Page:A simplified grammar of the Danish language.djvu/20

8 Native purists condemn the use of c and q as alien letters. The former they maintain should be rejected before k as unnecessary, and should always be replaced by k, where, as is the case in genuine Northern words, c has the sound of that letter; while, where it has the sound of English, or French c before a soft vowel, they prefer to represent it by the letter s. Qu (or qv) is, on analogous grounds, to be rendered by kv, which supply the equivalent sound in genuine Northern letters.

In regard to pronunciation, great variations, as already observed, are growing up between Danes and Norwegians; and in the following remarks we will endeavour briefly to notice some of the most prominent national, and recently acquired, differences of sound given to the same letters by the two peoples.

By Danes and Norwegians the final d is not pronounced after l, n, r, t, as Hånd (hǎwn), 'hand;' or before t and s. Among Norwegians, however, d never takes the soft th sound common in Danish when it follows a vowel at the end of a word, as med (medth), 'with.' Norwegian final d has the sound of t in most nouns and adjectives, but in some pronouns, as hvad, 'what,' it is not heard.

In Danish, g loses its distinctive sound in monosyllables when following a vowel, as mig (mei), 'me.'

In Norwegian the g before the soft vowels ä, e, i, ö, y, acquires the sound of English y, as gærne, (yerne), 'willingly.'

In certain parts of Norway hv has the sound of kv, as hvad (kva), 'what.' This peculiarity, which was till lately regarded as a mere provincialism, is now beginning to find