{"id":274,"date":"2011-12-30T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=274"},"modified":"2011-12-24T13:12:06","modified_gmt":"2011-12-24T13:12:06","slug":"those-pretty-letters-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2011\/12\/30\/those-pretty-letters-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Those Pretty Letters 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If letters had a national identity, \u00d8<\/strong><\/span> would doubtless be Miss Denmark. \u00c6 is shared with the Norwegians and Icelanders and indeed the whole world in fancy ways of writing Latin<\/a> words (C\u00e6sar<\/em><\/span>, right?) \u00c5 just recently found its place in the Danish alphabet, and is still often written \u2019Aa\u2019 in placenames, such as Aalborg rather than \u00c5lborg. \u00d8, on the other hand, has been in Denmark since the Middle Ages, and its use beyond Denmark, Norway and the Faroe Islands is limited to technical stuff (as a symbol for \u2019diameter\u2019) and trademarks like the tonic N\u00f8rdic Mist<\/span>. (Guess it makes it look \u201dNordic\u201d somehow.)<\/p>\n

When Danes can\u2019t find \u00d8 on the keyboard, they write \u2019oe\u2019. (Or use the zero symbol, if they happen to be my cousin.) Like \u00c6, it was originally a ligature (two letters whacked together). You may have seen the French<\/a> ligature \u0152<\/span>. This is what the letter ought<\/em> to<\/em> have looked like. But somehow the E part became a diagonal in Danish. (And two dots in Swedish and German: \u00d6.)<\/p>\n

\u00d8, famously \u2013 in Scandinavia at least \u2013 is one of only three letters which can also act as an independent word in Danish. It means \u2019island\u2019, and you can find it as an ending in many Danish island names: Christians\u00f8, \u00c6r\u00f8, Tun\u00f8, Fan\u00f8<\/strong>\u2026
\n(The other one-letter words are \u00e5<\/strong>, which means a \u2019small river\u2019, i<\/strong>, the preposition \u2019in\u2019, and I<\/strong>, which is the plural \u2019you [guys]\u2019.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00d8 is a pretty letter, that you\u2019ll love to tweak if you be one of dem calligraphers\u2026 In any Danish butik<\/strong> (shop) selling food items, you\u2019ll find a lot of things marked with an \u00d8. That means the spaghetti package you\u2019re holding in your hand is an \u00f8kologisk (organic) product. Indeed, many Danes associate the letter \u00d8 with all things \u201d\u00f8ko\u201d, that is, grown and produced in a way that is thought to be friendlier to the environment.<\/p>\n

In short, without its \u00d8, Danish culture would certainly collapse. There would be no \u00f8l<\/strong> (beer)!<\/p>\n

Tomorrow\u2019s special letters special will conclude this series with \u00c5\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

If letters had a national identity, \u00d8 would doubtless be Miss Denmark. \u00c6 is shared with the Norwegians and Icelanders and indeed the whole world in fancy ways of writing Latin words (C\u00e6sar, right?) \u00c5 just recently found its place in the Danish alphabet, and is still often written \u2019Aa\u2019 in placenames, such as Aalborg…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}