The Danish Language (IS THIS REAL?)

[@Langfocus]

Hey everyone! If you're learning Danish, visit DanishClass101 ►( bit.ly/Danishpod101 )◄ - one of the best ways to learn Danish! I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do! For 33 other languages, check out my review! ► langfocus.com/pod101 ◄ (Full disclosure: if you upgrade to a paid plan, Langfocus gets a small referral fee that helps support this channel, at no extra cost to you.)

[@2Jeffrey]

great I've been waiting for a Danish vid 😎

[@swededude1992]

You mentioned dialects of danish is slowley dissapearing. I am half swedish and half danish and grew up in Sweden. My danish part is originating from the Copenhagen area. I am used to Copenhagen-dialect of danish. I remember I was on vaccation in Copenhagen. I randomly had a convo with an elderly lady from Jylland. I am not sure if she wanted to be kind to me or if it was her danish dialect, but her dialect where so soft and melodic it was like talking with annother swede. That blows my mind. 🤯 Copenhagen-dialect is what most swedes thinks all danish sounds and makes fun of.

[@NicolaiDufva]

@@haddock4574 It's a low key diabolic attempt at killing the Danish language. Cancel culture! :-P

[@kl1541]

m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/fKLKg3ZrqMt2l7M watch this video for funny history about Danish😂👍

[@funandentertainment7531]

Hi,How similar are Indian and Nepali languages.

[@aysesahin3373]

Me: born and raised in Denmark KZbin: Sooo, do you wanna learn Danish or what? Me: yeah, why not?

[@PinkyPinky-uc9ml]

Same here!

[@im.weird_so]

I am and also born in Denmark and live in Denmark

[@aysesahin3373]

@@im.weird_so heeeeeeeeej

[@ines4559]

Haahahahahah same

[@noahlanggaard8369]

Haha så er vi mange

[@LALFAST]

I’m danish, and I finally understand why foreigners find danish difficult.

[@roodborstkalf9664]

For Dutch speakers reading Danish can be learnt but learning to speak it is far more difficult.

[@magnuseriksson1822]

Actually, it's just the first impression. When I started to study it, I quickly casted out my terror ;) Although without large exposure to it, it's still difficult sometimes to understand it when spoken.

[@user-qy2wf2lt6v]

@@roodborstkalf9664 It kind of goes both ways ....

[@musicforstudy1459]

@@roodborstkalf9664 lol in denmark we have german as obligation to learn

[@shongueesha7875]

@@musicforstudy1459 No we don't. You can choose between german or french.

[@Paul-eb4jp]

The most difficult thing for me as an Englishman learning Danish is actually using it, Danes always say just speak English.

[@tobbcittobbcit8899]

Pretend to not understand English 👍 that'll fix it

[@adday.]

​@@tobbcittobbcit8899 No dane would believe that if the commenter is under 60

[@therybes]

I have the same peoblem. Im english living in denmark and when i speak danish, i normally get the reply just speak english.

[@tobbcittobbcit8899]

@@therybes tell them to swallow the potato and just speak swedish

[@andrewhdz]

Pretend to speak only French and Danish with few and short phrases "Pardon? Pas Anglais" 😂

[@smarte1111]

Im danish and I have no problem communicating with Swedish people, I just speak English.

[@svenbtb]

I don't think a lot of people realize how common English is in Denmark and Sweden lol

[@sohopedeco]

It's bizarre how Dutch and Scandinavians can speak English better than English speakers

[@72freesoul62]

Thanks man cause I will need ages to understand Danish and planning to work in Denmark. Mange Tak.

[@mariashamoun2909]

LOL

[@VenomCobrah]

@@72freesoul62 Oh you won’t have a problem, by far most people in Denmark can speak English, it’s mostly kids and elderly who can’t speak English, my parents are both 61 and can speak English (FYI I don’t consider my parents elderly) 😅 so even people at that age can often speak English, maybe not as good as people like my age (25) but they can definitely have a conversation in English

[@Argenswiss]

In every language I've learned I always sucked at grammar and excelled at vocabulary and pronunciation. Then I encountered Danish and my world crumbled 😂

[@JRBendixen]

Ha ha ha. So true.

[@antonschacht8985]

Then you should hear danish people talk other languages like Netherlandish or something else with the rrrrrrrrr trills

[@Argenswiss]

@@antonschacht8985 my girlfriend is danish, I have a lot of fun teaching her Spanish hahahah

[@antonschacht8985]

@@Argenswiss lol

[@musicalmoongirl5055]

danish grammar is the wild fucking west, so many things we just dont have rules for that are like "just know it bro". its impossible to be confused because there are no rules to be confused about lmao. i feel like our grammar is designed to be as simple as possible to get into

[@kebman]

20:05 “It's typically a velarized laminal alveolar approximant.” Ok, got it!

[@briankristiansen821]

Lol 😂😂

[@myk1137]

Same LOL!

[@DaneInTheUS]

Fantastic lmao

[@GravelLeft]

When I defended my master's thesis this summer, one of the professors who graded it was Danish, while I'm Norwegian. When he told me my grade in Danish, I couldn't tell if he said A or E, lol (it was A, luckily).

[@eekamoose]

Heh heh, I know what you mean. I wonder if that's why they give grades in numbers in Danish schools and colleges. I speak Danish very fluently and only have a slight English accent after 25 years living in Denmark, but if a Dane says one of the letters A, E and Æ, I still haven't got a clue what they said. 'Sagde du A som Albert?' 'Nej da, jeg sagde E som Egon!'

[@Henrikko123]

Your grade is Aladeen

[@eekamoose]

@@winnerweiner5017 Okay, I see what Gravel Left meant. The difference between 'tolv' and 'to' in Danish is not difficult for me (now a Danish citizen but originally English) to distinguish, but then again I'm not Norwegian. Norwegians must think that every single Dane has just come back from the dentist...

[@roben2791]

congrats, so why a dane needed to grade you? doesn't it make it difficult?

[@GravelLeft]

@@winnerweiner5017 This was at a Norwegian university, and the Norwegian grading system (for higher education) is letters from A to F, with F being a fail, so I meant what I said.

[@m_eudk]

As a Danish speaker, I can for the most part communicate with Swedes and Norwegians in Danish, if we all speak clearly and leave out most informal speech and/or dialectal features to our own speech. It's almost always the case that we WANT to speak to each other in our own languages, but when awkward situations happen or if we don't get something, we might try using words in the other's language if we know that they have a different word, or we just switch to English.

[@TVWJ]

As a non-native danish speaker since more than 20 years, I can fairly well understand swedish, and a little less Norwegian - probably because I am used to speak with people from sweden who speak danish with a swedish accent. The sounds of swedish are just more familiar to me. But it takes quite some effort to understand swedish and norwegian (and some danish dialects) correctly. Usually, in sweden, I just speak danish to the people, and it goes quite a long way, for small standardized communications, such as in shops, ordering in restaurants, ask for directions, check in at hotels etc, but sometimes I have to ask to repeat. A full conversation in danish -swedish (or norwegian) is often difficult, and as I do not speak swedish or norwegian myself, I have to go to english. Swedish and Norwegian in a telephone conversation is also very difficult, and often I have to go to english as well.

[@aleksandarbakalov3562]

Kannst du Deutsch verstehen? hahah just a joke,but in reality can you understand German?

[@m_eudk]

Aleksandar Bakalov I can (to an extent), I study it at school ;) But if I didn’t, I think I would understand the very basic stuff and certain words here and there

[@aleksandarbakalov3562]

@@m_eudk Thank you for the reply,have a nice evening ;)

[@m_eudk]

Aleksandar Bakalov U too Aleksandar :D Oh and btw, are you German?

[@cassandrakorsgaard5923]

As a Dane myself I just wanna say that I actually just watched this video and expected it to be like many otehrs where I feel like they're making fun of our language and making it seem harder than it actually is. When I watched it I was suprised how good your explanation actually was and I also shared this with a friend of mine from England cuz she wants to learn danish. I just wanna clear a few things out about some accents and the question at the end too. We do have different accents, even among youngsters. If I would have to say all of them it would be hard as I don't even know how many there are, but I know the four that you can hear the most difference in when people are speaking it. First of, if you're learning danish please don't be scared to try and speak it. Many immigrants mix a lot of the words up so it isn't grammatically correct all the time but Danes usually understand anyway. And the "hans" and "sin" part of the video, don't be scared you're gonna say that wrong either as many Danes do it too. I mix it up as well sometimes and I was born and raised here. So don't be scared, say something grammatically incorrect and mostly people would be happy to help you correct it. That was just my little motivation speach to the learners of danish languages. There's "Rigsdansk" as you mentioned in the video. It's the most commonly used both In Jylland (Jutland), Fyn and a little on Sjælland as well. Other than that there's also Vestjysk (Used by quite a few people from West Jutland.) If I had to describe it in one simple sentence I would say the danish cowboy language. In this accent some people say "møj" instead of "meget" and even for me who goes to school with many others who speak like that it was hard to figure out at the start why they sad that. We also have Sønderjysk (South Jutland). This is the hardest, even for many danish people, to understand. I don't really talk to many people from that area but my dad works wit people from there and even he says that it's really ahrd to understand what they're saying sometimes even tough he's lived in Denmark for many years now and is fluent. The last one would be "Københavneren" (or "The Copgenhagen accent") I'm not trying to make fun of anyone but if you listen carefully you'll often hear a slight difference when comparing someone from Copenhagen and someone who speaks "Rigsdansk". Last we have your question at the end. As a Dane I would say I have some difficulty understanding people from Sweden and Norway but it's not a big problem unless they speak really fast as that's where the problem mostly is. If I speak slowly to someone from one of the other countries and them slowly back to me, then I wouldn't have much difficulty understanding them. There's just one problem. In Norway there's something we Danes call Norsk/Gammel Norsk (Norwegian / Old Norwegian) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian). As a Dane it is much easier to understand Gammel norsk but when norwegians started speaking Nynorsk it suddenly got so much harder understanding them as there's some slang that we aren't used to and it's so much different than old Norwegian and Danish. Hope this comment helped clear some things out. Some of this is my own and some other's opinion so if you don't like it please don't hate in the comments. Also if you read this whole thing, then thanks! Hope you have a great day/night wherever in the world you are!

