Jutlandic dialect
Jutlandic, or Jutish, is the western variety of Danish, spoken on the peninsula of Jutland in Denmark.
Generally, the eastern dialects are the closest to Standard Danish, while the southern dialect is the one that differs the most from the others; therefore it is sometimes described as a distinct dialect. Thus Jutlandic is by that definition actually two different dialects: general or Northern Jutlandic and Southern Jutlandic. However, the linguistic variation is considerably more complicated and well over 20 separate minor dialects can be easily found on Jutland. shows nine larger dialectal regions which will be discussed in this article. There are major phonological differences between the dialects, but also very noteworthy morphological, syntactic, and semantic variations.
Subdialects
The different subdialects of Jutlandic differ somewhat from each other, and are generally grouped in three main dialects.These are the abbreviations seen in the map linked above, which will be used throughout the rest of the article:
NJy: Northern Jutlandic, NVJy: North Western Jutlandic, NØJy: North Eastern Jutlandic, MVJy: Mid-Western Jutlandic, MØJy: Mid-Eastern Jutlandic, SyJy: Southern Jutlandic, SønJy: South Jutlandic, Djurs: Djurs-dialect, Sslesv: South Schleswig
''Sønderjysk''
- Sønderjysk is often seen as very difficult for other speakers of Danish, even other Jutlandic dialects to understand. Instead of the normal Danish stød, it has tonal accents like Swedish. Many of the phonemes are also different, including velar fricatives much like in German. It also has the definite article before the noun, as opposed to the standard Danish postclitic article.
''Østjysk''
- Østjysk is the closest to the standard of the three Jutlandic dialects, but still differs widely in the pronunciation of vowels and the voiced stops word initially or intervocallically. Some dialects of East Jutlandic also still have three genders, like the majority of Swedish and Norwegian dialects.
''Vestjysk''
- Vestjysk is also well known for this enclitic article as well as a complete lack of gender distinction. Phonetically, it is known for having for the phoneme /v~ʋ/ in all positions, as opposed to only post-vocalically in standard Danish. It also can exhibit stød in slightly different environments from the standard.
Phonology
Consonants
Standard Danish phonology contains nasal, aspirated voiceless and devoiced plosives. Four voiceless fricatives, , , and are present, as well as approximants: , , , and . There are also three regular and a lateral approximant, , , and . Below is a table depicting the consonant inventory of Danish. Phonemes that appear in standard Danish are in black and phonemes which are only seen in the dialects of Jutland are in bold. This table only includes phonemes and some allophones.| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Alveopalatal | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
| Nasal | m | - | n | - | ɲ | ŋ | - | - |
| Plosive | pʰ, b̥ | - | tˢ, d̥ | - | - | kʰ, ɡ̊ | - | - |
| Fricative | β | f, v | s | ɕ | - | x, ɣ | - | h |
| Approximant | - | ʋ; ʊ̯ | ð̞ | - | ç j; ɪ̯ | - | ʁ; ɐ̯ | - |
| Lat. Appr. | - | - | l | - | ʎ | - | - | - |
| Velar Coarticulation | ʍ, w | - | ɫ | - | - | - | - |
The major phonological process in Jutlandic consonants is lenition. This is the weakening of originally voiceless consonants in either the coda of a syllable or word as well as intervocallically. The weakening causes voicing as well as the fall from a stop to a fricative and finally to a sonorant. The final step of lenition is then complete apocope. This phenomenon can be seen in all its stages in the Jutlandic dialects, although it shows considerably more variability in the alveolars. The bilabials still have the approximant in one dialect, but no null phoneme and the velars have no sonorants, only a voiceless stop and fricative. The stages of the lenition as well as which dialects they occur in can be seen in the table below. Multiple possibilities for the same stage are shown separated by a semicolon. In Maps and the spread of the pronunciation of and are shown. The ÷ represents the null or zero morpheme in the maps, the -j and -r are and respectively and q is the devoiced velar stop while ch stands for the fricative . Vends and Læsø are regions usually belonging to the NJy dialectal region whereas Fjolds is the border region between Germany and Denmark, normally considered part of South Jutlandic.
