The orthography of the Danish language is regulated by Dansk Sprognævn through their official orthographical dictionary, “Retskrivningsordbogen”.
Any revisions take effect as soon as a new edition is published, so if you’re keen to spell correctly, you have to learn the changes immediately.
The changes introduced today include the following:
- Abolishing alternative forms that correspond to pronunciations that aren’t used any more:
- Baskerlandet or Baskien > Baskerlandet
- federal or føderal > føderal
- langust or languster > languster
- taifun or tyfon > tyfon
- øjelåg or øjenlåg > øjenlåg
- roastbeef or rostbøf > roastbeef
- billiondel or billiontedel > billiontedel
- Abolishing simplified spellings of loanwords that haven’t caught on:
- croquis or kroki > croquis
- håndmikser > håndmikser or håndmixer
- jogurt or yoghurt > yoghurt
- krep or crepe > crepe
- majonæse or mayonnaise > mayonnaise
- Introducing an alternative ending -ie for some words ending in -ium:
- kriterium > kriterie or kriterium
- ministerium > ministerie or ministerium
- sanatorium > sanatorie or sanatorium
- Abolishing simplified spellings of native words that haven’t caught on (I’m personally very unhappy about these changes!):
- elleve or elve > elleve
- tredive or tredve > tredive
- drøbel or drøvel > drøbel
- Bizarrely, merging two words that in my idiolect have different pronunciations and different meanings:
- sauce > sauce or sovs
- sovs > sauce or sovs
- Messing about with the hyphens in some compounds:
- e-mail-adresse > e-mailadresse
- stand-up-comedy > standupcomedy
- play-off-kamp > playoffkamp
- roll-on > rollon or roll-on
- built-up-tag > builtuptag
- tagselvbord > tag selv-bord
- T-bone-steak > T-bonesteak
- a-våben-fri > a-våbenfri
- DAMP-barn > DAMP-barn or damp-barn or dampbarn
- Introducing some optional instances of -t in some adverbs (which actually comes as a surprise to me — I thought -t was already allowed here):
- gladelig > gladelig or gladeligt
- klogelig > klogelig or klogeligt
- unægtelig > unægtelig or unægteligt
- Making it possible to drop the space in some compound prepositions when followed by a complement. The space was never allowed when the prepositions occurred without a complement (e.g., han fulgte bag efter/bagefter manden, but han fulgte bagefter (not *bag efter):
- bag efter > bag efter or bagefter
- bag i > bag i or bagi
- inden for > inden for or indenfor
- neden under > neden under or nedenunder
- oven på > oven på or ovenpå
- ud over > ud over or udover
- frem for > frem for or fremfor
Interestingly, many compound prepositions still don’t allow this freedom. For instance, in the following four sentences it is not allowed to write *udaf, *optil, *udefra and *opad:
- De har altid haft svært ved at komme ud ad døren i ordentlig tid.
- Plæneklipperen kører op til 4 timer på en opladning.
- Ude fra gaden lød der et stort brag.
- Vejen gik stejlt op ad bakke.
I’m pretty happy about some of the changes, whereas some of the others are annoying me. However, I need to learn the new rules so that I can spell Danish correctly if I need to, even if I might defy the rules on my blog.
(PS: Don’t ask me about the photo — it was the only result I got when I searched for Retskrivningsordbogen on Flickr.)