Kathleen Hansen age 16, of Mesa Ariz , for her question
WHERE DID THE DANISH LANGUAGE COME FROM?
The Danish language belongs to the East Scandinavian branch of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo European languages. Like Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic, Danish is derived from a common Scandinavian language which can be traced to runic inscriptions of the third century A D.
Significant changes occurred in the parent language during the Viking age (800 1050), leading to distinct differences between the East Scandinavian dialects, from which Danish and Swedish evolved, and the West Scandinavian dialects, which are the sources of Norwegian and Icelandic.
The history of the Danish language may be divided into three main periods: Old Danish (800 1100), Middle Danish (1100 1500) and Modern Danish (from 1500).
Examples of Old Danish are preserved in numerous runic inscriptions. Early Middle Danish is represented sparingly in proper names occurring in the 12th century Latin documents and more fully in early Danish laws. These sources show that no common language existed at that time, but that three "provincial languages" were in use: those of Scania (then a part of Denmark), Zealand and Jutland.
Middle Danish underwent important changes, such as the leveling of inflections and the simplifications of grammar, and absorbed many loan words especially from Low German.
Zealandic, as used in government offices, became the basis for a common language.
About 1500, the chief characteristics of Danish had evolved and it began to be used as a national language. The printed and publishing activities that occurred during the Reformation led to a considerable transformation of the medieval orthography and contributed markedly to the development of a literary vocabulary.
A geographical expansion of Danish took place when it became the official written language of Norway which was then united with Denmark. And under the influence of humanism, Latin was used extensively in literary writing from about 1500 to about 1700.
During the last half of the 17th century, German was spoken at the royal court and many German words entered the Danish language, although most of them were later discarded.
Danish had virtually completed its grammatical development by the beginning of the 18th century and it became a significant cultural and literary language, especially through the work of the poet, playwright and historian Ludvig Holberg.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, fewer dialects were spoken, the interaction between spoken and written language increased and the vocabulary expanded through the assimilation of German, French and English words, including many technical terms.
Authorized standard orthography, with subsequent revisions, has been in effect since 1871.
Through a spelling reform adopted in 1948, the capitalization of nouns was abolished and the letter "sa" as replaced by "a." These changes brought Danish closer to Norwegian and Swedish.