| Standard Lenition | -v Stop | +v Stop | + or – v fricative | Flapping | Approximant | zero |
| Old Danish | Standard Danish | NVJy, NJy, SydJy | MØJy; MVJy, SønJy1 | Vends, East SønJy | ||
| Jutlandic Alveolars | , | , | - | null | ||
| Old Danish | Standard Danish, MØJy, Fjolde | NordJy, MØJy; Midt- and SydJy, North SønJy; SønJy | Læsø | |||
| Jutlandic Bilabials | , | , | - | - | ||
| Old Danish | Standard Danish, Northern Jutlandic, North SønJy | SønJy | ||||
| Jutlandic Velars | , | , | - | - | - |
e.g. In Southern Jutlandic, Scandinavian post-vocalic p, k become word-finally, whereas Standard Danish has b, g, e.g. søge 'to seek' = Standard Danish, tabe 'lose' = Standard Danish. In the northern part of Southern Jutland, these sounds are voiced fricatives between vowels, i.e. : e.g. søger 'seeks' = Standard Danish, taber 'loses' = Standard Danish.
Vowels
Standard Danish has a large vowel inventory and contrasts length on many vowels. Vowels can also be glottalized where the so-called stød is present and many change their quality depending on whether or not they are preceded or followed by an /r/.| Front Unrounded | Front Rounded | Central Unrounded | Central Rounded | Back Unrounded | Back Rounded | |
| Close | i, i: | y, y: | - | - | - | u, u: |
| Near Close | ɪ | - | - | ʊ | - | - |
| Close Mid | e, eː | ø, ø: | - | - | - | o, o: |
| Open Mid | ɛ, ɛ: | œ, œː | ə | - | - | ɔ, ɔː |
| Near Open | æ, æ: | - | ɐ | ʌ | - | - |
| Open | a | ɶ, ɶː | - | - | ɑ, ɑː | ɒ, ɒː |
Jutlandic exhibits many diphthongs, which are not present in standard Danish. The long stressed mid vowels, /e:/, /ø:/, and /o:/ become /iə/, /yə/, and /uə/ respectively in central Jutland as well as SSlesv, e.g. ben = Standard Danish 'leg', bonde 'farmer' = Standard Danish . SønJy has the same vowel quality for these vowels, but exhibits a tonal distinction, which is present in place of the Danish stød. NJy raises them without diphthonging them to /i:/, /y:/, and /u:/ respectively. In a small area of Mid Western Jutland called Hards the vowels become diphthonged with a glide, much like in English and are pronounced as /ej/, /øj/, and /ow/. In Northern Jutland /i:/, /y:/, and /u:/ are also diphthonged in two syllable words with a glide. NJy always has the glide present and NVJy tends towards the glide, but it is not present for all speakers. Long a and å have been raised to and respectively in northern Jutlandic, e.g. sagde 'said' = Standard Danish, gå 'go, walk' = Standard Danish. Map shows the different possible pronunciations for the standard Danish mid, stressed vowels which is further explained in the following table.
| Std. Danish | NJy | NVJy | MVJy | MØJy | SydJy | SønJy | SSlesv |
| /i:/ | |||||||
| /y:/ | |||||||
| /u:/ | |||||||
| /e:/ | |||||||
| /ø:/ | |||||||
| /o:/ | |||||||
| /æː/ | |||||||
| /ɔː/ | |||||||
| /ɑː/ |
Outside of these diphthongs arising from changes in pronunciation from standard Danish long vowels, there are also the following diphthongs: , , , /, / and /. and are both present in Vends, NVJy and MVJy but only one occurs in Østjysk, SønJy and SydJy. There is a tendency towards , but in MØJy can be found instead. The same sort of alternation is also seen with and . In MVJy, NJy and NVJy both diphthongs exist. In MØJy there is an alternation between the two, but each speaker only has one. In SydJy and SønJy only is found. is present as a diphthong in all of Jutland with the exception of the island of Fanø, but has different pronunciations depending on length of the segments. The remaining diphthongs show a distribution based on rounding. In the majority of Jutland the unrounded diphthong is rounded. In South Eastern Jutland the rounded one is unrounded and only in certain parts of Sønderjylland are both diphthongs preserved. Map shows the rounding alternation for the front, close diphthong /.
An interesting phenomenon in western SønJy and MVJy, NVJy as well as NJy is the so-called klusilspring. The klusilspring can be seen as a modified stød that only occurs on high vowels. These long vowels are shortened and then followed by a klusil, or plosive, or in some cases a spirant. In Vends and western South Jutlandic the three pronunciations become: , , and and they have the same pronouciation but followed by a schwa if not in the coda. An area in NVJy designated on the map as Him-V has instead , and and in MVJy it is similar with the /u:/ also containing a glide and in all three cases a schwa is inserted if it is not in the coda of the syllable. The rest of NVJy along the coast has the schwa as well but a fricative instead of a stop, so the sounds are , , and . In the rest of the Jutlandic dialects the vowel quality is overall the same, with gliding in NVJy on the map and only unrounded front vowels in Djurs.
