Is Danish hard to learn? An honest answer from a Danish teacher

Yes and no, and the split is unusually clean. Danish grammar is one of the easiest an English speaker will meet. Danish pronunciation is one of the hardest in Europe. And the biggest obstacle is not the language at all: it is that every Dane speaks English and will switch the moment you hesitate. I teach Danish for a living, so here is the honest version, with what to do about each part.

The official answer: one of the easiest languages for English speakers

The US Foreign Service Institute, which has trained diplomats in languages for seventy years, puts Danish in its easiest category, together with Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, French and Spanish: around 600 to 750 hours of class to reach professional working proficiency. Russian is rated at about 1,100 hours, Arabic and Japanese at 2,200. On paper, Danish is close to English: same language family, shared vocabulary, similar sentence structure.

On paper. The FSI figure is for a full-time student in a classroom, and it measures reading and speaking, not how it feels in a Danish supermarket in month three. That feeling is what this page is about.

What is easy about Danish

• Verbs do not change for person. Jeg er, du er, han er, vi er: I am, you are, he is, we are, all er. Present tense is one form. Past tense is one form. There is no subjunctive to speak of, and no “I go, he goes”.
• No cases. Nouns do not change depending on their role in the sentence, unlike German.
• Two genders, and they only show in two little words. en and et. Annoying to memorise, but there is nothing to decline.
• Shared vocabulary. hus, mand, kold, vinter, æble, drikke, komme, hund, kat, arm, hånd, finger. English got a lot of its everyday words from the Danes who settled in England a thousand years ago, and you get them back for free.
• Word order is close to English, with one big exception, below.
• The written language is regular. Danish spelling is old, so a word looks the same in every form of the sentence, and you can learn to read Danish fast. It is the reading aloud that is the problem.

What is hard about Danish

1. Pronunciation, and especially listening

This is the one, and it is real. Danish drops or softens most consonants between vowels and at the end of words, has a large set of vowel sounds, and reduces every unstressed syllable to almost nothing. Hvad hedder du? is four words on paper and one smear of sound in the air. The soft d and stød get all the attention, but the vowels are the real difficulty: by and bi are different words, and your ear does not hear it yet.

The practical consequence is that Danish is easy to read and hard to hear. My students can read a newspaper article a year before they can follow the conversation at the next table. I wrote the pronunciation guide for exactly this, with audio on every example.

2. Everybody speaks English

Danes are among the best non-native English speakers in the world, and they are polite. If you pause, they switch. It is meant as kindness and it is the single biggest reason foreigners in Denmark do not learn Danish. You have to say, in Danish, that you want to speak Danish: Kan vi tage det på dansk? Jeg øver mig. Most Danes will happily slow down. Some will not, and you find other Danes.

3. The numbers

Fifty is halvtreds, seventy is halvfjerds, and 87 is syvogfirs, “seven and eighty”. It is a small thing that you meet every day, at every till, and it makes people feel stupid in week two. It is five words to learn; the numbers guide takes an afternoon.

4. The one hard rule of word order

Danish puts the verb in second place, always. If the sentence starts with anything other than the subject, the verb comes next and the subject moves after it: I går spiste jeg pizza, “yesterday ate I pizza”. English speakers say I går jeg spiste for years, and Danes understand it, but it marks you. The other version of the same problem is where ikke goes in a subordinate clause: fordi jeg ikke har tid, not fordi jeg har ikke tid. Two rules. Both learnable in a month with a teacher who corrects you.

5. En and et

There is no rule that tells you whether a noun is en or et. About three quarters are en, so guess en and learn the exceptions with the word. It affects the adjective too (en stor bil, et stort hus), which is why it matters.

Danish compared to its neighbours

• Norwegian is the same language written down, more or less, and much easier to hear. If you have no reason to choose Danish, Norwegian is the easier Scandinavian language. If you live in Denmark, that is your reason.
• Swedish is a little further away in vocabulary and has pitch accent, which is its own difficulty. Similar total effort.
• Dutch is about the same difficulty, with easier pronunciation and harder spelling.
• German is harder: four cases, three genders, verb at the end of subordinate clauses. Danish is German with the grammar removed and the consonants sanded down.

How long it takes

With two or three hours of practice a week, spread over the week, this is what I see:

• Three months: you can introduce yourself, order a coffee, understand the numbers, and survive a short conversation if the Dane is patient. Level A1.
• Six to nine months: you can talk about your day, your job and your plans, ask for what you need, and follow slow speech. Level A2, which is the level of the first two modules at the language school.
• One to two years: B1. You can hold a conversation about most things, read the news with a dictionary, and pass Prøve i Dansk 2, the test for permanent residence.
• Two to three years: B2 and Prøve i Dansk 3, the level for citizenship. The Danish education is designed so that a full-time student reaches it in about three years.

Faster is possible with more hours; slower is what happens without listening practice. The people who take five years are not less talented; they are the ones who let the Danes switch to English.

What to do about the hard parts

1. Learn the sounds before the words. A week on the vowels, the soft d and the rhythm saves months later, because every word you learn afterwards goes in with the right sound.
2. Listen every day, to something short: a podcast, the radio news, a children’s programme. Ten minutes. You are training your ear, and the ear only trains on real speech.
3. Insist on Danish, politely, with the sentence above. Pick the people who let you: the bakery, the neighbour, the in-laws.
4. Learn the numbers as words in week one.
5. Get your pronunciation right early. Listen to each word, say it, record yourself and compare, and ask a Dane to correct you when you can. Once a wrong sound has been practised for a year, it is much harder to fix.

Questions people ask

Is Danish hard for English speakers specifically?

Easier than for most others. The grammar and vocabulary are close, and the hard part, pronunciation, is hard for everyone.

Is Danish hard for German speakers?

Grammar and vocabulary are almost free; the pronunciation is as hard as for anyone. Germans read Danish in weeks and complain about hearing it for years.

Can I learn Danish as an adult?

Yes. Adults learn grammar and vocabulary faster than children; they learn sounds more slowly, which is why the accent stays. An accent is fine. Every Dane has heard one.

Do I need Danish to live in Denmark?

To get by, no. To have Danish friends, understand your children’s school, get most jobs outside IT and research, and get permanent residence or citizenship, yes. See which tests you need.