Computing standards
In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:
The Danish and Norwegian alphabet is the set of symbols, forming a variant of the Latin alphabet, used for writing the Danish and Norwegian languages. It has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian) and 1948 (Danish):
| Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | Æ | Ø | Å |
| Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z | æ | ø | å |
The letters ⟨c⟩, ⟨q⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨x⟩ and ⟨z⟩ are not used in the spelling of indigenous words. They are rarely used in Norwegian, where loan words routinely have their orthography adapted to the native sound system. Conversely, Danish has a greater tendency to preserve loan words' original spellings. In particular, a ⟨c⟩ that represents /s/ is almost never normalized to ⟨s⟩ in Danish, as would most often happen in Norwegian. Many words originally derived from Latin roots retain ⟨c⟩ in their Danish spelling, for example Norwegian sentrum vs Danish centrum.
The "foreign" letters also sometimes appear in the spelling of otherwise-indigenous family names. For example, many of the Danish families that use the surname Skov (meaning 'forest') spell it Schou.
The difference between the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Swedish uses the variant ⟨ä⟩ instead of ⟨æ⟩, and the variant ⟨ö⟩ instead of ⟨ø⟩, similarly to German. Also, the collating order for these three letters is different in Swedish: Å, Ä, Ö. ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨ä⟩ are sorted together in all Scandinavian languages, as well as Finnish, and so are ⟨ø⟩ and ⟨ö⟩.
The below pronunciations of the names of the letters do not necessarily represent how the letters are used to represent sounds. The list includes the number of each letter when following official ordering.
| Letter | Number | Danish name | Norwegian name | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | a | 1 | [ɛˀ] | [ɑː] |
| B | b | 2 | [pe̝ˀ] | [beː] |
| C | c | 3 | [se̝ˀ] | [seː] |
| D | d | 4 | [te̝ˀ] | [deː] |
| E | e | 5 | [e̝ˀ] | [eː] |
| F | f | 6 | [ef] | [ɛfː] |
| G | g | 7 | [ke̝ˀ] | [ɡeː] |
| H | h | 8 | [hɔˀ] | [hoː] |
| I | i | 9 | [iˀ] | [iː] |
| J | j | 10 | [jʌð] | [jeː] or [jɔdː] |
| K | k | 11 | [kʰɔˀ] | [koː] |
| L | l | 12 | [el] | [ɛlː] |
| M | m | 13 | [em] | [ɛmː] |
| N | n | 14 | [en] | [ɛnː] |
| O | o | 15 | [oˀ] | [uː] |
| P | p | 16 | [pʰe̝ˀ] | [peː] |
| Q | q | 17 | [kʰuˀ] | [kʉː] |
| R | r | 18 | [ɛɐ̯] | [ærː] |
| S | s | 19 | [es] | [ɛsː] |
| T | t | 20 | [tsʰe̝ˀ] | [teː] |
| U | u | 21 | [uˀ] | [ʉː] |
| V | v | 22 | [ve̝ˀ] | [veː] |
| W | w | 23 | [tʌpəlve̝ˀ] [lower-alpha 1] | [ˈdɔ̀bːl̩tˌveː] [lower-alpha 1] |
| X | x | 24 | [eks] | [ɛks] |
| Y | y | 25 | [yˀ] | [yː] |
| Z | z | 26 | [set] | [sɛtː] |
| Æ | æ | 27 | [eˀ] | [æː] |
| Ø | ø | 28 | [øˀ] | [øː] |
| Å | å | 29 | [ɔˀ] | [oː] |
When sorting in alphabetical order in Danish, the numbers provided in the list above is used. Some peculiarities exist, however.
