# Danish: inne, inte, itte, ikke



## mandersmcphee

hej allesammen!
    i'm a grad student who's currently knee-deep in a sociolinguistics project on the distribution of negative particles in danish dialects...in plain speak, of the four attested variants in danish (inne, inte, itte, ikke), who says (or said) what and where?  i'm using the korpus cordiale spoken corpus (available online if you're interested), and coding for all sorts of things to try and tease each variable out, but i've reached that point where i need the general intuitions of native speakers.  if you danes had to hypothesize which negative particle gets used in what part of dk and by whom (by that i mean age, profession/education, gender, etc...), what would you say??
      mange tak!


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## BoTrojan

Wow ... what an interesting project and a great question.  I can't wait to see what Andreas Jensen and others have to say about this one.  But don't you think there's quite a bit of existing literature on this from the Danish academic realm?  And by the way, it's not altogether certain that variations in this usage will be geographical.  My guess is that it will depend heavily on the context, that is, what is being said, possibly in addition to the other factors you mention.  But that's just a guess.  Again, can't wait to see what the natives think ...


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## Wilma_Sweden

I agree - this is very interesting indeed. I didn't even know there were so many variants! I'm pretty certain that the usage on Bornholm may be different from the rest of the country, for example. I, too, can't wait to see what the Danes make of this topic. 

/Wilma


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## Pteppic

At the risk of sounding repetitive this does indeed sound like an interesting project. I had no idea "itte" exists in Danish as well - we live and learn.


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## Mifune

Very interesting indeed, but are you really sure inne, inte and itte are negative particles in Danish. You sound very sure, and into your project, I am a native speaker, living outside Denmark for several years, and even though I manange Danish perfectly it is difficult without checking a grammar book, to explain why you have got this wrong, still it surprices my, read: I doubt you are right. "Ikke" is Danish, the rest is not. Definetly there must be som regional differences on the use of ikke, or the extend of the use, but not on the other particles, they are not Danish. Please send me a link to the Korpus cordiale, I am quite interested in sociolinguistics myself, I have made some project during my studies on cortesia verbal in Spanish.


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## mandersmcphee

hallehoj, kids!
    thanks for all your responses thusfar.  i think some more background information on the korpus cordiale might help to clear up any misunderstandings that might be afoot.  the korpus cordiale is a collection of oral interviews with danish dialect speakers that were recorded between the years of 1934-1994 in small(er) danish communities.  most of the people i've observed so far have been at least 50 years old (and at most 90), so it doesn't surprise me that some of you may be unaware of the existence of these variant forms of verbal negation.  i'm curious to find out what people nowadays in these small towns perceive of these alternate forms, in what situations they might (still) surface (because the 90's weren't all that long ago, linguistically speaking), and what extralinguistic information native speakers of the modern-day rigsmal can provide concerning its presence, albeit rare.  
   wilma...you're absolutely right concerning bornholm.  in fact, the popular trend in a lot of modern approaches to scandinavian ling (and linguistics in general) is to separate the insular forms from the mainland forms from the get-go because they do always tend to pattern quite differently.  of what i've observed thusfar, this feature seems to be no exception...
   mifune...thanks for the crash course in swedish.  actually, that was my gateway scandinavian language when i was just developing an appetite for them all.  i know 'inte' is traditionally "udansk," and the others something even more 'deviant', but i plan to make the case that the other existing forms "itte" and "inne" were merely phonological deviations of the same base form that historically became entirely different lexemes used to serve the same grammatical purpose.  voila.  i can't post your link to the corpus because i'm a new member, but if you google "korpus cordiale," magical things will start to happen...

     now, isn't linguistics fun?   thanks again for everybody's comments!  let's bring on those natives...


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## Wilma_Sweden

Mifune said:


> I doubt you are right. "Ikke" is Danish, the rest is not.


ODS recognises ikke, inte and itte, and the corpus attached to it (see left margin menu) show a few examples of the two latter and an overwhelming majority of ikke. While the ODS may be seen as slightly antiquated by now, I have no reason to doubt its correctness, i.e., if it's there, it must be Danish... 

@ mandersmcphee: have you been able to draw any conclusion based on numbers from your corpus, i.e. to frequency of each form?

/Wilma


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## Mifune

Interesting information you have come up with, now I can imagine old people using these forms: Anyway I can´t help you, I am from Århus, and my whole family as well, and even my grandparents speak a dialect very close to rigsdansk.


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## Sepia

I know but a few of them as Dansh.

"ikke" is standard DK

"inte" - I know this as totally archaic.

"itte" ??? maybe in some dialects - I know "it" from various Jutland dialects.

But if we count the last one we cannot leave out

"ik'". You hear that one mainly in the greater Copenhagen area; there you also hear it at the end of sentences as request for acknowledgement -equivalent with the Canadian "eh".


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## Andreas_Jensen

Good evening... I agree with most of what has been said so far  

"ikke" is standard Danish, and it is extremely rare to hear people say something else. The "dialectal" variant that is most common is definitely "it" (as Sepia also said). This could be a short form of "itte" as danes have a tendency to shorten such words (as "ik"). "it" is known from the song:

"Hworfor må æ _it_ få Beatleshår, hworfor ska æ ålti klippes, mår? 

(hvorfor må jeg ik' få Beatleshår, hvorfor skal jeg altid klippes, mor?)  

Off the top of my head I'd say that "it" is used in the north (maybe west) of Jutland, where it is probably quite common. I know for sure that it is used in the dialect of Southern Jutland (from the music of L:Ron Harald) 

"Inne", I believe I have heard too... But where?... Hmm... To be honest I have no idea, where people would say this and it is very, very uncommon. 

"inte" is just plain Swedish... I have difficulty imagining danes saying that 

About the "ik" I'd say that most danes say this... Although it might be more common in Copenhagen where "ikke" is hardly ever heard... But from my 10 years of living in Vejle I'd say people also say "ik" there. I once had a teacher from Randers who consistently pronounced the entire word and never said "ik" and I believe to have heard others from central/northern Jutland do the same... Maybe that is common around those parts?

Well, that was my input... Sorry to not be of much help


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## Magb

I find it rather amusing that Danes often shorten "ikke" to "ik" while Norwegians often shorten "ikke" to "ke". Maybe if we joined forces we could someday utter the entire word. (Not that there's anything wrong with either simplified form.)


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## Wilma_Sweden

Andreas_Jensen said:


> "inte" is just plain Swedish... I have difficulty imagining danes saying that


Again, it used to be Danish, too, according to the ODS, although never used in writing, and I imagine there are few people alive today who remember that.

In Swedish, icke is the old written form, predominant 100 years ago but now almost forgotten, while inte, originally in spoken language only, is now the standard both for written and spoken language (with some varying pronunciations according to dialect). Over time (from 16th century - now) there have been quite a few different pronunciations and spellings of these, most of which are long forgotten.

/Wilma


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