Bornholmsk: its history and status in Denmark

The other day my dad called me into the living room to show me a video on his iPad. The video was of three men conversing in Danish while operating a combine harvester.

“Do you recognize the dialect?” my dad asked. I told him no. “All Danish is Danish to me,” I explained, or something like that.

He told me the men in the video were from Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea just south of Sweden. Because the island is so isolated from the rest of Denmark, its inhabitants speak a unique dialect called Bornholmsk.

Map of Denmark from World Atlas. The island of Bornholm is shown in the lower right corner — Map of the Kingdom of Denmark. Bornholm is located in the lower right corner just south of Sweden
(source: World Atlas)

What is Bornholm?

While Denmark proper is known for its flat green landscape, Bornholm is made up of large granite rock formations. As a result, people call it by the nickname klippeøen or “rock island”. (In English, my dad refers to it as “The Rock”.)

Its location in the middle of the Baltic Sea made it a valuable stop on shipping and trade routes.

The story of Bornholmsk

Bornholmsk is an East Danish dialect. It is mostly spoken rather than written, but there is a written tradition dating back to the 19th century. The 1920s-40s saw the Golden Age of writing in the Bornholm dialect. Today, the writing tradition continues in newspapers and social media.

Some argue that Bornholmsk is its own unique language rather than a dialect of Danish. However, I will continue calling it a dialect of Danish here.

The dialect is endangered. Over the past 25 years especially, residents of Bornholm have begun adopting the standard Danish dialect over the Bornholm dialect. People often code switch between the two dialects.

Bornholmsk vs. standard Danish

Bornholmsk has several grammatical properties which distinguish it from standard Danish.

1. Grammatical gender

Bornholmsk has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. It retained this from Old Norse, which also had three grammatical genders. Standard Danish, meanwhile, has two grammatical genders: common and neuter. The masculine and feminine genders in standard Danish collapsed into each other to form the common gender.

	Old Norse	Bornholmsk	Standard Danish
Masculine	Sg. -(i)nn Pl. -(i)nir	Sg. -(i)n Pl. -na	Sg. -en Pl. -e(r)
Feminine	Sg. -(i)n Pl. -nar	Sg. -(e)n Pl. -na	Sg. -en Pl. -(e)ne
Neuter	Sg. -(i)t Pl. -(i)n	Sg. -(e)d Pl. -(e)n	Sg. -et Pl. -(e)ne

Definite suffixes for Old Norse, Bornholmsk, and standard Danish

2. Double definiteness

Bornholmsk expresses double definiteness (definiteness is English the) whereas standard Danish does not. This phenomenon also occurs in Swedish.

In standard Danish, there are two options for expressing definiteness:

As a free unit before the noun and at least one modifier (ex. adjectives)
As a suffix attached to the end of the noun

Bornholmsk has both options appear in the same phrase.

Bornholmsk	Standard Danish
dæn goa solen DEF. good sun-DEF “the good sun”	den god sol DEF. good sun “the good sun”

Definiteness expressed in Bornholmsk vs. standard Danish

3. Phonological differences

Bornholmsk has multiple phonological differences to standard Danish.

First, standard Danish uses -e for unstressed syllables. Bornholmsk uses -e but also -a. For instance, for the word ‘whole, entire’:

Bornholmsk: hela

Standard Danish: hele

(Note: my source text does not specify this as a phonological phenomenon. This could also be a difference in writing convention.)

Second, some consonants are palatized in certain contexts.

Palatalization takes place when the tongue hits the hard palate while pronouncing a consonant. In Bornholmsk, this occurs with /g/, /k/, /l/, and /n/.

4. Different words

Bornholmsk also has entirely different words for certain things from Danish. Here are a few examples:

English	Standard Danish	Bornholmsk
the boys	drengene	horrana
girl	pige	piblijn
afternoon	eftermiddag	awtań

Final thoughts

Now you know some more about the dialect Bornholmsk, its speakers, and its differences from Danish.

If you want to learn more about the dialect, check out the sources I used below.

If there’s another dialect or language you’d like to see me write about, or if you have another idea for a future blog post, leave a comment below or follow me on Instagram and send me a DM!