Jutlandic, or Jutish (Danish: jysk; ), is the western variety of Danish, spoken on the peninsula of Jutland in Denmark.
Generally, Jutlandic can be divided into two different dialects: general or Northern Jutlandic ( ; further divided into western and eastern) and Southern Jutlandic ( ). However, the linguistic variation is considerably more complicated and well over 20 separate isoglosses exist throughout Jutland. 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, where two of them are sometimes considered together.
Sønderjysk
Sønderjysk (South Jutlandic) 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 (East Jutlandic) 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 intervocalically. Some dialects of East Jutlandic also still have three genders, like the majority of Swedish and Norwegian dialects.
Vestjysk
Vestjysk (West Jutlandic) is also well known for this enclitic article as well as a complete lack of gender distinction. Phonetically, it is known for having [w] 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 (labial, alveolar, and velar). Four voiceless fricatives, [f], [s], [ɕ] and [h] are present, as well as approximants: [ʊ̯], [ð̞], [ɪ̯], and [ɐ̯]. There are also three regular and a lateral approximant, [ʋ], [l], [j] and [ʁ]. 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 (jysk) are in bold. This table only includes phonemes and some allophones.
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 intervocalically. 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 4.0 and 4.2 the spread of the pronunciation of [d] and [g] are shown. The ÷ represents the null or zero morpheme in the maps, the -j and -r are [ɪ̯] and [ɐ̯] respectively and q is the devoiced velar stop [ɡ̊] while ch stands for the fricative [χ]. Vends and Læsø are regions usually belonging to the Northern Jutlandic dialectal region whereas Fjolds is the border region between Germany and Denmark, normally considered part of South Jutlandic (Sønderjysk).
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/.