Danish orthography has no compulsory diacritics, but allows the use of an acute accent (accent aigu) for disambiguation. Most often, an accent on ⟨e⟩ marks a stressed syllable in one of a pair of homographs that have different stresses, for example en dreng 'a boy' versus én dreng 'one boy', or alle 'all, every, everyone' versus allé 'avenue'. Less often, any vowel including ⟨ å ⟩ (where it is however recommended to avoid diacritics) may be accented to indicate stress on the word, as this can disambiguate the meaning of the sentence or ease the reading otherwise. For example: jeg stód op 'I was standing' versus jeg stod óp 'I got out of bed' (i.e. unit accentuation). Alternatively, some of these distinctions can be made using typographical emphasis (italics, underlining). The Retskrivningsordbogen dictionary explicitly allows the use of further diacritics when quoting names from other languages. [2] This also means that the ring above ⟨å⟩ and the strike through ⟨ø⟩ are not regarded as diacritics, as these are separate letters.
Nynorsk uses several letters with diacritic signs: ⟨é⟩, ⟨è⟩, ⟨ê⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ò⟩, ⟨ô⟩, and ⟨ù⟩. The diacritic signs are not compulsory, [3] but can be added to clarify the meaning of words (homonyms) that would otherwise be identical. One example is ein gut ("a boy") versus éin gut ("one boy"). Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics, most notably ⟨ü⟩, ⟨á⟩, ⟨à⟩ and ⟨é⟩,[ citation needed ] following the conventions of the original language. The Norwegian vowels ⟨æ⟩, ⟨ø⟩ and ⟨å⟩ never take diacritics.
Bokmål is mostly spelled without diacritic signs. The only exception is one word of Norwegian origin, namely fôr, to be distinguished from for (see below) as well as any subsequent compound words, eg kåpefôr (coat lining) and dyrefôr (animal feed). There are also a small number of words in Norwegian which use the acute accent. The words are allé (avenue), diaré (diarrhea), kafé (cafe), idé (idea), entré (entrance), komité (committee), kupé (compartment), moské (mosque), supé (supper), trofé (trophy) and diskré (discreet). [3] An acute accent can also be used to differentiate en/ei (a) from én/éi (one) eg. én gutt (one boy) en gutt (a boy).
The diacritic signs in use include the acute accent, grave accent and the circumflex. A common example of how the diacritics change the meaning of a word, is for:
Also used is the cedille, but only on a ⟨c⟩ in loanwords, when pronounced like ⟨s⟩. [4]
The letter ⟨å⟩ (HTML å) was introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing ⟨aa⟩. The new letter came from the Swedish alphabet, where it has been in official use since the 16th century. [5] Similarly, the letter ⟨å⟩ was introduced in Danish in 1948, but the final decision on its place in the alphabet was not made. The initial proposal was to place it first, before ⟨a⟩. Its place as the last letter of the alphabet, as in Norwegian, was decided in 1955. [6] The former digraph ⟨aa⟩ still occurs in personal names, and in Danish geographical names. In Norway, geographical names tend to follow the current orthography, meaning that the letter ⟨å⟩ will be used. Family names may not follow modern orthography, and therefore retain the digraph ⟨aa⟩ where ⟨å⟩ would be used today.⟨aa⟩ remains in use as a transliteration, if the letter is not available for technical reasons. ⟨aa⟩ is treated like ⟨å⟩ in alphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent letters ⟨a⟩, meaning that while ⟨a⟩ is the first letter of the alphabet, ⟨aa⟩ is the last. In Norwegian (but not in Danish), this rule does not apply to non-Scandinavian names, so a modern atlas would list the German city of Aachen under ⟨a⟩, but list the Danish town of Aabenraa under ⟨å⟩. In Danish, the ⟨aa⟩ rule is applied, as long as it denotes one sound, for example German Aachen or Dutch kraal, but if it denotes 2 sounds like in ekstraarbejde (extra work), the two ⟨a⟩s are sorted as two.
In current Danish and Norwegian, ⟨w⟩ is recognized as a separate letter from ⟨v⟩. In Danish, the transition was made in 1980[ citation needed ]; before that, the ⟨w⟩ was merely considered to be a variation of the letter ⟨v⟩ and words using it were sometimes alphabetized accordingly (e.g., Wandel, Vandstad, Wanscher, Varberg in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon , 1904). [7] The Danish version of the Alphabet song still states that the alphabet has 28 letters; the last line reads otte-og-tyve skal der stå ("that makes twenty-eight"). However, today, the letter ⟨w⟩ is considered an official letter.
