Bornholmsk

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The island of Bornholm in Denmark is notable for its dialect, the so-called "Bornholmsk". Whilst usually considered a dialect of Danish, Bornholmsk sports some unusual features, in particular it has retained three distinct grammatical genders, like Icelandic or Norwegian, and unlike Danish or Swedish.

Several people have made dictionaries between Bornholmsk and Danish, and the local newspaper regularily has one small article spelled in Bornholmsk, but the language is actually more a spoken language than a written one, since everybody spells in Danish. Even words that don't exist in Danish would be "Danified" in writing.

Even on the small island with only about 45,000 inhabitants, the language is divided into five main dialects, not even counting Danish. As an example, eye would be spelled iva in some regions, but elsewhere it would be øja, which is quite close to the Danish word øje.

The northern part of the island would have more influence by Swedish than the rest of the island, due to the relatively large number of Swedish immigrants on those shores closest to Sweden. The differences are actually large enough so that the north-Bornholm dialect is called Allinge-svensk (Danish) (Âlinga-svænsk (Bornh.), Allinge-Swedish (engl.)).

Since Bornholmsk is not tought in schools, many Danish teachers, especially those from abroad ("ovrefra", førd(male), førder(female), the Bornholm slang for people from the rest of the country) have had hard times with several expressions that are very close to Danish. For example, in Danish many people would say i sommers about the summer that has passed. While the S in the end is an error in Danish, it is actually the correct grammatic spelling in Bornholmsk. Similar (but not as many) close-to-words would occur, if one compared Bornholmsk with Swedish, though this would not be needed.