[@WitchVillager]

best comment ever

[@mikaelrundqvist2338]

As a swede I have encountered sönderjysk and I have had contact with danish thru a childhood friends father and my ex-wifes best friend being half-dane but raised in Sweden but speaking danish to her mom but that didn't help me with sönderjysk. Much easier with both english and german

[@goytabr]

Your comment about mutual intelligibility with Swedish and Norwegian sounded like me with Spanish. I'm Brazilian, so a native speaker of Portuguese, and Spanish is close enough for mutual intelligibility to be very high (despite a lot of treacherous false cognates, e.g. Portuguese "embaraçada" = "embarrassed" or "tangled", Spanish "embarazada" = "pregnant"). BUT this only applies to written Spanish or spoken slowly. If spoken too fast, I can't understand much. BTW, the same applies to European Portuguese, whose pronunciation sounds like a foreign language to us Brazilians even though the words are (mostly) the same. We have a hard time understanding people from Portugal speaking fast (the reverse is not true because the Portuguese are used to a lot of Brazilian music, TV programs, and soap operas, so they're familiar with our pronunciation).

[@mariiris1403]

I understand what you mean with the Norwegian language differences, but 'bokmål' isn't 'old Nowegian', 'Old Norwegian' is the same as 'Norse'. 'Bokmål' is actually norweginized Danish, while we had to use that while in union with Denmark for about four hundred years. New Norwegian was made to reflect dialects (mostly Western), that would be more Norwegian than 'bokmål', but the latter is far more used. While speaking, however, we use our dialects, mostly.

[@djefr]

Completely wrong regarding “rigsdansk” - first of all there is no such thing, as Dansk Sprognævn doesn’t deal with pronounciation. As such, the definition that is generally accepted is that it is danish with no distinct hints to your origin. And danish spoken in Jylland and Fyn absolutely does not fall under that category. The generally accepted closest thing is a nordsjælland-dialect, which is quite monotonous. However, the fact that it might be considered a dialect itself, excludes it from the definition, hence why it is a non-sequitor to even conceptualize.

[@eekamoose]

I can tell you from my personal experience of moving to Denmark that the first 25 years learning Danish are the most difficult... ;o)

[@NicolaiDufva]

It gets better around 45 years in...

[@hieveryone.8508]

@@NicolaiDufva. Haha.

[@uzurpon]

@eekamoose Oh really ? Crown prince Frederik's wife Princess Mary (An Australian born) learned danish within a few years. Alexandra (Former wife of Frederiks brother Prince Joakim) did the same. So either you were lazy or just not good at it :)

[@eekamoose]

​@@uzurpon A) Rolig nu. You need to work on your sense of humour. This was an affectionate joke. B) You are wrong on both counts. I could speak Danish reasonably within a year of moving to Denmark in 1996. I did not take any classes and the only support I had was a good dictionary and one totally out-of-date book that still exclusively referred to the 'De' form. It was hard work but I read Jyllandsposten with a dictionary and watched the evening TV news with subtitles for hard of hearing almost every day. And I refused to let people speak English to me (those that wanted to). I still have a slight English accent but over the years people have sometimes mistaken me for a Dane or asked me which part of Denmark I come from, which has made me feel quite proud. I also feel very proud to have been granted Danish citizenship. I love Denmark, its people, its 'samfundssind' (community spirit, social solidarity), its culture and last but not least its language. Besides English and Danish I speak three other European languages fluently and have worked as a trilingual interpreter English/French/German in Germany. Fortsat god weekend :)

[@ZacharyAlexanderGoh]

Uzurpon you’re such an ass

[@Miraculum7]

I'm from Schleswig-Holstein and the proximity to Denmark makes everything south of Hamburg feel like a different country. Hilsen fra Flensborg !!

[@dsanxcz3074]

Hej fra flensborg :D

[@videotosse]

@Лэонардо Куња Ja (yes)

[@mangrey2361]

Well as a south dane I would not say about 50% danish 25%% german and 25% "home made" but over time the danish and english world are getting more

[@Markle2k]

@Лэонардо Куња It used to be Denmark there until it was stolen, like what happened in 2014

[@Pidro__]

@@Markle2k what happened in 2014?

[@Morgenstund]

I’m Danish and I’m in awe of myself having mastered such a strange language!

[@motorbike650]

I'm English..and I'm leaning Danish on duo lingo..it's not easy!..you don't pronounce all the letters

[@INTUITIVENORSK2303]

It is quite strange & to me, not as nice or as fluid as Swedish or Norwegian. Nonetheless, i just love languages and can appreciate any language for what it's worth. Everyone globally is proud of their roots & their respectif cultures, so i can understand why the Danes loves theirs too. Even if we Norwegians or Swedes don't always get it with 100% certanty.

[@user-qy2wf2lt6v]

To take your final Danish exam, all you have to do is say "rødgrød med fløde" three times in quick succession.

[@mushvoo]

Wish that was true XDDDD

[@LykkeEeg85]

Yes lets make a how to say rød grød med fløde time

[@gcanaday1]

I pass. Took me an hour.

[@mathildemajlarsen4903]

Ja det er rigtigt XD

[@mushvoo]

@@mathildemajlarsen4903 Vent kan man det? xDDDDD

[@Marguerite-Rouge]

As a French person, I'm so glad to learn about a language with so more weird numbers than in my own language !

[@ichbinhier355]

Et bien, en Belgique les gens disent septante (70) et nonante (90) et aussi dans quelques régions de la Suisse les gens disent huitante (80), donc on dirait que c'est surtout le français de la France qui est le plus bizarre, en ce qui concerne les chiffres mdr

[@sergiantonisilvaylerin6592]

Hahaha, C'est vrai Mais le danois n'est pas si compliqué= avis, paraply, pause, parfume, kvarter, kusine (familie), etc... (Danish is not that complicated:newspaper, umbrella, break, perfume, quarter, cousin (female )...😉

[@emswista1157]

Det er ikke numre det er bogstaver XD (it isnt Numbers there are just three extra letters sorry if i come of as rude here they are æ å ø)

[@BGSKG83]

And I gave up on the French number system, when I was trying to learn French (I'm Danish) Up to I think 40 or 50 it was ok, but after that... Nah, I'm never going to use higher numbers(lol) It's many years since I was taught French so most of it is forgotten, because I don't use it in my daily life, although a few sentences here and there are understandable to me, and I can give a "Salute" to french speaking customers the few times they venture into my store/register, instead of a "Hej/hi"

[@sergiantonisilvaylerin6592]

@@emswista1157 Selvfølgelig /Bien sûr👍 æ= hiver, dés,chez, café-./ø = deux,sœur/[og/et] å=veaux ,eau, bureau;mon ami/min ven

[@part9952]

I am from Austria and completely fell in love with Denmark and it‘s language when i was in Hvide Sande last year. Very beautiful country and extremly interesting language. My main focus and project in language learning is Russian which I‘ve been learning for over 3 years now but today I started to learn a bit of danish as well. Its nice for a change to learn a language that seemingly consists only of vowels compared to the russian consonant war :) greetings to all danes out there from Østrig! 🇦🇹🇩🇰

[@LasseUJohansen]

Спасибо из Дании

[@part9952]

@@LasseUJohansen хаха не за что!

[@superviewer]

Thanks for the possitive message and for being interested in our language 🙏 Tak ❤

[@erikraagaard124]

Tak tak

[@denmark23]

Greetings 🇩🇰🇦🇹

[@mathiassvendsen9788]

As a Dane, after watching this video, even I am left with a feeling of: Damn, my language is difficult.

[@cristinadreambaker4822]

Feel you. Men så slemt er det ikke ;)

[@spinxu.6474]

Nej så svært er det da ikke😂😂😂

[@shaide5483]

Germanic languages need to update all of their spelling

[@frejakollealslev9086]

Enig

[@moenaihai]

@@shaide5483 hvad snakker du om? Vi staver ordentligt nice

[@Yostheou]

Jeg elsker dansk, men jeg ved ikke hvorfor. Det er virkelig smukt, interessant og minimalistisk sprog. Hilsner fra Brasilien 🇩🇰🇧🇷👋

[@TwinStrike100]

"Jeg elsker Dansk, men jeg ved ikke hvorfor. Det er virkelig smukt og minimalistisk" you're on the right track held og lykke

[@Yostheou]

@@TwinStrike100 Thank you! Just fixed it 😁

[@MikCph]

Minimalistisk? Hvordan?

[@Yostheou]

@@MikCph Især med hensyn til udtale. Men også kulturen "tale er sølv, tavshed er guld."

[@magnushmann]

@@Yostheou Deep. But so true though.

[@FreakyFeline88]

French: WE have lots of vowels and very difficult pronunciations because we don't pronounce everything Danish: Hold my smørrebrød

[@withzeinab5519]

I wanna learn Danish do u have any suggestion?

