verb ist (is) is placed at the end.

Many verbs can be placed at the end of the German sentence. This is the German equivalent of It is true that I should have phoned you: Es ist wahr, dass ich dich hätte anrufen sollen. In the German sentence three consecutive verbs are placed at the end.

The sentence Peter will have to be invited also places many verbs at the end. In German the sentence is Peter wird eingeladen werden müssen. The German sentence places four verbs at the end, but in contrast to English, the past participle eingeladen (invited) is the third word of the sentence.

It is clear that German word order can differ significantly from that of English. Many German sentences place the verb at the end. It is also common to place a string of verbs in sentence-final position.