What is stød in Danish?

Stød is a quick catch in the voice, like a tiny creak, that Danish puts into some syllables and not others. It is easy to miss, and it can be the only difference between two words: mand (man) has it, man (“one”, as in “one says”) does not; mord (murder) has it, mor (mother) does not. Where it lands also varies by region, which is part of why Aarhus and Copenhagen sound so different.

The speaker in this clip runs through how Danes talk around the country, then compares two cities. Når man taler århusiansk, så starter man hele tiden for oven og falder ned på tonerne: Aarhus speech starts high and falls, while Copenhagen speech starter i bunden og hopper opad, starts low and jumps up. He then teases an actor for saying the city’s name med den forkerte tonegang og den forkerte stødplacering, with the wrong melody and the stød in the wrong place. Not every dialect has a stød. In parts of South Jutland there is none at all, and on Als, the island Sønderborg sits on, the old dialect uses a high or low tone in its place. For a learner, standard Danish is the version to copy. Dictionaries mark the stød with a small ˀ: mand is [manˀ].