[@matthewturner2803]

Lol

[@undeadblizzard]

@@withzeinab5519 Same way listen to music lots and read. I have so many Spotify playlist of whatever language. Listen and read. Read makes you learn grammar goods. Listen help with pronunciations.

[@undeadblizzard]

Also reading is for nerds so never read.

[@Blahaj385]

means "buttered bread". also speed limit is spelled **inhales** hastighedsbegrænsning

[@FreakishSmilePA]

Yaknow. I'm most likely never going to learn Danish, but I'm still 110% interested lol

[@itzmarkfx]

i have this relation with a lot of languages especially the ones that aren't so similar to english

[@nero7469]

Same

[@LLWN84]

That happens always! Watch any of his language profiles and you'll be like: "C'mon! I want to learn this language asap! This seems so amazing!"

[@FreakishSmilePA]

@@LLWN84 lmao I bing watch Langfocus and other Language KZbin. I'll spend a week on a language and suddenly have a nack for another. I've been switching between Dutch, German, and Swedish for a while now lol

[@LLWN84]

@@FreakishSmilePA Happens most of the time with me too, lmao 2.

[@ciprianocarrasco5832]

As being Swedish, living my whole life just across the bridge in Malmö, and as a child having access to to Danish TV, I think that has been an advantage in understanding Danish. Today I have no problem communicating with Danes, as long as we both make an effort to speak slowly and translate words that are not the same in both languages. Often we are aware of these words that are totally different or even the “false friends”.

[@sandhammaren05]

I have understood a bit of Skånsk from Norwegian. I assume that Skånsk is a Swedish dialect distorted by Danish pronunciation.

[@Toopa88]

@@sandhammaren05 I think the Skånska you hear these days is more or less standard Swedish with accent. Sure, they have their own words, but I mean... as long as they aren't talking a strong dialect (I think mostly the older generation & farmers do that) you should understand them quite well. If you understand Swedish you should understand most people talking Skånska fairly easily after a few days. I guess it's comparable with British English vs. Australian English. PS: The water in Sandhammaren was very cold this summer 😅

[@donc7349]

@@sandhammaren05 Actually Skånsk is a Danish dialect with Swedish influence.

[@hansdorschdk2]

And we love you too!! vi kallar fortfarande Ers vackra version av svenska östdanska

[@Zorg2006]

As someone from Malmö, can you tell me if the situation in TV shows like The Bridge is realistic? Where Swedes and Danes speak to each other in their native languages and understand everything perfectly? I've often wondered if it represents the truth.

[@deargodwhatamidoing1122]

“You are 1/8 danish. That meens you are 7/8 full of shit” Dude i am dead LMAO😂

[@93juan]

Numerals in Danish: exist Numerals in French: finally a worthy opponent

[@peterfireflylund]

Then there is Japanese and Korean. They have two sets of numerals: a native one and a Chinese one. Sometimes the native one is the correct one, sometimes the Chinese one. It depends...

[@justakathings]

Peter Lund Japanese only has one set of numbers. But have two sets of readings for characters as Japanese still uses characters while korean uses two sets of numbers. But both languages use the “Chinese reading” one for numbers and the other for characters

[@peterfireflylund]

あか:3 in other words, Japanese also has two sets of numbers. The two readings are exactly that: native numbers and Chinese loanwords.

[@justakathings]

Peter Lund there aren’t two sets of numbers, only in korean. Only two numbers can be pronounced in two ways 7 (shichi or nana) and 4 (shi or yon), the rest only one. The individual kanji has On’yomi and Kun’yomi if that’s what you’re talking about (the Chinese and Japanese readings respectively), but only one set of “stand alone numbers”

[@yorgunsamuray]

@@peterfireflylund and for the larger numbers, they have their own thing. 10000 is not ten thousand, its one "tenthousand" (千, sen=1000 & 万, man=10000), 100000 is like "ten tenthousand" (十万, juuman 十, juu means 10), a million is "a hundred tenthousand" (百万, hyakuman, 百, hyaku means 100) ten millions is "a thousand tenthousand" (千万, senman...you know 千)...and then comes "a hunredthousand", yes 100,000,000 has its own word: 億=oku. This is for Japanese, but I have heard that Mandarin and Korean are the same too.

[@oanasimon1983]

My husband is Danish, but we do not live in Denmark. I have tried to learn Danish on and off since we have met. My level of understanding is quite good, but I struggle with speaking as I find the pronunciation very hard(my native language is from the Latin family). This video makes me want to try harder and not give up on Danish.

[@hassegreiner9675]

20 year ago we had an American exchange student living us for the better part of a year. He was 16 and sat directly into a regular Danish 10th level class. After about three months he knew so much Danish he no longer needed help to do his homework.

[@dermeisterdesspiegels3518]

@Oana Simion E ca un fel de franceză în ceea ce privește omiterea anumitor litere în vorbit?

[@oanasimon1983]

@@dermeisterdesspiegels3518 E greu de comparat cu franceza. Da, omiți litere, dar felul în care faci asta nu e foarte precis. In franceză ai totuși reguli de pronunție pe care daca le urmărești vei ști cum să te exprimi. In lb daneză nu e cu reguli stricte, e mult mai fluid felul în care pronunți. Practic trebuie să înveți fiecare cuvânt cu pronunția corectă.

[@adday.]

I'm Danish and I don't blame you if you give up on Danish when you basically don't need it. My bf is Finnish, and luckily he speaks Swedish to me, and he understands Danish. I refuse to learn Finnish, I will not learn a language that makes my brain hurt so much and doesn't sound pretty to me at all, when I don't need to! A few words, but no more. He doesn't expect it either, he knows I love Swedish and learned it for him. I draw the line at Finnish! Ps, hils din danske mand 😊

[@oanasimon1983]

@@adday. I do like Danish, it's not that, but for sure it's challenging to keep up with because I don't live there. I would aslo rather learn Swedish instead, it so melodious and seems easier to pronounce compared to Danish. I worked for a few years in Finland and I really like the sound of the language, but I'm sure it's not easy to learn. Tak for dine hilsner:)

[@jacko6779]

im danish born in denmark and curently live in denmark speak danish every day and even i found this confusing

[@temmiekristensen5674]

same

[@LykkeEeg85]

Jeg mener det her altså jeg lever med de her bogstaver æøå hver dag

[@somebodystolemytoast7516]

Me to or as i would normaly say og mig i forgart how to spell Åse meig

[@julianjoensen3248]

Jeg bor ikke i Danmark men i Ferioerne

[@thegreenknight1033]

YEET danskere YEET

[@masicbemester]

Hold on a sec, - Uvular rhotic instead of alveolar - silent letters are frequent - base 20 leftovers (forgot to mention those) Let's see who you really are. *Removes mask to reveal French*

[@devenscience8894]

Ha. I just made a similar comment. You beat me to it.

[@zsoltsandor3814]

The danish r was so much easier to grasp after studying a bit of french. But it's also somewhat similar to the "official" German r. Floating somewhere around those sounds.

[@thebronywiking]

Don't forget the weird 20 base counting system.

[@bibobeuba]

@@thebronywiking Even though most romands (francophone swiss) and waloons (francophone belgian) don't use it and use other words instead, e.g. septante, huitante or nonante.

[@PainterVierax]

@@thebronywiking Well that's not entirely true. By using septante (70) and nonante (90) instead of soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix Belgian French and Swiss French counting system is way more regular than the French varieties from the whole France and its former colonies (american and african). Some Swiss French dialects are in fact totally in a regular 10 base as they use huitante instead of quatre-vingt (80). In practice, a lot of native French speakers are aware of those regular forms (and even the obsolete octante form for 80) despite not using them. Mainland French people not close to Swiss and Belgium frontiers may get a reminder of their existence when someone drop them into a conversation and they will just freeze for a second, but in the end they will understand.

[@Maridun50]

Man - I never knew Danish was that complicated .... Surely I would never learn if i didn't speak it already ...! Cheers from a 70-year old Dane ......

[@danbsj]

I'm just proud that it's one of the hardest languages to speak and understand.

[@seid3366]

@@danbsj At least for English speakers, it’s a Category 1 (according to the FSI, which trains diplomats to overseas locations), meaning it’s thought of as a relatively simple language, compared to Category 5, like Arabic, Chinese & Korean

[@michaelkaa2669]

@@seid3366 Ha ha ha ha You are welcome..... Just go a head.....

[@myk1137]

@@danbsj Same for Turkish

[@thissunchild]

@@danbsj As the first second language I learned, I don't think Danish is particularly hard. But if I had to learn Russian I would literally cry myself to sleep each night.

[@harrokehn2612]

Us danish people seriously love watching videos of our own country.

[@superviewer]

It's part of the low Danish self-esteem and these videos give us hope 😊

[@valdemarmaul9396]

Ja vi gør

[@RooZvonBooZ]

yup xD

[@colbymasvidal2397]

​@@superviewerHvorfor svarer du på Englesk?🤣

[@mbb1489]

When I speak Danish to Swedes and Norwegians I can normally change my pronunciation in a way that they would find me easier to understand. I also substitute some words for Swedish/Norwegian equivalents. Also there are quite large accent differences in Denmark between Jutland/Jylland and Zealand/Sjælland (where the capital is).

[@Yorgos2007]

...and that is not pronounced as Zealand or Seeland but as Shalen' :)

[@emilbozaandersson5776]

I’m a swede and when I am speaking with a dane or norwegian I often also change some words for example äta in swedish that means to eat I always change to spise when I am speaking to a dane or norwegian.

