Danish pronunciation, regional or otherwise

[galingale]

The recent post about Denmark got me remembering...  Can someone point me to a place where I can find Danish pronunciation examples online?  How about regional pronunciations?

A Danish friend comes from a part of the country where many consonants are only faintly pronounced.  He demonstrated his grandparents' rural pronunciation with the Dansk

Comments

[dan_lian]

Hi, I'm not sure about a place online, but I can tell you that where I learned to speak Danish (Holte, just north of Copenhagen) gave me a noted accent. Evidently Holte people speak the equivalent of Queen's Danish (or so I was told by folks). Rather than "Hol-te", I say "Haalte", and tweak my vowels accordingly. It's an interesting observation. I also know that my classmates would tell me how "lucky" I was not to be on Bornholm or Jylland, because they "don't speak properly" out there and how people from around Copenhagen/on Sjaelland can sometimes need a translator to understand the rural speakers.

Mind you, I never went to either Jylland or Bornholm so I can't assert to the differences, but that was what my classmates in 'high school' from 1999-2000 told the wee exchange student.

[galingale]

Neat. I'd previously heard of this happening with English--someone from California became an impromptu translator at a conference because an attendee from Scotland couldn't understand an attendee from the Bronx. But they'd been fine when exchanging emails beforehand!

[shorofsky]

Hi there, I am from Jylland and can tell you that you were subject to some quite mean generalisations about the Danish language.

There is a lingual rivalry in Denmark... Over here in Jylland we make fun of the way people from Sjælland talk. We don't tend to like the way it sounds, actually, just like they don't like the way we talk.

However, they were exaggerating the difficulty they experience when "travelling abroad". There is a lot less difference between the way we speak in Jylland and the way they speak over on Djævleøen than there was in the past.

[dan_lian]

"The devil island", eh? :)

I figured that there had to be some exaggerations--these were gymnasium students, after all, and with an impressionable American in their midst, who could resist the fun? -- but I did hear some generalizations from adults as well. I figured it was similar to the way we Northern American speakers (gently) harass the Southerners. Not drastic, but if you weren't expecting it, you could run into issues.

[shorofsky]

Yep... We do tend to call Sjælland Djævleøen in normal speech...

Yeah, I can see the similarity with the Northern American and the Southern dialects.

There are loads of evil generalizations about dialects;-)

[widdertwin]

Between Djævleøen and Lorteøen, I think Denmark has a new reverse-psychological tourism campaign!!!!

[shorofsky]

Well, Lorteøen is just a carry over from when Amager was actually a very large ceptic tank... All the filth from Copenhagen used to be taken there and there were people in little row boats employed to keep the waste moving...

Hard not to call that shit island, huh?

[galingale]

"Call it guano all you want, it's still batshit to me." --Janet Kagan, Mirabile