History of Danish
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the history and evolution of the Danish language. For the history of the Danish people, see Danes. For the history of the Danish culture, see culture of Denmark.
The Danish language developed during the Middle Ages out of Old East Norse, the common predecessor of Danish and Swedish. It was a late form of common Old Norse. The Danish philologist Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen divided the history of Danish into "Old Danish" from 800 AD to 1525 and "Modern Danish" from 1525 and onwards. He subdivided Old Danish into "Runic Danish" (800–1100), Early Middle Danish (1100–1350) and Late Middle Danish (1350–1525).[1]