[@emilbozaandersson5776]

Kidney Failure fem og halvfierds = sjuttiofem

[@finn127]

@@emilbozaandersson5776 Eg er fra vestlandet i Norge og seier også eta i staden for spise.

[@johanfagerstromjarlenfors]

I just stick to my blekinge dialect when speakin to a dane and some of your immigrants in denmark think i speak danish (just as people in stockholm thinks...). And when i speak to people from stockholm i have to use english cause they don’t understand swedish

[@theabruun1028]

13:08 The “hans” and “sin” is something that even a lot of native Danes stuggle with. Usually you’ll learn the rule in school (that if the subject is the possessor, you use “sin”, if not, use “hans”), but many MANY people still get it mixed up

[@LaVieDeReine86]

Også jeg :( men det er livsfarlig med "han dræbte sin far" og "han dræbte hans far"

[@FoxyOnyxSheep]

Sometimes "sin" sounds like "din" when you are talking fast, so people tend to get confused I feel like xD

[@Donnah1979]

Men vi bruger som regel "min" og "din" uden problemer...

[@seid3366]

@@FoxyOnyxSheep That’s why I’ll pronounce the majority of consonants & speak slow

[@guldklimp]

Det är lite intressant. Vi använder ju sin/hans/hennes på svenska också, men jag upplever inte att folk blandar ihop det här. Undrar var det beror på!

[@eyvindjr]

Understanding Danish as a Norwegian or Swedish speaker is all about exposure, especially at an early age. A summer holiday with the Danish cousins is enough to understand it almost perfectly. Speaking it without an obvious accent is very complicated, though; properly differentiating how A, Æ and E is pronounced in Danish must be one of the hardest wovel challenges in any language.

[@SadMatte]

Danish is so casual that if you have even the slightest bit of spice in your accent, you're bound to make some words sound Norwegian to us XD

[@frankz3140]

For me, Danish is like the French of germanic languages. It sounds somehow classy with a weird exoticness attached to it. You can understand some words with a suggestive accent but still, the grammar and pronunciation sues you, beats you up and leaves you naked on a dark alley

[@tangbein]

They do have a more formal way of speaking compared to norwegian and Swedish.

[@frankz3140]

I wouldn't exactly say formal. It's like classy as in old poetry. Danish is the complex result you get when you mix Shakespearean english with Einstein's calculations and make it norse

[@alexdel5629]

I think that Portuguese is the Danish of romance languages. It looks so similar to Spanish and Italian, but when they speak it... It's a whole struggle.

[@wlliamp4382]

The grammar of french and spanish is quite similar They're 75% mutually intelligible in the other hand french with english just 15%

[@frankz3140]

Makes sense. But I still think that compared to Danish, Portuguese is a small little child. I've studied it for a while, most of the time, it's quite solid. And depending on the dialect, it's even easier. Brazilian Portuguese has had a lot of foreign influence, it's closer to Spanish than it's European counterpart. While Danish, personally, has given me a hard time, no matter the accent

[@GeoStreber]

German guy who just moved to Denmark recently: Regarding the grammar: This is very familiar. Regarding pronounciation: AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH THE HORROR

[@69sand]

Been taking German for about 4 years now, German grammatics are hell

[@ewigerschuler3982]

@@69sand no

[@NortOfficial]

Hehehe, Just be with danes alot! that's the best you can do to learn

[@thelazyduck9370]

To hell with german grammar :( different verbs depending on the subject.. kasus.. NO

[@uk9383]

I moved to fensburg and im im allready annoyed and it not even a danish city

[@danieltausen4726]

Dane here: I have spoken with both nowegians and swedes, and everytime we have all just spoken our native tongue with only minor misunderstandings.

[@bk_the_raccoon3650]

Yes that's my experiece as well. I don't understand every single word they say, but I understand the full meaning. Dane too btw :)

[@timothythorne9464]

From looking at these videos, it seems English resembles Danish, Swedish and Norwegian more closely in both grammar and vocabulary than it does German

[@shutterchick79]

@@timothythorne9464 I've heard it put like this - Old English and Old Norse had a baby, Early Middle English. French kidnapped and raised it, and now she's a Germanic girl in French clothes that still tries to speak her language, but can't talk about complicated subjects without using some words that French taught her.

[@gregorarmstrong01]

I can understand swedish but not danish. In fairness swedish is my fifth language.

[@user-bf8ud9vt5b]

Danish, how many vowels do you want? aLl oF thEm

[@vrenak]

just 9 when writing, but we'll use like 1000 when speaking, it's up to you to differentiate them, because if you use the wrong you said something completely different. Good luck.

[@sebastiangade]

Try looking at Finnish haha

[@mikejameson7678]

@@sebastiangade nah feck Finnish. You could say the same exact word, and have it mean something completely different. Skat - used to refer to your close loved ones. Skat - means treasure. Skat - meaning taxes. Pronounced and written the exact same way.

[@katrineolsen9303]

@@mikejameson7678 it can be wirtten the same way but it has different meanings ( Fun fakt people like me who are from Denmark knows what '' skat '' means because of what other words it stick's too its another meaning of the word )

[@Malentor]

@@sebastiangade less vowels than danish.

[@hannealbrechtsen461]

I am Danish, born and bred in Copenhagen. Thank you for an excellent presentation of our language... One of the Sounds that people from abroad often struggle with is the viwel ‘ø’ (oe). I practice Danish intro with integration citizens, like refugees. We try to sing the Danish homework, which seems to support the learning process. Gives us a few good laughs too ❤️❤️❤️

[@inglishhomeandgarden8386]

Great way to learn languages!

[@infinite5540]

Nice job on your English, the only quirk I noticed is your use of "bred" instead of the more appropriate "raised" That's really cool too! I always imagined that sound like the one in the English words "put" and "cook", but I don't know if that's really what it is.

[@moogsi]

@@infinite5540 "Born and bred" is a common idiom to British English speakers. Perhaps "born and raised" is way more common in America... Sounds completely natural to me. Depends on who you're talking to I suppose...

[@hannealbrechtsen461]

kalimbaS Thank you

[@infinite5540]

@moogsi "Born and raised" is common in America, which perfectly explains my ignorance, being an American that I am. Thanks for telling me though, that is genuinely interesting and made me smile 🙂

[@Foodgeek]

Danish speaker: I understand both Swedish and Norwegian. If I speak with a Swede, they will often speak English unless they are from Skåne. Norwegians understand, in my experience, Danish with little to no problems. The languages are very close, albeit with a different cadence.

[@Odinsday]

You know your language is in a weird spot when Iceland Danish is more understandable than Denmark Danish lol

[@trezapoioiuy]

I would say it's quite a common thing. The American versions of Spanish English and Portuguese are also more friendly to learners than their European counterparts.

[@hualisi_]

Brazil Portuguese is more understandable than Portugal Portuguese as well

[@TheGQBrotha]

trezapoioiuy - Very good point about Portuguese. I notice when I hear Portuguese from Portugal it sounds more harsher and difficult to understand than Brazilian Portuguese.

[@eyyy2271]

I see your comments offen

[@sveinaredvardsen3521]

I believe the Danish they learn in Iceland is more for understanding Scandinavians in general.

[@darynkatano]

Danish is a tongue twister, except it's a whole language

[@plopgoot5458]

Im Danish, can confirm. and as a fun fact: it is one of the only languages in the world where, conversation can continue while taking a breath.

[@ΧΙΗΙΧ]

I'm part Danish. And to me, Danish just sounds like one long flow of vowels with "consonnends" (messed that up so bad) and hay!, there was a t.... And on with the flow, no words, no stops, just a lot of sounds, mixed together, somehow conveying grammatical meaning and information 〰〰🇩🇰 I really sound like a yoga instuctor... Det er jeg elser ikke, men Dansk er en god relax sprøg (jeg sage jo jeg halv Dansk 😔)

[@osasunaitor]

I remember taking the metro in Copenhagen and hearing the station names called out... some sounds were actually _painful_ to hear, I'm not exaggerating. It made my throat suffer just from the thought of having to vocalise such a noise everyday

[@aquicha8168]

@@osasunaitor what cities were it?

[@Asa...S]

A tongue twister, with a tongue on anaesthetics... 😊

[@patriciaitalia]

I have been learning Danish for over two years now. No one has ever explained it better than you have in this video. Even the numbers are making sense now! Thank you so much for all the work you put into teaching us. You are a gem!!

[@ellenstergaardgravesen1011]

I only recently discovered the origin of our names for the numbers - and I'm a Dane. The names never really made sense to me - but this video made it quite clear - and suddenly f.ex. halvtresinds-tyvende (50th) makes perfectly sense. Thank you! 🙂

[@Ramhams1337]

@@ellenstergaardgravesen1011it’s like 3 - 0.5 x 20 or 2.5 x 20 right

[@ellenstergaardgravesen1011]

@@Ramhams1337 the last one yes.

[@Ramhams1337]

@@ellenstergaardgravesen1011 looked it up. it's the first one. it's the main number -0.5 like halvanden. is 1.5. the meaning is basically 2 - 0.5

[@ellenstergaardgravesen1011]

@@Ramhams1337 oh I misread your comment. But yes (3 - 0.5) x 20.

[@camembertdalembert6323]

"there is far from being a one-to-one relationship between letters and sounds". ha ha ha... This reminds me another language with germanic roots.

[@jonathanrobinson913]

It's English, just in case you the reader didn't know.

[@kokofan50]

That’s the Danish influence on English.

[@grauwolf1604]

People speaking this language are unable to read normal words. You know what is "sbiiishiiis"? It is "species", a word frequently used in botanics and zoology.

