Free Danish Keyboard Online.
Type from any device — no download, no install.
100% free
·
5.5 million speakers
·
All devices
Danish was set down in law long before it had a fixed spelling. The Jutlandic Law dates from 1241, and the first printed book in Danish, the Rhyming Chronicle, appeared in 1495. In 1869 teachers and scholars from Denmark, Norway and Sweden met in Stockholm to bring Scandinavian spelling closer together, and in 1872 Svend Grundtvig’s Dansk Haandordbog became the first official spelling dictionary; a ministry decree of 1892 then laid down the school spelling. The break came with the reform of 1948, started by education minister Hartvig Frisch, adopted on 22 March and in force from 1 April. It made three changes: nouns lost their capital letters, so Hest became hest; aa became å in ordinary words, so paastaa became påstå; and kunde, skulde and vilde became kunne, skulle and ville. Where the new letter belonged was left open. The first proposal put å before a, and only in 1955 was it placed last, after æ and ø. Dansk Sprognævn, the Danish Language Council, was founded on 17 March 1955 and edits the official spelling dictionary, Retskrivningsordbogen, issued in 1955, 1986, 1996, 2001, 2012 and 2024; since 2024 the digital edition, updated every year, is the one in force. The å met the most resistance. From 1984 municipalities could keep aa in local place names, and Aarhus went back to Aa in 2011, although the dictionary says Danish place names are always correct with å.
Spoken Danish hides much of what it writes. The stød, a creak or catch in the voice, can be the only thing that tells two words apart, yet spelling never marks it: hun (she) has no stød and hund (dog) has one, as with ven (friend) and vend (turn around), while læser means reader without stød and reads with it. Consonants soften as well. The blød d, the soft d, is closer to a vowel than a stop, and non-Danes often hear it as an l. Standard Danish has around 20 vowel qualities. A 2008 study by Bleses and colleagues set Danish toddlers against 17 comparable studies of other languages and found the Danish word comprehension scores the lowest from age one, which the authors linked to Danish sounds being harder to split into words.
On a Danish keyboard Æ comes before Ø, the reverse of Norway. The Windows Danish layout puts Å to the right of P, Æ to the right of L and Ø to the right of Æ, so the keys follow the alphabet; the Norwegian layout swaps the last two. The key left of Backspace is a dead key for ´ and `, so ´ then e gives é, and the key next to Å carries ¨, ^ and ~. The key left of 1 shows ½ and §, and Shift+4 gives ¤. AltGr reaches @ on 2, $ on 4, € on 5 or E, the braces on 7 and 0 and the square brackets on 8 and 9, with | on the accent key and \ on the < key. Numbers follow Danish rules: the decimal key on the number pad types a comma, because 3,5 is three and a half, and the time is written with a full stop, as in kl. 14.30. Quotation marks differ from both neighbours. Danish books and some newspapers use »guillemets pointing inward«, the opposite way round from Norwegian, while everyday typing uses the straight " on Shift+2. Æ, ø, å and é all belong to the GSM 7-bit set, so they keep a text message at 160 characters, and .dk domain names have accepted æ, ø and å since 2004. Danish is an official language of the Faroe Islands, was co-official in Greenland until 2009, is a recognised minority language in Schleswig-Holstein and is still a compulsory school subject in Iceland. This page shows the 29 letters, with é, » « and kr. in the Special popup.
Arabicالعربية
Amazighⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ
Amharicአማርኛ
ArmenianՀայերեն
Assameseঅসমীয়া
BelarusianБеларуская
Bengaliবাংলা
BulgarianБългарски
Burmeseမြန်မာဘာသာ
Chinese中文
CzechČeština
DanishDansk
Dhivehiދިވެހި
Egyptian Hieroglyphs𓂀
FilipinoWikang Filipino
FrenchFrançais
Georgianქართული
GermanDeutsch
GreekΕλληνικά
HausaHarshen Hausa
Hebrewעברית
HungarianMagyar
IrishGaeilge
Japanese日本語
Kannadaಕನ್ನಡ
KazakhҚазақша
Khmerភាសាខ្មែរ
Korean한국어
Kurdishکوردی
Laoພາສາລາວ
MacedonianМакедонски
MongolianМонгол
Nepaliनेपाली
NorwegianNorsk
Pashtoپښتو
Persianفارسی
PolishPolski
PortuguesePortuguês
RussianРусский
SerbianСрпски
Sindhiسنڌي
Sinhalaසිංහල
SomaliSoomaali
SwedishSvenska
Thaiภาษาไทย
Tigrinyaትግርኛ
TurkishTürkçe
UkrainianУкраїнська
Uyghurئۇيغۇرچە
VietnameseTiếng Việt
