The Danish language: a quick guide

The Danish language is a North Germanic language, the language of Denmark, and the closest relative of Norwegian and Swedish. It is spoken by about six million people. In Danish it is called dansk, and Denmark is Danmark. I am Lui, a Danish teacher, and this page is the short version of what my students ask about the language before they start: where it comes from, why it sounds the way it does, and what that means for you.

What language do Danes speak?

Danes speak Danish. Almost all Danes also speak good English, which is a blessing in your first week and a problem in your first year: as soon as you hesitate, they switch. Danish is also used in Greenland and the Faroe Islands next to Greenlandic and Faroese, and by the Danish minority in northern Germany.

• danskDanish (the language, and the adjective)
• DanmarkDenmark
• en danskera Dane
• et sproga language
• Jeg taler lidt dansk.I speak a little Danish.
• Taler du engelsk?Do you speak English?

Notice that dansk has a small d. Languages and nationalities are written with a small letter in Danish, which is one of the first mistakes my students make in their emails.

Is Danish closer to Dutch or German?

Neither, really. Danish belongs to the North Germanic branch, with Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese. Dutch and German belong to the West Germanic branch, with English. So the grammar and the core words of Danish are Scandinavian.

What confuses people is the vocabulary. Over centuries of trade, Danish borrowed a lot of words from Low German, the language of the northern German towns. That is why a German speaker recognises købe (to buy, German kaufen) and arbejde (to work, German Arbeit). The word order is not German, though: the verb does not go to the end of the sentence.

Danish, Norwegian and Swedish

Written Danish and written Norwegian (bokmål) are very close; a Norwegian can read a Danish newspaper without much trouble. Spoken, it is a different story. Norwegians and Swedes often find spoken Danish hard to follow, because Danish pronounces much less of what it writes. Danes understand Norwegian more easily than Swedish.

Why does Danish sound the way it does?

Three things, and each one has its own page in this guide:

• The soft d. A d after a vowel is not a d: mad, rød, gade.
• Swallowed endings. Consonants weaken or disappear, and the unstressed syllables are reduced: meget, København.
• Stød. A small catch in the throat that can be the only difference between two words: hun (she) and hund (dog).

And many vowels. Danish has nine vowel letters, three of them extra: æ, ø and å. The full explanation, with audio on every word, is in the Danish pronunciation guide.

Is Danish hard?

The grammar is easy for an English speaker, and the spelling is close to the words you already know. The sound is the hard part, for listening more than for speaking. I wrote an honest answer in Is Danish hard to learn?

What this part of the guide covers

The articles below are about the language itself: how Danish compares with its neighbours, where it comes from, Danish names, and the facts people look up. They are short, and every Danish word in them can be heard. If you want to learn the language rather than read about it, start with the free course.

Questions people ask

How do you say Denmark in Danish?

Danmark, stressed on the first syllable. The r after the a is not a real r; it opens the vowel.

How do you say hello in Danish?

Hej, which sounds like English “high”. It works from morning to night, with everyone.

Do Danes say I love you?

Yes, Jeg elsker dig, but they save it for the people they mean it about. To a friend or about a thing, Danes say Jeg kan godt lide dig, I like you.

Is Danish a language or a dialect?

A language, with its own written standard and dictionaries. Danish has dialects of its own, too; the one you learn at a language school is standard Danish, close to the Danish spoken around Copenhagen.