[@grauwolf1604]

@@kokofan50 It is the influence of lazyness in both languages!

[@kalmarunions2115]

I come from an island in Southern Denmark where we speak a 'language' called Alsisk, where words like 'jeg' (I) becomes 'a' or 'æ' depending on what town you come from. And we have this little sentens only containing single letters:' a æ ø æ ø u i æ å' (jeg er på øen ude i åen) ( i am on the island out in the river) And even people 50 km can have problems understanding what we say.

[@Marvinuser]

a dialect like Jutland (Jysk) and Funish from Funen ( Fynsk) Zealandish (sjællandsk) as Falster and also the Copenhagen one ;) vi har en del dialekter, fjernest fra hinanden Bornholmsk, Sønderjysk og Københavnsk xD meeen de ligger ret tæt mange af dem dog.. Mojn Mojn! ;)

[@kalmarunions2115]

@@Marvinuser der er så dog også færøske (føroyar) Der minder mere om Norsk end ris dansk

[@Marvinuser]

@@kalmarunions2115 helt sikkert men det er jo også en anden gren af oldnordisk, Islandsk er Norrønt hvor færøsk er dønsk og begge lyder som en pærevælding af finsk norsk og tysk, selvom færøerne oprindeligt talte samme sprog som os ;) meeen jeg synes nu at begge er nemme at forstå på skrift, men det er nok også fordi jeg har indsigt alle de sprog, når man kender til både Finsk, Gælisk, old engelsk, Tysk, Norsk og Svensk og visse slaviske sprog så hjælper det en del ikke ? :p

[@Marvinuser]

A Æ U Å Æ Ø I Æ Å ;) sådan skal den lyde !

[@Eulex88]

Funny thing, in Swedish Värmland dialect this is a complete sentence: I åa ä e ö, å i öa ä e å (in the river there's an island, and in the island there's a river)

[@DoctorPastapus]

I actually never thought about how difficult our language is, it’s actually pretty fun and informative even tho this lays natural to us Danes, but watching this video makes you se things differently 😊

[@Nygaard2]

SO happy that I learned Danish as my mother tongue, wouldn’t want to try to learn it, it’s so difficult.

[@grauwolf1604]

Difficult is something else than uneasy. Learn finnish, that's difficult.

[@plsfckoff]

I learn Swedish and when I can read Danish most of the time because they are so similar. But spoken... bruh

[@Langfocus]

There are some predictable sound changes, though.

[@hermanmortensen]

@@Langfocus spoken Danish might as well be mandarin, even though the written form is very easy to understand

[@gamerpixels2374]

I am learning Swedish, but i can also talk sonen basic danish. Just speak Swedish and use danish tones

[@hermanmortensen]

@@gamerpixels2374 I don't know how easy or hard Danish is to understand for swedish speakers, but as a Norwegian i find other, more distantly related germanic languages like spoken Dutch more intelegeble then spoken Danish. But that is just my experience.

[@nickrobson4068]

I'm also learning Swedish, and I'm at the point where I speak it at a B2+/C1 level. Danish is _hard_ to understand, but you really just need to expose yourself to it more if you want to learn to understand it. There's a fantastic young people's news channel called DR Nyheder here on KZbin that makes great videos about both news and things that have gone viral. I found that after watching it (with their provided Danish subtitles) for a few weeks I was able to start relying more and more on just the voice. Maybe you'll find some success with it too.

[@XSilverCold]

I’m danish and living in Denmark. Thank you for teaching me new info on our language! Jeg er dansk og bor i Danmark. Tak fordi du lærer mig ny info om vores sprog!

[@gwho]

The softness and not giving a crap about spelling is clearly related to French

[@talknight2]

This is surprisingly more than a meme. All of the West European languages went through something called the Great Vowel Shift a few hundred years ago, which is why English, French and German have so many mismatches between spelling and pronunciation. This change spread as far as Denmark but not really further into Scandinavia which is partly why Danish sounds so different from the other Nordic languages.

[@vera_ah]

Dane here: I don’t find a problem pronouncing French so take from that what you wil

[@rasmusfritzen2999]

French ? for real ? We(Denmark)have like zero in common with Fance Besides some of our royal family tends to prefer french people as a partner :) and in pure pronunciation it could hardly be any further from danish. It is clear there are certain words that are repeated in Danish English and French etc. But it is probably because they all have Latin embedded in their language. And some words in engslish are from "old danish" like the word "window" and many others that are originally from the dansih language and not latin to make it even more complicated :) But French related to danish ? Not so much, but i see ur point :) In my personal opinion is that danish can not really be compared a lot besides swedish, norwegian, faroese and icelandic. German language have way more in commen with the danish language then french btw, but there is still no way a dane and german would be able to understand each other without having learned some German or Danish at least. I hope i made it more or less clear for you how it is in reality :)

[@ChristianFS1]

@@talknight2 "The great vowel shift" specifically only occurred in English between the 15th and 18th centuries. Other sound shifts occurred to varying degrees in different Germanic languages and the phonology of French also changed drastically (as evidenced by its "historical" orthography), but these aren't directly related phenomena AFAIK.

[@talknight2]

@@rasmusfritzen2999 It's a joke bro :D

[@mikaaalto3135]

Danish is a beautiful language. English spoken with a heavy Danish accent, not so much.

[@nikolajrahbek3356]

English with Danish accent = Danglish = almost as charming as a baby goat trying to jump

[@HankHopeless]

Guilty

[@App1_e]

“Do you know where, øh, the togstation er?”

[@HankHopeless]

@Dalle Smalhals " Ama'rkansk " ?

[@dikaelv231]

Well - in my head it sounds sooo good - but when it comes out of my mouth, something strange has happend. Måske det bare er mig :D

[@stinekehler8063]

Hi! Im Danish, and I currently live on a School with both danish and norwegian speakers. It’s taken me a while to adjust to some of their soft consonant. Also, some of their “normal/frequently” used words are equivalent to some old danish words that I’ve only heard my grandma say. A lot of them tell me they find it easier to understand danish than it seems for us to understand Norwegian, but when they speak slow I follow most of it :-) thanks for the nice video!

[@someoneinthecrowd4313]

That's interesting, because a lot of frequently used words in Danish haven't been used in Norwegian since television was in black and white. Reading Danish text is often like reading a newspaper article from the 50s.

[@AverytheCubanAmerican]

Finally I’ll be able to learn what my Lego bricks are saying

[@Facu_Roldan]

Are you God? You are almost omnipresent lol

[@simonfrederiksen104]

And if you happen to have a Danfoss thermostat

[@PainterVierax]

If your Lego bricks speaks to you, then you should get easy on the Cuba Libre. ;)

[@bnz2222]

Shit! He found out our secret spying method.

[@YourneighborJade]

“Leg Godt”

[@jeffe7622]

it's much simpler when you actually talk the language. people will easily understand you if you swapped some words and you pronounced the letters incorrectly. immigrants in denmark does this alot and it is still easy for danish people to understand. and most of the people living in denmark are relly good at english

[@typograf62]

Once we were told to write programs using English labels and names rather that Danish ones. Well, even computer programmers are not that good at English - it got completely messed up. EG. "GemtAfdeling" - > "HiddenDepartment" (should have been "SavedDepartment" - for a variable). I just sad and stared - where was that department hidden and why? It should probably have been "Ward" rather than "Department". And "BorrowedBad". What? Well, the idea was that a BED had been borrowed bwtheen two sections of a hospital. It sounded like syfilis.

[@jeffe7622]

@@typograf62 lol dude, sounds like a pain in the ass

[@kimpedersen6402]

I heard we sound like dry gagging (like puking with no vomit) but to us we sound like angels singing.

[@ei96byod]

Swedes and Norwegians make fun of the silly Danish language. Danes and Swedes make fun of the silly Norwegian language. Norwegians and Danes make fun of the silly Swedish language. We are basically just siblings teasing each other. 😆 I find it quite easy to understand Danish in general (I'm Swedish myself), probably because my grandmother was Danish, and we spent basically all our vacations in Denmark camping when I was a child. (Denmark was THE place for camping in those days 👍🙂. Don't know how it is now though.) I think it's more about how far from each other people live than their main language. I mean, I find many Swedes difficult to understand, and don't get me started on some of the dialects of Norwegian! In general I find people from København tend to change their pronunciation when speaking to Swedes, probably because they are used to doing that because of their proximity to Malmö in Sweden. In any case, our differences are just as fascinating as our similarities I think 🙂

[@Hin_Håle]

And don't forget about all the swedes that work in København. I'm surprised everytime I go there.

[@yeetmachine1737]

@@Hin_Håle Too bad you guys have to talk to THOSE people

[@BaGussy]

Robert E. S. ahhhh stfu, why so toxic

[@Taawuus]

Yup, I spent some summers in Denmark as a Swedish kid too, haha! A lot of camping and people just talking a little bit differently (but then the next year we went to Gotland, and for me it was just the same thing! ;-) Seriöst! Många gotländska dialekter kan vara svårare för mig att förstå, än vissa danska)

[@Cosmic_idea]

Yea siblings that describe it pretty well. When the countries where younger Denmark and Sweden fought like cats and dogs while Norway was in the middle. Then when they had grown older they calmed down and talked to each other again, and now have a good relationship (ish). If that doesn't sound like a lot of other sibling's relationships I don't know what will.

[@ArturoStojanoff]

In this class the indefinite class takes the suffix *Minecraft villager sound*, and the definite class takes the *other Minecraft villager sound*.

