Difference between revisions of "Denmark"

Denmark is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which also consists of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The name of the country in Danish is "Danmark".

Denmark is situated about 54 - 58 degrees North, and 8 - 15 degrees East. Denmark has an area of about 43.069 km2 and 5,5 mill inhabitants (2007). The main language is Danish.

Country Code

There are a number of standards giving a country code to Denmark:

ISO 3166 alpha-2 	 	 	 	DK
ISO 3166 alpha-3 	 	 	 	DNK
ISO 3166 numeric 	 	 	 	208
CEPT-MAILCODE 	 	 	 	 	DK
UN Genève 1949:68 Vehicle code 	 	 	DK
CCITT E.163 international telephone prefix	45
CCITT X.121 X.25 numbering country code	 	238
ISO 2108 ISBN book numbering 	 	 	87

The Alpha-2 code "DK" of ISO 3166 is for general use, and is use generally by the public as the abbreviation for Denmark.

Regions and municipalities

Denmark is divided into five regions (Danish: regioner, singular: region) and a total of 98 municipalities. The regions were created on 1 January 2007 as part of the 2007 Danish Municipal Reform to replace the country's traditional thirteen counties (amter). At the same time, smaller municipalities (kommuner) were merged into larger units, cutting the number of municipalities from 270 to 98. style="text-align:center"

Language

The name of the Danish language in Danish is "dansk". Danish is spoken by around 6 million people and is the mothertongue for 97% of the population in Denmark. The language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, where it holds the status of minority language. Danish also holds official status and is a mandatory subject in school in the Danish territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which now enjoy limited autonomy. In Iceland and Faroe Islands, Danish is, alongside English, a compulsory foreign language taught in schools (although it may be substituted by Swedish or Norwegian). In North and South America there are Danish language communities in Argentina, the USA and Canada.

The language code according to ISO 639 for the Danish language is "da".

Other Languages

Denmark is one of the countries with the highest percentage of multilingual population in the world. 66% of danes are able to converse in two other languages than their mothertongue, 30% of danes are able to converse in three other languages than their mothertongue.

The three most widely known foreign languagges are: English 86%, German 58%, French 12%.

English and German are compulsory subject in primary school and in general Danes have good english knowledge thanks to the strong Anglo-American influence and the practice of subtitling rather than dubbing foreign tv shows and movies.

Writing system

The Danish alfabet uses the 26 characters in the basic Latin alphabet with an additional three: æ/Æ, ø/Ø and å/Å. These three letters are not considered to be accents of a and o and are sorted following z in the order æøå.

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz Ææ Øø Åå

The combination of two <a>s is regarded as one <å>, originating from older orthography but still used in many person and place names.

For indicating stress, different pronunciation and long vovels, an accent can be used on all vowels:

Áá Éé Íí Óó Ýý Ǽǽ Ǿǿ Ǻǻ

The following letters of foreign origin is commonly used in Danish newspapers and books, according to examples in "Retskrivningsordbogen":

Ââ Àà Çç Ðð Êê Ëë Èè Ôô Őő Œœ Þþ Üü Ää Öö

The recommended character set is DS/ISO 8859-1; for a bigger repertoire DS/ISO/IEC 10646-1 is recommended.

Sort Order

Alphanumeric deterministic ordering.

Normal <a> to <z> ordering is used on the Latin script, except for the following letters: The letters <æ> <ø> <å> are ordered as 3 separate letters after <z>. <ü> is ordered as <y>, <ä> as <æ>, <ö> as <ø>, <ð> as <d>, <þ> as <t><h>, French <œ> as <o><e>. Two <a>s are ordered as <å>, except when denoting two sounds (which is normally the case only in combined words). Nonaccented letters come before accented letters, and capital letters come before small letters, when words otherwise compare equally. There is no explicit ordering of accents specified in "Retskrivningsordbogen", and whether case or accents are the most important is not specified.

Numeric formatting

The decimal separator is COMMA <,> [1]

The thousands separator is FULL STOP <.>[2]

The grouping of large numbers is in groups of three digits.[3]

Monetary formatting

The currency is Danish Kroner, in Danish, "danske kroner". The ISO 4217 code is DKK. The native abbreviation is "kr". 1 "krone" is equal to 100 "øre". S

International currency symbol: 	 	DKK 543,21
Domestic currency symbol: 	 	kr 543,21
Use of negative sign:  		 	kr -543,21
Thousands and decimal separators:	kr 9.876.543,21

Telephone numbers

The international telephone prefix for Denmark is +45. There are no area codes; all numbers have 8 digits. The recommended format for telephone numbers is in groups of 2, for example 39 17 99 44.

