Page:A simplified grammar of the Danish language.djvu/21

Rh favour among the general body of cultivated Norsemen. This peculiar sound of the Northern hv brings more clearly into view the affinity between the Old Northern and Latin; the kvem (hvem, 'who,' 'whom') of the rising Norsk generation being identical with quem, while their kvad (hvad, 'what,' 'which') represents with nearly equal exactness the Latin neuters quid, quod.

J is rejected after k and g before soft vowels in the new system of spelling, but its rejection has by no means met with unqualified approval, and hence one modern dictionary will give gjerne, kjöbe, etc., while another gives gærne, 'willingly,' köbe, 'to sell,' etc. One person will write kjær (or kjer), and another kär, 'dear;' or one book published at Copenhagen may bear on its title page the name Kjöbenhavn, while another gives the same word as Köbenhavn.

The combined letters sk, st, which have among Danes the same sounds as in English, are differently pronounced by Norwegians and Swedes. The sk among the latter has the sound of English sh, as Skyds, (shütz), 'relay of carriages.' The st when preceding j has a less well established sound among Norwegians, some of whom follow the Swedes in giving it the sound of sh, or sch, as Scherne for Stjærne, 'star,' while others, like the Danes, keep to the sound of stierne.

In the older forms of spelling much confusion prevailed in the use of vowels, and in the present transition stage of Dano-Norwegian orthography this indefiniteness still exists, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of the Stockholm Linguistic Congress to establish some fixed rules for vowel-sounds, that might be accepted both in Dano-Norwegian,