[@BlastedRodent]

I’m danish and live in Sweden. It took me about two months of everyday exposure to crack the code of how swedish works. From then on out, I was able to adjust my vocabulary and pronounciation to the point that, while obviously not a native speaker, I’m understandable to people around me. Which I absolutely was not in the beginning. As for understanding, I was raised with the expectation that I should be able to understand nordic languages which definitely helped me (I believe a lot of younger people mentally freeze up when exposed to the other languages, which is why they think they understand less than they’re actually able to). But it still took about a month of listening to unfamiliar vocab and set phrases before the fog lifted.

[@gabriels287]

My Swedish friends pronouncing Portuguese names with a Spanish accent. Me: Guys, it’s not like that. Portuguese is to Spanish what Danish is to Swedish, we don’t pronounce everything LOL

[@TheZenytram]

Portugal portuguese though.

[@vanefreja86]

I love the sound of Portuguese - it sounds softer than Spanish

[@danielarellano5811]

Edwin Hidalgo My danish friend once told me, -norwegian sounds like French, both languages are so peaceful and romantic. Nowadays i agree with her haha, P.d. I’m native spanish speaker too XD

[@taintedtaylor2586]

Brazilian Portuguese is incredibly funny for us Spanish speakers, but by far the funniest thing is written Portuguese, it’s just incredibly funny.

[@rayelgatubelo]

Brazilian and European Portuguese phonologically might as well be different languages...

[@AmalieSteffensen]

So, to actually answer your question for Danish speakers: It depends on a variety of factors. Obviously, I can only speak on my own behalf, and I know a lot of people disagree with me on a lot of points, but for me it's like this. Swedish is definitely easier to understand than Norwegian. "But Norwegian is just Danish pronounced weirdly", I hear fellow Danish speakers say, and yes. But also, super duper no. I think the reason Swedish is easier for me to understand is that, while its vocabulary differs quite drastically in some places, the pronunciation is still closer to Danish than the pronunciation of Norwegian. I assume that is due to Danish and Swedish's shared ancestry in Old East Norse, whereas Norwegian comes from Old West Norse. Either way, I also think it is DRASTICALLY reducing Norwegian's value as a language to just say that it's Danish, but pronounced weirdly. While Norwegian Bokmål is almost literally just the same as Danish, Norway has a wide variety of dialects of which a lot sound very different from """standard Norwegian""" (which like.. I don't even know if that's a thing? I know they invented Nynorsk to represent dialects in writing but???), or at least from what you'd imagine Bokmål to sound like (I'm really not an expert on Norwegian). So that's a lot of moot points that don't really answer the question, so let's try with an example instead: Last November I went to an international event, where I met two Norwegian people. On of them I could easily understand. She was careful about speaking clearly when communicating with me, and also she was from Oslo, which is quite important in this context (remember the dialect spectrum? Oslo is a little more than 300 km North of the northern most point of Denmark). She also had Danish family and so was extra careful to adjust her vocabulary when speaking with Danish, which is a point we'll come back to later. The other Norwegian person is a VERY different story. I met him, learned he was Norwegian and was like "Oh, cool! We can just speak together in our native tongues then", only to immediately have to ask him to switch back to English because I did not understand A WORD of what he was saying. This guy grew up in Narvik, which is a town 1700 km north of the northern most tip of Denmark. He was born almost 6 TIMES FURTHER AWAY from speaking my native tongue than the first Norwegian person I met. I mean it when I say I had literally NO IDEA what he was saying when he was speaking Norwegian. Sure, I could tell it was Norwegian, but I would've probably understood more if he spoke Dutch, and I do not speak Dutch. The same is true for Swedish. The further north, the harder it is to understand. But I do still think that Norwegian pronunciation is generally way further from Danish than Swedish, so while most people I know find it easier to understand Norwegian than Swedish, I, as someone who is both very aural but also have trouble processing audio (I know this sounds weird, but idk how else to explain it), find that Norwegian is my own personal nightmare - because people form Norway expect me to understand them and I DO NOT. With that being said, most of the time Norwegian is typically a lot easier to understand in writing than Swedish, because Denmark was like "actually Norway is Denmark, here, have all of our words" and there you've got Bokmål. Bokmål is like Danish, but if the way you spell things actually made sense. Nynorsk is a bit harder, but still understandable - depending on which dialect the person writing it speaks. Swedish is eh. It's fine? Sometimes there are some vocabulary differences that make it hard to understand, but most basic words are the same and you can come a long way from context. Fun little example of that is when I was at a Swedish restaurant with a friend, and the waiter told us we could sit at "bordet bredvid blomman" (the table next to the flower). In Danish this sentence would be "bordet ved siden af blomster", with respectively "bredvid" and "ved siden af" meaning "next to". I didn't know the word bredvid, but it did sound like "bred ved" (wide at), which objectively doesn't make sense, but could be taken to mean me "along the width of" or something like that. It was easier to explain in my head, but you can't win every time. Personally, when I talk to people from Sweden or Norway I make a point to be facing them and speaking clearly, because that's what I'd really like for them to do with me for me to better understand them. I also try to adjust my vocabulary, so for an example I work in a shop, and when telling someone from Norway or Sweden that something is 75 DKK, I'd usually say "syvtifem kroner" rather than "femoghalvfjerds kroner", because the former is how they form numbers in those languages. That got a lot longer than expected, so I think I'll leave it at that for now oops.

[@JohanHerrenberg]

Fascinating! I'm Dutch myself and can read Danish. Understanding spoken Danish proved much more difficult, but I can follow it quite well on radio nowadays.

[@goksir5845]

Your number system gives me headaches. As a Norwegian from Oslo I generally find Swedish slightly easier to understand when spoken, but Danish writing is ludicrously easy to understand.

[@antioch4019]

"I think the reason Swedish is easier for me to understand is that, while its vocabulary differs quite drastically in some places, the pronunciation is still closer to Danish than the pronunciation of Norwegian" When I read this I was like, "wait what no way!!!!". But then Skåne came into mind and I wonder if alot of the swedes you've come in contanct with are mostly from southern Sweden (Skåne and Blekinge). Because if they are then I definately agree with you that it is closer to danish. I mean it once was danish territory so the dialect is heavily influenced by danish. We even call Skåningar danes ourselves and if they have a very thick accent even swedes (from other regions) have a hard time understanding them sometimes. But anything above skåne is very different from danish in sounds. Probably why it's harder for you to understand. But you don't really have to go far up to loose that danish pronounciation. Just go from skåne to Halland and you probably think it's equally hard to understand a swede from there as a swede from the northern most part of sweden.

[@hoathanatos6179]

No native in Norway speaks Bokmål but it is closest to the Oslo dialect. Also I've found that Norwegians are the best at understanding the other North Germanic languages because they grow up listening to Swedish and the other major Norwegian dialects in media and thus are used to hearing a variety of dialects and sounds from a young age. Also because Danish is a weirdly spoken Bokmål to most Norwegians.

[@Taawuus]

@@JohanHerrenberg I remember watching English shows when I grew up, with Dutch subtitles. As my English was not that good, when I was 8 (I am Swedish, by the way), I just read the subtitles, and got most of it! Ha ha! It just felt like Swedish with another spelling!

[@Victor-wc8wx]

Now i understand how difficult it is to learn danish, i'm from Denmark, and i had no clue that our language was so complex.

[@granitklippa]

I’m a Swede working within the Nordic area since many years. I have no problem to understand Danish until it comes to the numbers, that’s were am struggling, especially when they say a series of numbers, like a phone number. Shit, then I am totally lost even though I know the way they construct the numbers. When I meet with my Danish and Norwegian colleges, we always speak a Scandinavian mix of languages. Basically the Danes replace a lot of words and adjust there way of speaking, quite a lot, so do the Norwegians but to a less extent and we Swedes does not alter our way of speaking that much, just pronounce the words better and maybe replace some words that we know are often misunderstood.

[@Glaaki13]

Yes the way we say numbers are ancient

[@lordthor5951]

The numbers systems biggest problem really is the whole 6-and-50 setup which I as a dane personally struggle with at time when people quickly list numbers that needs written down. Its luckily very easy to fix in conversations by just shifting to norwegians or swedish setup.

[@SpiceCh]

Luckily, the multiples of 10 are very easy to wrap your head around and get adjusted to.

[@TheBarser]

I am danish and we should really just change the numbers. It would be very easy for us, and it just makes more sense to say femtito kroner instead of tooghalvtreds

[@Softpaw1996]

@@TheBarser 52 (tooghalvtred) giver da langt mere mening end femtito? femtito lyder jo bare fjollet.

[@Cantbebotheredbyyouanymore]

For any Dane who’s curious as to what Danish sounds like to those who don’t speak it, try listening to Dutch. The accent is the same, but impossible to understand

[@Sgrunterundt]

Yes. I've been in places in, like, Spain or America, and heard indistinct talking nearby and thought: "Oh, there are some other Danes there, cool. I can't quite make out what they are saying... oh wait, they are Dutch"

[@JanBruunAndersen]

Actually... If you have some knowledge of English and German (like this Dane do), I will say that I am able to understand some 75 % of written Dutch without any difficulty. The remaining 25 % will require some contextual guesswork. As for spoken Dutch it is about 30-40 %, something that would improve dramatically after just a few weeks living in The Netherlands.

[@Xadhoom]

I noticed this too when visiting the Netherlands. It sounds practically the same, apart from some details - but it's complete gibberish (to the danish ear). :D

[@klausolekristiansen2960]

I flew KLM once. the captain, co-pilot and purser all introduced themselves over the speakers. They were called Hrrrrrrrr, Hrrrrrrrrr and Hrrrrrr.