''Stød''
As mentioned earlier, the klusilspring is an alternative of the stød that occurs only with high vowels. In the other mainland Scandinavian languages as well as SønJy, there are two different tonemes which distinguish between words that were originally one or two syllables. Tone 1 is a simple rising then falling tone in most dialects and tone 2 is more complex, e.g. hus 'house' = Standard Danish ~ huse 'houses' = Standard Danish. In standard Danish as well as Jutlandic, tone 1 is replaced with a nonsegmental glottalization and tone 2 disappears entirely. Glottalization can only occur on vowels or sonorants and only in one or two-syllable words and is realized in transcription as a . However, in two-syllable words the second syllable must be a derivational morpheme as the historical environment of tone 1 was one-syllable words and tone 2 only occurred on two-syllable words. Due to apocope and the morphology, both tones and the stød can now be found on one- and two-syllable words. There can be multiple stød segments per word, if the word is a compound, which separates its phonetically from the tonemes of Swedish, Norwegian and South Jutlandic, which can only occur once over the whole word. However, in contrast to the standard Danish stød, the Jutlandic stød does not usually occur in monosyllabic words with a sonorant + voiceless consonant. Only Djurs and the city dialect of Aarhus have the stød in this environment. As mentioned before, most of north west Jutland does not have a stød after short high vowels, and instead has the klusilspring. The stød is still present on sonorants and mid and low vowels in the proper environment. Western Jutlandic also has a stød on the vowel in originally two-syllable words with a geminate voiceless consonant such as,, or e.g. katte 'cats' = Standard Danish ; ikke 'not' = Standard Danish.Other phonological characteristics
- Jutlandic also exhibits a strong tendency towards apocope, i.e. skipping the e often found in unstressed syllables, which is itself a weakening of an original North Germanic -i, -a or -u, which causes many words to be distinguished based purely on vowel length or the presence of the stød. Most unstressed syllables are dropped and in some cases final segments, often e.g. kaste 'throw' = Standard Danish .
- Jutlandic is further known for lacking the diphthong in the first person nominative pronoun: jeg. It is pronounced in the majority of Jutland as but in SønJy and NVJy as . The difference goes back to different forms in Proto-Norse, namely ek and eka, both found in early Runic inscriptions. The latter form has a regular breaking of e to ja before an a in the following syllable. The short form, without breaking, is also found in Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic.
- In Northern Jutlandic v is a labiovelar approximant before back vowels, whereas it is a Labiodental approximant in Standard Danish, e.g. vaske 'wash' = Standard Danish. The same dialects have voiceless variants of v and j in the initial combinations hj and hv, e.g. hvem 'who' = Standard Danish, hjerte 'heart' = Standard Danish.
- In most parts of Jutland, nd becomes, e.g. finde 'find' = Standard Danish.
Grammar
Gender
Originally the Scandinavian languages, like modern German as well as Icelandic, had three genders. These three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter are still present in many dialects, notably most dialects of Norwegian. However, in all standard versions of the mainland Scandinavian languages, there are only two genders. The masculine and feminine fell together, taking the masculine article, and the neuter stayed separate. Three genders remain in northern Jutland and far in the east, which could potentially be explained through dialect contact with both Norwegian and Swedish dialects which preserve all three genders. The loss of all gender distinction in the west, though, is unique to Jutlandic. Note though that West Jutlandic still have two noun classes, n- and t-words like standard Danish, they are just not genders. t-words in West Jutlandic are limited to mass nouns.| 3 Genders | 2 Genders | 1 Gender | |
| Region | Vends, Djurs | East Jutland, SønJy | West Jutland |
| masculine 'a man' | i mand | ||
| feminine 'a woman' | æn kone | ||
| common gender | æn kone, æn mand | æn kone, æn mand, æn hus | |
| neuter 'a house' | æt hus | æt hus |
Article
The definite marker is also not consistent in the Jutlandic dialects. In the west, where only one gender is present, as well as in all of SydJy and SønJy, the definite marker is a free morpheme that comes before the noun. It is not, however, the same as the free morpheme found in standard Danish when an adjective precedes a noun. It is phonetically realised as .| West and South Jutland | East and North Jutland, Standard | |
| masculine 'the man' | æ mand | manden |
| neuter 'the house' | æ hus | huset |
| feminine 'the woman' | æ kone | konen |
| plural 'the men' | æ mænd | mændene |
There are also small areas in Jutland where predicate adjectives as well as adjectives in indefinite noun phrases have gender congruence in the neuter form. In SSlesv, easternmost Djurs and on the island of Samsø, adjectives take a -t ending which patterns with standard Danish: for example, et grønt glas and glasset er grønt. 'a green glass; the glass is green' In Vends there is no congruence on adjectives in indefinite noun phrases, but the -t is still present in predicate adjectives. The variability in the examples also reflects differences between number of genders, postclitic versus enclitic article and apocope. In the rest of Jutland, as a result of apocope, the -t disappears completely: .
