Perkerdansk, Immigrant Danish or Gadedansk[1] is a multi-ethnolect[2][3] spoken in Denmark, a variety of Danish associated primarily with youth of Middle Eastern ethnic background. It is a contact variety that includes features of Danish as well as Arabic, Turkish, English and other immigrant languages. Particularly common in urban areas with high densities of immigrant populations, its features have also spread to general youth language in Denmark.
The term perkerdansk may be perceived as offensive, just as perker may be offensive slang for immigrants and descendants of primarily Middle-eastern origin. However, it may also be used as an endonym.
The following is an example of Danish spoken by two youth in Copenhagen. Speaker A speaks Berber as a first language and speaker B's first language is Kurdish. Nonetheless, their Danish includes elements of Arabic ( wallah 'I swear') and Turkish (kız 'girl', para 'money'), and English (I got 'I have', -s plural ending on the Turkish word para).
A: wallah jeg siger min storebror han skylder mig 700 kroner jeg skal have 350 i dag og 350 om to uger. I got paras. Skal du til den der fest på fredag.
"Wallah I say my older brother he owes me 700 crowns I am getting 350 today and 350 in two weeks. I got paras. Are you going to that party on Friday?"
B: mm..
A: wallah man jeg siger dig efter den der tur jeg tænker bare på fest og kız.
"Wallah man I tell you after that trip I think only about party and kız"[2]
Other non-standard features are grammatical, such as the simplification of grammatical gender system, and syntactical, such as lack of word order inversion in subordinate clauses ("når man er i puberteten, man tænker mere") and after initial sentence adverb ("normalt man går på ungdomsskolen"); Standard Danish is a V2 language, with an exception for subordinate clauses. Phonetic features include the loss of stød in some words and an isochronic shift from being stress-timed to syllable-timed.[4]
The Danish poet Yahya Hassan made creative use of elements of immigrant Danish in his work.[5]
Quist, P. (2012). Skandinavisk i kontakt med indvandrersprog. Sprog i Norden, 43(1).
Nortier, J., & Dorleijn, M. (2013). Multi-ethnolects: Kebabnorsk, Perkerdansk, Verlan, Kanakensprache, Straattaal, etc. in Bakker, P., & Matras, Y. (Eds.). (2013). Contact languages: a comprehensive guide (Vol. 6). Walter de Gruyter.
Jørgensen, J. N. (2000). Perkerdansk-lovende perspektiver for det danske sprog. Dansk pædagogisk tidsskrift, (3), 8–15.
Quist, P. (2006). Perkerdansk og Rinkebysvensk. Kronik i Information 3. marts 2006.
Cheshire, J., Nortier, J., & Adger, D. (2015). Emerging multiethnolects in Europe.
Quist, Pia 2008 Sociolinguistic approaches to multiethnolect: Language variety and stylistic practice. International Journal of Bilingualism 12, 1-2: 43–62.
Quist, Pia and Janus Møller 2003 Research on youth language in Denmark. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 159: 45–55.
Quist, Pia 2000: Ny københavnsk 'multietnolekt'. Om sprogbrug blandt unge i sprogligt og kulturelt heterogene miljøer. Danske Talesprog. Bind 1. Institut for Dansk Dialektforskning. København: C.A. Reitzels Forlag. 143-212
Christensen, Mette Vedsgaard 2004: Arabiske ord i dansk hos unge i multietniske områder i Århus. I Dabelsteen & Arnfast (red.): Taler de dansk? Aktuel forskning i dansk som andetsprog. Københavnerstudier i tosprogethed, bind 37. Københavns Universitet.
Barding, Antonia, Kristina Maria Danielsen Eliasen, Marlene Kjærgaard Bjørn, Anja Falkner Matthiassen, Signe Elvstrøm, and Nathalia Barat. 2015, "Yahya Hassan-ironi og multietnolekt." BA thesis, Roskilde University Center .
Danish is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina.
Rinkeby Swedish is any of a number of varieties of Swedish spoken mainly in urban districts with a high proportion of immigrant residents which emerged as a linguistic phenomenon in the 1980s. Rinkeby in Stockholm is one such suburb, but the term Rinkeby Swedish may sometimes be used for similar varieties in other Swedish cities as well. A similar term is Rosengårdssvenska after the district Rosengård in Malmö. The one magazine in Sweden published in these varieties, Gringo, proposes 'miljonsvenska' based on the Million Programme.