[@MorningNapalm]

I disagree, I was raised in Denmark, live in Germany and have some Dutch friends, and while it sounds related, it does not at all sound the same, many aspects are quite different. Dutch is closer to German, I think. I find reading Dutch quite doable, on the basis of my German understanding.

[@niharbehere1584]

Word in English: fifty Spelling in Danish: Halvtreds Pronunciation in Danish: alsssaiais

[@ddemaine]

Norwegian: Plain old "femti" (femtio in Swedish)

[@simonfrederiksen104]

half-sixty

[@2LZA3EEM]

If they write alsssaiais they will pronounce it in diffrenet way 😅🤣

[@MikCph]

No, we actually do pronounce the H, so it's more like haltres, with stress on the last syllable.

[@goebelmasse]

When I was in Denmark a few decades ago, the Danish Riksbank wrote "femti" on their half-three-twenty Kronur banknotes. Danish numerals seems to be hard even for native speakers of Danish. "Femti" was immediately understandable as "five-ten(s)" to me (I'm from Germany). "Half-something-nearly-impossible-to-understand-and-spoken-much-too-fast" is cryptic and remembers me how French speakers are saying "Four-times-twenty-ten-nine" for "Ninety nine". Also with great speech speed, of course. Which people ever counted base twenty in Europe's past, they created a lot of strange residue in some languages of today. I guess "base twenty" could be a good Langfocus video too.

[@mirakjems3828]

In my experience, as both a native Danish and Swedish speaker, Danes really really try to speak Swedish when speaking to swedes, but are often not understood. I live in the part of Sweden that is closest to Denmark and here most people understand the Danish Swedish. In other parts of Sweden swedes usually just switch to English. Swedes like to mock the Danish language for, as you have said, their pronunciation and for their number system. When swedes from where I live speak to Danes they try to speak Danish and in other parts of the country as I said, they just speak English. As a speaker of both languages its really fun to hear a conversation between a swede and a dane here, because they're both trying so hard to speak the other persons language and failing greatly (: Also when you speak both Danish and Swedish, Norwegian is very easy to understand and for me it sounds as Danish words with Swedish pronunciation, and with bad spelling

[@TheEmilie1996]

yeah norwegian really sounds like a mix of danish and swedish

[@bladimirandersson9191]

En skåning som pratar danska? Det låter som ett bekant koncept... ;-D

[@purplechips5251]

@@bladimirandersson9191 hvaaaa???

[@purplechips5251]

@@bladimirandersson9191 okay lige maget

[@bladimirandersson9191]

@@purplechips5251 Haha det var bara ett skämt som spelade på att Skåne var en del av Danmark förr i tiden :-) God fortsättning granne!

[@dkostasx]

Almost 20 years in Denmark trying to speak Danish and still cannot get around using numbers correctly

[@slashv2]

its easy.. 2 comes after 1, 3 after 2.. ;)

[@dkostasx]

@@slashv2 It is not. Instead of saying 21 as 20+1 you have to say it 1+20. So in English instead of saying twenty-one you would have to say one-twenty. 121 will become "one hundred one twenty" instead of "one hundred twenty one"

[@slashv2]

@@dkostasx heh oh i know, i was just making a stab at you for not "Knowing" how to count to 3 ;p But to be fair sarcasm is hard to pick up in writing :D I'm a native danish speaker so i can count to 10 myself without having to use my feets :D

[@jensstolt1656]

@@dkostasx Same as you using the clock backwards, Practice.

[@karsten69]

As a Dane, I can say that, in 9th grade, we are given crash courses in Norwegian and Swedish, just so we have a chance of understanding them, (or we were when I went to school, I'm old now.) Norwegian *Bokmål,* is so similar to Danish that companies put them side by side when printing instructions, on groceries. and I understand *Bokmål* almost fluently, I can't understand *Nynorsk* though. In Denmark, aside from our native language, we learn English in 3rd grade, then in 6th grade we either learn, German/Spanish/French, depending on what classes are available at what school. so by the time we are finished with grade school (9th grade in Denmark) we know 3 languages, as well as rudimentary Norwegian/Swedish. The stupid way our numbers are said kept tripping me up in math classes, so much so that I swap to English in my head when doing calculations nowadays. and as much of a mess as Danish is, and it is, I can confirm it as a native speaker, I'm just grateful that *Rigsdansk* is somewhat understandable, because my family are old farmers, and it took me 15-20 years to learn to understand my grandpa, I had my grandma translate for us. Here is a transcript of something he said during an interview when the interviewer noticed his dialect: *"Morsingbosk er no slæt æ så svæ, nå føst man fo æ læ! Men det ær svæ å forstå, hwans det betøjer når nur saje: "A wa på wej snek øve æ aj, da der kam en ærl"."* And it translates into "Morsingbosk (his dialect) is not that hard to understand, when you've learned it. But it is difficult to understand what it means when I say, "I was on my way, quickly over the creek when a moose came by"."

[@skrolle]

I don't know how widespread it is, but many of my Danish friends with kids said that the school was using Norwegian counting words or "nissesprog" at least for the first couple of years, because "fem-ti-seks" makes a whole lot more sense than "seks og halvtreds" when you're learning a positional ten-base counting system. I also noted that the old 50kr bill had the text "femti kroner" printed on it, but the new one doesn't. I have no idea if it'll ever happen, but it would be cool if Danish switched

[@emilbovbjerg]

I'm a born and raised Morsingbo, and I can't understand Morsingbomål. So yeah, it's a difficult one.

[@Taawuus]

Very interesting! And, I am happy that I understood at least a bit of your transcription! :-D When spoken, I might have understood 0% though! I try to "visualize" (audialize?) it whilst reading it, but I know that it would probably not sound like I imagine it. I can also relate to the crash courses that you mentioned: it was the same at that grade in my school in Sweden: some Norwegian and Danish texts to read (but never much Icelandic... no wonder! The teachers would not be able to explain the grammar, hehehe...). I actually really liked those classes, but I wish that I had more of it. Those classes gave me a new perspective, but it was unfortunately very shallow. Just like: Here you see some Norwegian and some Danish. "Cool... let's move on to the next subject!" No real context, no language history...

[@mcgreedz]

Interesting. It's been a few decades since I have had the pleasure of the Danish school system, but you state that you're old, so I'm guessing you haven't attended school recently either. I have never heard of anyone in Denmark (until just now) that has been taught Swedish and/or Norwegian in school. Myself and - as far as I'm aware - everyone I know personally were taught German and English exclusively. That being said, I agree that Bokmål is easily understood, at least in writing, and I would argue that it is so by most Danish people. It's basically like reading something a Danish toddler has written. I would be comfortable reading a book written in Bokmål despite having never had any crash courses or such in it.

[@karsten69]

@@mcgreedz I'm 31 and when I say crash course, I mean 1 week for Norwegian and 1 week for Swedish, and it wasn't its own separate thing, but part of the Danish lessons.

[@tyler2854]

I can't get over how serious he is when he says "soft d".

[@masicbemester]

F L A C C I D

[@gustavorstarling]

@@masicbemester F R I C A T I V E

[@notsumi1237]

I live in denmark I was born in denmark And i speak Danish This video: *pops up on my screen* Me: what the- Also me: clicks on the video

[@xavantg]

"Kamelåså?" "Kamelåså!"

[@rbr6561]

1000 litres of milk

[@simonfrederiksen104]

Karamel sovs!?

[@haze1086]

Vi forstår hinanden ikke!

[@clockworker]

skulle du have mig en sligstejskåmske sykkelekugle?

[@tobiasreimerchristensen3119]

And so f*cking whaat?

[@plislegalineu3005]

How to make a language hard to learn: Oversimplify pronunciation and use alphabet that fit (past form) it from 14th century to 18th century.

[@gerald4013]

same problem with French and English!

[@devenscience8894]

So... French. Kidding, but they do seem to be similar in that way.

[@OntarioTrafficMan]

Ya, yu kud just as eezily bee speeking about English

[@John_Weiss]

And to make it even harder, freeze the language's spelling right in the middle of a massive phonemic shift! 😆 That way the spelling doesn't even fit how the language was pronounced at a single point in time.

[@hoathanatos6179]

Don't try to learn Tibetan then. It would be like a Spanish speaker writing words in Latin but with Spanish syntax. So one would read Teneo quod exir but would pronounce it as Tengo que irme to give you a grasp of the difference between spoken and written Tibetan.

[@DullyDust]

Could you maybe make a video about how Danish and Dutch compares? I am a Dane living in the Netherlands and I have noticed a lot of similarities

[@heethanthen]

De talen hebben zeker een hoop gemeen.

[@jensstolt1656]

@@heethanthen Nej, vi taler ikke ens. Men vi har mange lyde tifælles.

[@heethanthen]

@@jensstolt1656 funny. I speak Swedish (learned) and I understood every word of that.

[@rapolasantanavicius6025]

People: *think french numbers are a mess* Danish language: hold my beer

[@diouranke]

French numbers r logical to me up until 70

[@rapolasantanavicius6025]

@@diouranke yeah, I was refering to that

[@PainterVierax]

@@diouranke And that is highly improved in some dialects. By using septante (70) and nonante (90) instead of soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix Belgian French and Swiss French counting system is way more regular than the French varieties from the whole France and its former colonies (american and african). Better than that, some Swiss French dialects are in fact totally in a regular 10 base as they use huitante instead of quatre-vingt (80).