In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός, from διακρίνω. The word diacritic is a noun, though it is sometimes used in an attributive sense, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritics, such as the acute ⟨á⟩, grave ⟨à⟩, and circumflex ⟨â⟩, are often called accents. Diacritics may appear above or below a letter or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.
Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth vowel letter of the English alphabet. Its name in English is wye, plural wyes.
The acute accent, ◌́, is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed characters are available.
The circumflex is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin: circumflexus "bent around"—a translation of the Greek: περισπωμένη.
The letter Å represents various sounds in several languages. It is a separate letter in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, North Frisian, Low Saxon, Transylvanian Saxon, Walloon, Chamorro, Lule Sami, Pite Sami, Skolt Sami, Southern Sami, Ume Sami, Pamirian languages, and Greenlandic alphabets. Additionally, it is part of the alphabets used for some Alemannic and Austro-Bavarian dialects of German.
The Swedish alphabet is a basic element of the Latin writing system used for the Swedish language. The 29 letters of this alphabet are the modern 26-letter basic Latin alphabet plus ⟨å⟩, ⟨ä⟩, and ⟨ö⟩, in that order. It contains 20 consonants and 9 vowels. The Latin alphabet was brought to Sweden along with the Christianization of the population, although runes continued in use throughout the first centuries of Christianity, even for ecclesiastic purposes, despite their traditional relation to the Old Norse religion. The runes underwent partial "latinization" in the Middle Ages, when the Latin alphabet was completely accepted as the Swedish script system, but runes still occurred, especially in the countryside, until the 18th century, and were used decoratively until mid 19th century.
Finnish orthography is based on the Latin script, and uses an alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, officially comprising twenty-nine letters but also including two additional letters found in some loanwords. The Finnish orthography strives to represent all morphemes phonologically and, roughly speaking, the sound value of each letter tends to correspond with its value in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – although some discrepancies do exist.
Welsh orthography uses 29 letters of the Latin script to write native Welsh words as well as established loanwords.
The Polish alphabet is the script of the Polish language, the basis for the Polish system of orthography. It is based on the Latin alphabet but includes certain letters with diacritics: the acute accent ; the overdot ; the tail or ogonek ; and the stroke. ⟨q⟩, ⟨v⟩, and ⟨x⟩, which are used only in foreign words, are usually absent from the Polish alphabet. However, prior to the standardization of Polish spelling, ⟨x⟩ was sometimes used in place of ⟨ks⟩.
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is the generalization of the alphabetical order to other data types, such as sequences of numbers or other ordered mathematical objects.
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme, or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.
German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the case.
English rarely uses diacritics, which are symbols indicating the modification of a letter's sound when spoken. Most of the affected words are in terms imported from other languages. The two dots accent, the grave accent and the acute accent are the only diacritics native to Modern English, and their usage has tended to fall off except in certain publications and particular cases.
Polish orthography is the system of writing the Polish language. The language is written using the Polish alphabet, which derives from the Latin alphabet, but includes some additional letters with diacritics. The orthography is mostly phonetic, or rather phonemic—the written letters correspond in a consistent manner to the sounds, or rather the phonemes, of spoken Polish. For detailed information about the system of phonemes, see Polish phonology.
Portuguese orthography is based on the Latin alphabet and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. The diaeresis was abolished by the last Orthography Agreement. Accented letters and digraphs are not counted as separate characters for collation purposes.
Norwegian orthography is the method of writing the Norwegian language, of which there are two written standards: Bokmål and Nynorsk. While Bokmål has for the most part derived its forms from the written Danish language and Danish-Norwegian speech, Nynorsk gets its word forms from Aasen's reconstructed "base dialect", which is intended to represent the distinctive dialectal forms. Both standards use a 29-letter variant of the Latin alphabet and the same orthographic principles.
Umlaut is a name for the two dots diacritical mark as used to indicate in writing the result of the historical sound shift due to which former back vowels are now pronounced as front vowels.
Danish orthography is the system and norms used for writing the Danish language, including spelling and punctuation.
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