# Norwegian/Danish: do people have problems with spelling dt correctly?



## Red Arrow

Hello everyone

Many people make so called "dt faults" while writing Dutch. The rules are easy, but d / dt / t are all pronounced the same at the end of a Dutch word, so it can be a bit confusing.

Swedish doesn't have this kind of spelling anymore (ever since 1906), so I wondered... Do Norwegians and Danes often have problems with it? I am not talking about linguists, but rather people in general.


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## myšlenka

There is no final devoicing in (mainland) Scandinavian so what you are describing in Dutch doesn't really apply. You do find common spelling errors, but of a different kind.


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## Dan2

But consider the adverbial form of adjectives ending in 'd': "godt".  I think Red Arrow is asking if Norwegians might misspell that as "gott" (as I believe is correct in Swedish).

EDIT: Actually, Americans sometimes make the kind of error Red asks about in the case of names of German origin ending in -dt, like "Schmidt" misspelled as "Schmitt".

Also a good question to ask the Germans!


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## Ben Jamin

I see more and more people in Norway spelling "gott" instead of "godt".


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## Red Arrow

myšlenka said:


> There is no final devoicing in (mainland) Scandinavian so what you are describing in Dutch doesn't really apply. You do find common spelling errors, but of a different kind.


That's why I asked about it. Sweden altered the spelling in 1906 for some reason, even though gott is pronounced differently from godt/gott. I wondered if the previous spelling was confusing.

According to Wikipedia, Danish seems to have the "opposite" problem of Dutch. They voice everything (except F) at the end of a word. So then *god, godt, anhold *and* anholdt *are all pronounced with a D, I suppose?


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## myšlenka

Dan2 said:


> But consider the adverbial form of adjectives ending in 'd': "godt".  I think Red Arrow is asking if Norwegians might misspell that as "gott" (as I believe is correct in Swedish).


I googled the phrase "gott å høre" (to filter out German and Swedish) and I found 880 results. When I started going through it, Google shortened it to 22 because the entries were very similar. Only a few of them are errors, whereas the rest seem to be written in dialectal styles or by Swedes/Icelanders. So, I still uphold my claim that this spelling error is not recurrent.


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## myšlenka

Red Arrow :D said:


> According to Wikipedia, Danish seems to have the "opposite" problem of Dutch. They voice everything (except F) at the end of a word. So then *god, godt, anhold *and* anholdt *are all pronounced with a D, I suppose?


Danish has syllable-final lenition but it depends a lot on the phonological context, so not quite the opposite of Dutch. I don't speak Danish, but my guess is:
-_god/anhold_ - the d is mute
-_godt/anholdt_ - pronounced as t.


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## bicontinental

myšlenka said:


> -_god/anhold_ - the d is mute
> -_godt/anholdt_ - pronounced as t.



The 'd' is silent in each of the four words above. Interestingly, in 'standard Danish' the 'd' is not silent in the words _gad, ged, gid, gud, gyd _(imperative of gyde), and_ gød _(imperative of _gøde_).


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## raumar

Dan2 said:


> I think Red Arrow is asking if Norwegians might misspell that as "gott" (as I believe is correct in Swedish).





myšlenka said:


> I still uphold my claim that this spelling error is not recurrent.



I agree with myšlenka. My impression is that this spelling error - to misspell "godt" as "gott" or "gått" - typically is done by young children, who spell words just as they are pronounced. Grown-ups usually realize that "godt" is a declension of "god", so most people know that the correct spelling is with a "d". Of course, some people deliberately choose to write in a dialectal style, as in some of myšlenka's examples - especially in social media.

My (totally un-scientific) impression is that the opposite error is just as widespread in Norwegian, if not more. Especially, you sometimes see people misspell "sunt" (healthy) as "sundt". This is an older spelling, abolished many years ago.



Red Arrow :D said:


> even though gott is pronounced differently from godt/gott.



I am not sure what you mean here, Red Arrow?


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## Red Arrow

raumar said:


> I am not sure what you mean here, Red Arrow?


Woops, typo!
_Even though *god* is pronounced differently from godt/gott._


bicontinental said:


> The 'd' is silent in each of the four words above. Interestingly, in 'standard Danish' the 'd' is not silent in the words _gad, ged, gid, gud, gyd _(imperative of gyde), and_ gød _(imperative of _gøde_).


So I suppose Danes also make dt faults, then?


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## AutumnOwl

Red Arrow :D said:


> That's why I asked about it. Sweden altered the spelling in 1906 for some reason, even though gott is pronounced differently from godt/gott. I wondered if the previous spelling was confusing.


As the initiative to the spelling reform 1906 came from a teachers' organisation, one reason was most likely to make it easier for students to spell words as they were pronounced and not according to an old-fashioned spelling. The Swedish Academy had already made a spelling reform in the 1889 version of the Academy's dictionary, which rules the correct spelling of the Swedish language.


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## bicontinental

Red Arrow :D said:


> So I suppose Danes also make dt faults, then?



Yes, and the silent "d" in the "dt" combination is just one of many situations in which silent letters may pose a spelling challenge. Alternatively a "d" may be added erroneously as raumar mentioned above...as in gjordt (gjort, past participle of at gøre, to do). In Danish, _sundt_ is spelled with a silent "d", by the way.


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