Semantics
The presence of a separate free morpheme definite marker in the western Jutlandic dialects has come to cause a contrastive semantic meaning difference with the standard Danish dem. Nouns that can be analyzed as mass nouns, as opposed to count nouns can take the article before an adjective. If the noun is, however, meant to be a count noun it uses the standard Danish plural article dem. An example of this would be dem små kartofler versus æ små kartofler 'the small potatoes'. Dem små kartofler refers to the small potatoes in a set, i.e. those 5 small potatoes on the table. Æ små kartofler refers instead to a mass noun, meaning potatoes that are generally small. It is like saying "the yellow potatoes" in English. It can either mean yellow potatoes as a whole, a mass noun or the yellow potatoes sitting on the table, as opposed to the red ones.There is also a tendency to use hans or hendes instead of the "correct" sin when referring to the subject of the sentence. This means there is no longer a distinction between whether the possessive pronoun refers to the subject of the sentence or a third person, however, use of a word like egen/t 'own' can paraphrastically accomplish the same thing.
| Standard Danish | Han ser sin hund 'He sees his dog' | Han ser hans hund 'He sees his dog' | Hans hund ser ham 'His dog sees him' |
| Jutlandic | Han ser hans hund 'He sees his dog' | Han ser hans hund 'He sees his dog' | Hans hund ser ham 'His dog sees him' |
Sociolinguistics
Today the old dialects, tied as they were to the rural districts, are yielding to new regional standards based on Standard Danish. Several factors have contributed to this process. The dialects, especially in the northernmost, western and southern regions, are often hard to understand for people originating outside Jutland.The dialects also enjoy little prestige both nationally and regionally.
The Danish cultural, media and business life revolves around Copenhagen, and Jutland has only in recent decades seen substantial economic growth. In the 20th century dialects were usually suppressed by media, state institutions, and schools. In recent decades, a more liberal attitude towards dialects has emerged, but since the number of speakers has decreased, and almost all of the remaining dialect speakers master a regional form of Standard Danish as well, dialects are still being ignored.
Characteristics
The new Jutlandic "regiolects" differ from the Copenhagen variety primarily by a distinct accent:- a higher tendency of apocope of unstressed .
- a higher pitch towards the end of a stressed syllable.
- a slightly different distribution of stød: vej 'way' = Standard Danish ; hammer 'hammer' = Standard Danish.
- the ending -et is pronounced instead of, e.g. hentet 'fetched' = Standard Danish ; meget 'very, much' = Standard Danish
- postvocalic d is pronounced or, before i, in certain varieties of the regiolect: bade 'bath' = Standard Danish, stadig 'still' = Standard Danish. These pronunciations are not favored by younger speakers.
- or is pronounced in words where Standard Danish has : torn 'thorn' = Standard Danish. On the other hand, one also hears hypercorrect pronunciations like tårn 'tower' = Standard Danish.
- the strong verbs have -en in the past participle not only in adjectival use, as in Standard Danish, but also in the compound perfect: han har funden for Standard Danish han har fundet den. Such forms belong to the low register of the Jutlandic regiolects.
- a frequent use of hans, hendes 'his, her' instead of the reflexive pronoun sin to refer to the subject of the sentence: han kyssede hans kone 'he kissed his wife' for Standard Danish han kyssede sin kone.
- a lack of distinction between transitive and intransitive forms of certain related verbs like ligge ~ lægge 'lie, lay': han lagde i sengen 'he lay in the bed' for Standard Danish han lå i sengen.
- remnants of a regional vocabulary such as træls 'annoying', og 'too', ikke og or, in higher style, ikke også 'isn't it' .