Danish Dialectology Celebrates its 100th Anniversary

16 February 2009

When a Danish citizen passes the 100th milestone, the reigning monarch traditionally sends her or him a greeting from the royal family. The University of Copenhagen has become part of this royal tradition which is why Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark will be among the distinguished guests when Danish Dialectology celebrates its 100th anniversary 20 February 2009.

Guests at the celebration that is held in lecture hall 23.0.50 from 13-16 will be treated to choral singing, snacks & wine as well as lectures on the many research projects on spoken Danish that the section’s researchers are involved in.

Participation

If you would like to participate in the celebration, please contact Dialectology at dialekt@hum.ku.dk or + 45 35 32 85 00.

The Dialectology Section’s History

The general purpose of the Dialectology Section is the study of the spoken variants of Danish. Objects under study are traditional dialects as well as contemporary dialects and regional and social variants of spoken Danish. The Section holds comprehensive collections of excerpts on individual dialect words, as well as collections of audio recordings of spoken Danish from the beginning of the 20th century and onwards.

The Section is a descendant of an office established in 1908: Udvalg for Folkemaal (The Dialect Commission). The Commission was established as a permanent archive with its own office and work space in 1922.

The Commission had independent status, functioning as the Dialect Commission under the Ministry of Education, with partial funding from the Carlsberg Foundation, until 1960 when the Commission became affiliated with the University of Copenhagen as an independent department under the name of Institute of Danish Dialectology.

The Institute was located at the university premises in Central Copenhagen until 1978, when the University of Copenhagen transferred the Faculty of Humanities to the newly built Southern Campus, at which point the Institute became a part of the University of Copenhagen Amager.

In 2003, the Institute merged with The Arnamagnean Institute and the Institute of Name Research to form a new unit under the title Department of Scandinavian Research.