{"id":795,"date":"2012-11-23T15:02:52","date_gmt":"2012-11-23T15:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=795"},"modified":"2012-11-23T15:07:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-23T15:07:35","slug":"the-war-of-the-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2012\/11\/23\/the-war-of-the-words\/","title":{"rendered":"The War of the Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div style=\"width: 317px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a title=\"By Vijverln (Eget arbejde) [GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/)], via Wikimedia Commons\" href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AZaanse_mayonaise.jpg\" aria-label=\"512px Zaanse Mayonaise\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"  alt=\"Zaanse mayonaise\" width=\"307\" height=\"230\" \/ src=\"\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/8\/87\/Zaanse_mayonaise.jpg\/512px-Zaanse_mayonaise.jpg\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mayonnaise? Majon\u00e6se? Aaargh!<\/p><\/div>Whoa, the new edition of\u00a0<strong>Retskrivningsordbogen<\/strong>\u00a0has arrived!<\/p>\n<p><em>The Dictionary of Correct Writing<\/em>, as the title translates in English, is the Holy Grail of journalists, teachers and just about everyone who uses the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.transparent.com\/learn-danish\/\">Danish Language<\/a>. Edited by\u00a0<strong>Dansk Sprogn\u00e6vn<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 the Danish Language Council \u2013 it contains the official spellings of those\u00a0<strong>ord<\/strong>\u00a0(words) that are considered a part of the modern language. It\u2019s a bit like the <em>Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> without definitions and old words. (I mean, most of the words Shakespeare used are still in the OED. In case you purchased\u00a0<em>Retskrivningsordbogen<\/em>\u00a0in order to read H.C. Andersen, you probably picked the wrong dictionary!)<\/p>\n<p>Most Danes are suspicious of spelling reforms. Denmark was the last Scandinavian country to change \u2019<strong>aa<\/strong>\u2019 to the single spelling \u2019<strong><a title=\"Those Pretty Letters 3\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2011\/12\/31\/those-pretty-letters-3\/\">\u00e5<\/a><\/strong>\u2019, and attempts to \u201ddanify\u201d words taken from French (and other languages) have mostly backfired. For example, while the French word for driver,\u00a0<em>chauffeur<\/em>, is\u00a0<em>sj\u00e5f\u00f8r\u00a0<\/em>in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.transparent.com\/learn-norwegian\/\">Norwegian<\/a>, it\u2019s <strong>chauff\u00f8r<\/strong> in Danish, with only the last part of the word \u201dmade Danish\u201d. In the 1980\u2019ies, Dansk Sprogn\u00e6vn tried to boost \u2019<strong>majon\u00e6se<\/strong>\u2019 as an alternative spelling of\u00a0<strong>mayonnaise<\/strong>. It created such a mess that the whole debate was soon called\u00a0<strong>mayonnaisekrigen<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 the mayonnaise war! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>So, what\u2019s going to make the Danes punch each other with\u00a0<em>Retskrivningsbogen<\/em>\u00a0this year?<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Among the most controversial news are:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>words with the ending\u00a0<strong>-ium<\/strong>\u00a0(taken from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.transparent.com\/learn-latin\/\">Latin<\/a>) can now be written with the ending\u00a0<strong>-ie<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 both\u00a0<strong>akvarium<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>akvarie<\/strong>\u00a0are now correct labels to put on the glass box where your guppies and tetras live<\/li>\n<li>compound prepositions can now be written as one word in all positions. A compound preposition is a multi-word preposition like\u00a0<em>instead of<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0<em>next to<\/em>\u00a0in English. Traditionally, the rules have been a bit difficult in Danish: In a sentence like\u00a0<strong>Hun er uden for huset<\/strong>\u00a0(She\u2019s outside the house),\u00a0<strong>uden for<\/strong>\u00a0(outside) is written as two words because it\u2019s followed by a noun (<strong>huset<\/strong>). In\u00a0<strong>Hun er udenfor<\/strong>\u00a0(She\u2019s outside),\u00a0<strong>udenfor<\/strong>\u00a0has no noun following it and is written as one word. Phew. It can now be written\u00a0<strong>udenfor<\/strong>\u00a0in both sentences.<\/li>\n<li>abbreviation words like\u00a0<strong>tv<\/strong>\u00a0can now be written either\u00a0<strong>tv<\/strong>\u00a0or\u00a0<strong>TV<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>a huge number of English words used in the spoken language have now become official \u2013 if your Danish teacher dislikes your use of the F-word, it\u2019s just too bad for him. It\u2019s in the dictionary\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The new spellings can be found in the online dictionary <a href=\"http:\/\/sproget.dk\">sproget.dk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"350\" height=\"263\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/30\/2012\/11\/512px-Zaanse_mayonaise-350x263.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image tmp-hide-img\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/30\/2012\/11\/512px-Zaanse_mayonaise-350x263.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/30\/2012\/11\/512px-Zaanse_mayonaise.jpg 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p>Whoa, the new edition of\u00a0Retskrivningsordbogen\u00a0has arrived! The Dictionary of Correct Writing, as the title translates in English, is the Holy Grail of journalists, teachers and just about everyone who uses the Danish Language. Edited by\u00a0Dansk Sprogn\u00e6vn\u00a0\u2013 the Danish Language Council \u2013 it contains the official spellings of those\u00a0ord\u00a0(words) that are considered a part of the&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2012\/11\/23\/the-war-of-the-words\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":2127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[252444,2067,287,3684,252447,362760,89876],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar","tag-dansk-sprognaevn","tag-dictionary","tag-french","tag-norwegian","tag-retskrivningsordbogen","tag-spelling","tag-sproget-dk"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","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=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}