Ib Christian Albert von Cotta Schønberg was a Danish film actor, and is considered one of the leading actors of Danish film in the 20th century.
Susanne Salomonsen is a Danish singer and songwriter, better known under the nickname Sanne Salomonsen. Salomonsen joined a local rock band in 1967, and her first solo album was released in 1973. She became one of the most famous singers in Denmark during the 1980s. Various songs sung or written by her have been on the local charts.
Kristian Thulesen Dahl is a Danish director and former politician who served as Leader of the Danish People's Party (DPP) from 2012 to 2022. He was a Member of the Folketing (MF) from September 1994 until July 2022, first representing Fremskridtspartiet until 6 October 1995 and then the DPP from that date until 29 June 2022, when he became an independent.
Kai Normann Andersen was a Danish composer who wrote film scores and music for stage revues and dramas. He composed songs for over 50 films between 1930 and 1965. In the 1930s and 1940s he dominated Danish film music. He has been called "[o]ne of the most appealing personalities of our time in the light music field". Twelve of his songs have been included in the Danish Culture Canon. Connie Hedegaard and Claus Hagen Petersen list him among the 100 most important Danes of the 20th century.
Kebabnorsk, also known as Kebab Norwegian or Norwegian multiethnolect, is a language variant of Norwegian that incorporates words and grammatical structures from languages spoken by immigrants to Norway such as Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Tamil, and Chilean Spanish, as well as English. The multiethnolect differs from an ethnolect because it is spoken not by one particular ethnic group, but by the many varying immigrant populations in Norway, drawing elements from each of their respective languages. The Norwegian multiethnolect emerged from immigrant youth communities, particularly those in eastern neighborhoods of Oslo, and has spread to broader youth populations through permeation of mainstream Norwegian media. The term sociolect is also useful when discussing this variant, because sociological factors such as age, neighborhood, ethnic identity, and gender play important roles in classifying and understanding Norwegian multiethnolect.
MGP Junior is a Danish song contest for children aged 8 to 15. It originated in 2000 as a spin-off of Dansk Melodi Grand Prix, before coming the national selection for the now-extinct MGP Nordic in 2002 and from 2006 to 2009. From 2003 to 2005, MGP Junior was Denmark's national selection for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, a pan-European version of the format.
Pia Juul was a Danish poet, prose writer, and translator. She received several prizes and was a member of the Danish Academy. She also taught at the writing school Forfatterskolen in Copenhagen.
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Poul Pedersen was an American cinematographer who co-founded the Danish Cinematographers Guild in 1954. Pedersen worked on 18 Danish feature films for the Nordisk Film studio from 1944 to 1962. His films included Kispus (1956), the first Danish feature movie to be filmed in color, and Qivitoq (1956) which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Palme D'Or.
A multiethnolect is a language variety, typically formed in youth communities in working class, immigrant neighborhoods of urban areas, that contains influences from a variety of different languages. Unlike an ethnolect, which associates one language variety with one particular ethnic group, speakers of a multiethnolect often come from varied ethnic backgrounds, and their language usage can be more closely attributed to the neighborhood in which they live than their nationality or that of their parents. The term "multiethnolect" was first coined by Clyne (2000) and Quist (2000). Research of multiethnolects has thus far focused primarily on urban areas in northwestern Europe, such as Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain, but the phenomenon is far more universal than that. Researchers Jacomine Nortier and Margreet Dorleijn call multiethnolects “a phenomenon of all times, that was only waiting for linguists to give it a name." In recent research, multiethnolects are often explored as a form of contact language, meaning a language that is used for communication between two speakers who don't share a native tongue.
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Carl Werner Hansen, commonly known as Carl W. Hansen, is a Danish former football referee and linesman, who officiated in the Danish top-flight, second-tier and third-tier including lower ranking leagues in the 1950s and 1960s and in both European and UEFA sanctioned club tournaments. From 1962 until 1969, he was a full international for FIFA, and officiated international friendlies and competitive games at senior, secondary 'B' team and under-19 level.
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Sigrid Friis Frederiksen is a Danish politician who is the former chairman of Radikal Ungdom. She is also a blogger for Altinget.dk and BT. She also sits on both the executive committee and the main board of the Danish Social Liberal Party. In September 2023, she was chosen to be her party's lead candidate for the 2024 European Parliament election in Denmark.
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