Personal names rules

Children can get their father's or mother's last name, or any combination of these with or without a hyphen. Also in marriage the bride and the groom may take the other partner's name in any combination.

Personal names are commonly spelt with the full first name, while use of initials only is seen also. People are mostly addressed by voice by their first name. The common address form is the informal "du", and the more formal "De" is becoming more common. The family name is never spelt in capital letters only, contrary to continental European habits. Titles are used in some circumstances.

Postal addresses

The street number is placed after the street name.

Postal codes ("postnumre") are 4 digits and are placed before the city name. The CEPT country prefix should be places in front of the postal code for international mail, this is even commonly done for mail within Denmark. Postal codes are defined in "Post- og Telegrafhåndbogen - Postnummerdelen", obtainable at all postal offices, and may be found also in telephone directory books.

An example of a mail address is:

Danish Standards Association
Att: S142 u22 A8
Kollegievej 6
DK-2920 Charlottenlund
Danmark

According to CEPT recommendations, one should either use the French name of the country ("Danemark"), or the name in the local language "Danmark".

Storey specification is placed after the street number. The following conventions apply:

English 	Danish 		Danish abbreviation
Ground floor 	stuen 		st
1st floor 	1. etage 	1
basement 	kælderen 	kld
right 		til højre 	th
left 		til venstre 	tv
middle 		midt for 	mf

An example of its use:

Holger Danske
Fremtidsvej 26, 2 tv
DK-2000 Frederiksberg

Internet availability

High-speed Internet is very common in Denmark. Internet users account to approximately 3,762,500 which equals an internet penetration of about 69% according to Internet World Stats

Date Format

The timezone is UTC+0100 in the winter, UTC+0200 in the summer. The daylight savings period currently (1996) changes by one hour the last Sunday in March at 02:00, and back again by one hour the last Sunday in October at 03:00. This may change in the future. There is no official names for the timezones.

Use of week numbers are very common, and the week numbering is according to DS/ISO 8601.

The first day of the week is Monday, in accordance with DS/ISO 8601.

Date formatting according to DS/ISO 8601, for example 1995-04-13 for 13th of April 1995, is very common in technical business and in legal business, and other areas.

Both weekday and month names are written with an initial lower case letter in Danish (Normal capitalizing rules apply in the beginning of a sentence, etc.).

English name 	Weekday names 	Short weekday names
Sunday 	 	søndag 	 	søn
Monday 	 	mandag 	 	man
Tuesday 	tirsdag 	tir
Wednesday 	onsdag 	 	ons
Thursday 	torsdag 	tor
Friday 	 	fredag 	 	fre
Saturday 	lørdag 	 	lør

Short weekday names consisting of the two first letters are also commonly used.

English name 	Month name 	Short month name
January 	januar 	 	jan
February 	februar 	feb
March 	 	marts 	 	mar
April 	 	april 	 	apr
May 	 	maj 	 	maj
June 	 	juni 	 	jun
July 	 	juli 	 	jul
August 	 	august 	 	aug
September 	september 	sep
October 	oktober 	okt
November 	november 	nov
December 	december 	dec

Long date: 	 	 	07 juni 1994
Abbreviated day and time: 	tir 07 jun 1994 23:22:33 CET DST
long date with weekday: 	onsdag den 21. december 1994
Abbreviated long date:  	07 jun 1994
Numeric date: 	 	 	1994-06-07
Time: 	 	 	 	18:06:20

The 24 hour system is used in Denmark. There are no abbreviations commonly in use for before or after noon.

Units of Measure

Denmark uses the metric system. Height is therefore measured in meters and centtimeters, weight is measured in kilograms and distance is measured in kilometers.

Temperatures are normally measured in degrees Celsius, the Kelvin scale is sometimes used in science.

Man-machine dialogue

Naturally, most Danish users require programs where all menus, names of icons, commands, information messages, help texts, manuals etc. are translated and adjusted to their language and culture.

Programmers and screen layout designers must bear in mind that when English text is translated into Danish - and most other languages - it will normally be longer, i.e. require more space on the screen and occupy more computer memory.

Denmark has its own cultural symbols in some cases and use of non-Danish symbols as icons can create irritation and - if they are not easily recognized - confusion. Example: The typical suburban American mailbox with the raised flag is unusual in Denmark and hence not immediately associated with mail for most users.

Geni Translation

the name 'Geni' means 'Genious' in danish

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To edit these translations, edit the language specific template. To add to the list of available terms, edit the basic translation template. Add country specific terms within the country article.
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ALSO: Remember to check out the Translation Discussion!
Translation note: Do not translate text in CAPITAL LETTERS like NAME, NUMBER etc.

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