Learn to Speak Danish

One of the Scandinavian languages, Danish is spoken by about 6 million people, mainly in Denmark, though there are about 50,00 Danish speaking who live in Northern Germany and Danish is one of two official languages in Greenland. Although not widely spoken outside of the borders of Denmark, Danish is mutually intelligible with both Norwegian and Swedish, allowing Danish speakers to converse with people outside the borders of the country in the language.

Danish is a North Germanic language, which a descendant of Old Norse, the common language for the Germanic people living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. Much like English, the standard word order in Danish is subject, verb, object and the words have comparatively few inflections. Although not a strictly Latin based language like the Romance languages of its neighbors to the south, Danish does have a significant part of its religious and scientific vocabulary coming from Latin. It is also closely related to Swedish, however, the sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. Danish is prone to considerable reduction and assimilation of consonant and vowel sounds, meaning that rather than each letter have its one distinct sound like in, for example, Greek, Danish sounds tend to all bleed together. Like in Swedish and Norwegian, tonal word accents are common in Danish.

Because Danish is not widely spoken outside of Denmark, it may be difficult to find a local community college or private institution that teaches the language. Hiring a private tutor or purchasing a program like Rosetta Stone can therefore be a great way to start learning the basics of Danish pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. While immersing yourself in a language is usually the best way to learn any language, this may prove to be a more difficult task than imagined. Although speaking Danish on a daily basis for just a few weeks is equivalent to more than a year in the classroom, English speakers may have a hard time speaking much Danish even in Denmark. The Danes (along with their Scandinavian neighbors) tend to speak very good (of not perfect) English and it may be difficult to find people in Denmark who will not automatically respond to you in English. However, with some hard work and dedication, learning the basic foundations for the language can be achieved.