[@masicbemester]

The French number system is a math nerd's training spot. 1 to 16: not much to worry about 17 to 19: 10 (+) 7, and so on. 20: regular. 21: 20 and ("and" is a stand-in for +) 1 22 to 30: nothing noteworthy. 31: again, 30 and 1 (remember the "and one" exception goes on from 21 to 71, or alternatively, 60 and 11) 32 to 69 (nice): remember, nothing too out of the ordinary, apart from the "and one" exception rule. 70 to 79: 60 (+) 10, this goes on until 60 (+) 10 (+) 9 80: 4 (times) 20 (the exception to the unwritten plus, as it is a multiplication in the 4*20 scenario) (+) (number from 1 to 19) (also, blaze it) And that's all you need to know.

[@coltonriffle2310]

Danish language: Hold min øl

[@MartinAhlman]

I'm Swedish and I understand Danish. I don't even live in the south! Meeting Danish viking reenactors is what made it easier for me. And the answer to the question "What's the captal of Denmark?" is always a loud "Aarhus". ;-)

[@mulle2215]

Ah. The capital of Denmark is actually Copenhagen. It is the largest city and it is the most populated one. Copenhagen is also located in "Region hovedstaden" (Region capital). Aarhus is the second-largest city, so I understand why you got it confused with the capital.

[@MartinAhlman]

@@mulle2215 Not confused, that's what they say in Jutland ;-)

[@mulle2215]

@@MartinAhlman Of course it is.... tsk tsk ( ͡° ʖ̯ ͡°) 😆

[@TheBarser]

As a guy from Aalborg I will never accept Århus spelled with AA.

[@alistairrendall6089]

I could listen to Danish all day and all night. Just the sound of it is gorgeous.

[@allieluo3046]

Wow, really? What exactly do you find pleasant in it? im danish btw

[@joefromravenna]

Along the lines of A. Lincolns speech: “4 score and seven” instead of 87 ...

[@magnushmann]

Man of culture?

[@Markle2k]

It’s backwards. Syv og halvfjerds Seven and 4 score minus half a score = 77 I added the spaces to the Danish for clarity.

[@eekamoose]

In 1990 I was leaving Denmark after my first visit and wanted to take some spoken Danish with me so I bought a 'Den Bestøvlede Kat' (Puss In Boots) children's book and cassette tape (Lyt og Læs / Listen and Read) at the railway station in Randers before I caught the train south. The idea was just to have any kind of tape so that I could practise my Danish when I got home which was in France at the time. When I got home and put the cassette on I thought that I had put it in the machine the wrong way round and was playing the tape backwards. I worked in a language school and you could do that with language lab cassettes. So I tried turning the cassette over. That just gave me the end of Side B. I realised with horror that what I thought was the cassette being played backwards was in fact authentic Danish being played correctly. True story. I'll never forget it. "Der var engang en møller. Og han var meget fattig..." (Once upon a time there was miller. And he was very poor...).

[@LarsPallesen]

That was a hilarious story!

[@eekamoose]

@@LarsPallesen True story, Lars. And somewhere I think I still have the cassette tape. It's funny to look back on it but at the time I was in shock for days...

[@nathalielytzen2099]

i am danish and after wathing this i realised, how hard danish actually is.

[@pierregrangier2731]

I'm French and honestly, I've always thought that swedish is even more difficult to pronounce than danish. Of course, it's difficult to understand but finally, the rythm and sound of danish remind me british english somehow

[@stevebrown1707]

I lived in Denmark from 87-90, I went to free Danish classes in the afternoon and eventually took an exam. I think it was called Dansk prove 2 . I must say it was quite hard to pass! This video reminded me of how much of the language I have forgotten! I also learnt to drive in Denmark, I had a little red and white book , with various driving manoeuvres you could tick off like , left turn and right turn lol

[@uuuuNB]

"I had a little red and white book , with various driving manoeuvres you could tick off like , left turn and right turn lol" - LOL that's funny as fuck, hope your little red/white book also taught you the groundbreaking manoeuvre "to break"!

[@jesperlett]

I’m impressed at how accurate and detailed this video is. Well done. However, the description of the Danish numerals is a bit erroneous. The “half” part of halvtreds (50), halvfjerds (70), and halvfems (90) doesn't have anything to do with minus half of twenty. It’s to do with archaic pronunciation of 2.5, 3.5, 4.5 etc. In current Danish 1.5 can be pronounced “halvanden”, literally meaning “half second” meaning half way from 1 to 2. Similarly it was once possible to say “halvtredje” (half third) about 2.5, “halvfjerde” (half fourth) about 3.5, “halvfemte” (half fifth) about 4.5 etc. all the way and beyond 10. I recently stumbled upon “halvellevte” 10.5 in an old song. Even though these half steps are all cardinal numbers they are pronounced like ordinal numbers. So from 50 the system is “halvtreds” (50) abbreviated from “halvtred*-sinds-tyve” (2.5x20), “tres” (60) from “tre-sinds-tyve” (3x20), “halvfjerds” (70) from “halvfjerd*-sinds-tyve” (3.5x20), “firs” (80) from “fir*-sinds-tyve” (4x20), and “halvfems” (90) from “halvfem*-sinds-tyve” (4.5x20). (The * marks a cut out from the root word) Note that the first part of 60 and 80 stem from the cardinals 3 (tre) and 4 (fire) the way they are still in use today. So the steps between 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 oscillates between their ordinal and cardinal spelling and pronunciation roots. That’s why (to the confusion of also many Danes) 50 is spelled with a silent d and 60 isn’t (the last part of 50 sounds similar to 60).

[@frkbunka6244]

Dane here. I think exposure is really important to be able to understand other Scandinavian languages. In my uni program there has been a lot of Norwegians, so we got pretty used to understanding each other and changing words to make it easier for the other part. I think we quickly discover what words others don't get based on confused faces :) I lived in Sweden over the summer though, in Skåne, and though I can understand Swedish more or less if they don't speak to fast, that dialect really had me fighting to understand what was going on. It's getting better though, so I really think it's exposure!

[@magnuseriksson1822]

>almost no dialects as of today From my experience it is incorrect. I learned Danish at the university, and I later worked with it for some time as a sales manager for an internet shop, so I communicated with clients from all over Denmark. And I must say, a plenty of them spoke various dialects, some were very difficult for me to comprehend (especially those of Northern and Western Jutland). I also studied at a Danish Folk High School in Slesvig-Holstein, and local Danes also had a distinct dialect. They as well say that Bornholm Danish is very different from Rigsdansk even now.

[@mariashamoun2909]

we have a lot of dialects in Denmark

[@SirAser.F__k.you.Google]

If it’s any comfort..even we(from Sjælland) have a hard time understanding, what they r saying in southern Jutland - thats called ‘sønderjysk’ dialect

[@mariashamoun2909]

@@SirAser.F__k.you.Google er fra Midtjylland og har også svært ved det

[@VladikVP]

@@mariashamoun2909 Aarhus? Tvivler på du ville have de store problemer med det hvis du var fra Ringkøbing 😂

[@mariashamoun2909]

@@VladikVP Nej er fra skive hehe

[@johanfagerstromjarlenfors]

3 provinces (skåne, blekinge, halland) of sweden has dialects very closely related to danish and especially the danish spoken in Bornholm. I’m from Blekinge and people from almost all the rest of sweden says i speak danish... arabic immigrants in denmark thinks that too but not other danes🤔 These provinces were danish until like 400 years ago and the eastern danish dialect of these provinces has been ”swedified” to some point that it is not obvious that it once was danish but still differs from swedish with very different sounds. Some linguists thinks that these dialect actually has NOT been as much affected of swedish as often is assumed but still a lot. I have studied danish in university and actually.. it wasn’t much that was ”new” to me anywhere in the language... well a few sounds i wasn’t too used to but most sounds where just a little more exaggerated than my dialect. What was different for me was spelling even though the danish spelling makes a lot more sense to how we pronounce the words that what swedish spelling does... grammar was about exactly the same, at least how we normally use it in talk where i live. Actually there where some syntax differences where some ways of expressing a sentence was different. Speaking with danes has always been a lot more easy than speaking to norwegians (and swedes from stockholm and north of that).

[@Asiha-Chan]

I'm a Dane and came here to feel better about myself

[@Konmonachi]

Hey that's great, someone need to feel better.

[@nigelwiseman8644]

Danish is for me the most beautiful-sounding language on the planet. I have lived in Taiwan for 40 years and I am still learning Chinese (a lifetime is not enough). Having learned German, it would probably only take a couple of months to become functional in Danish. I can already say ro/d gro/d med flo/de.

[@Torskekusken]

“Ø” can be substituted by “oe” when written and still be grammatically correct and read as (ø). (Å) is (aa) and (Æ) is (ae)

[@im.weird_so]

Rød grød med fløde

[@rasmusfritzen2999]

to this day I have still met a German who could speak Danish properly in me 36 years of liveing, so in other words you are exposing yourself to an impossible task Meeeeen held og lykke ;)

[@hassegreiner9675]

@@Torskekusken Not quite. Danes normally pronounce all letters -or at least they impact the pronunciation ,as well as the understanding, so 'roed' would be 'ro-ed', 'groed' 'gro-ed', 'floede flo-e-de', etc, so find the æ, ø and å if you want to communicate effectively.

[@kyyappeeh]

@@hassegreiner9675 He just helped him with how to spell Danish words correctly without a Danish keyboard.

[@Lightbeerer]

I'm a Norwegian. I actually had a Zoom call this Friday with two of my colleagues: one is Swedish and the other is Danish. Each of us spoke our native language, and we all understood everything, or at least almost everything :) I struggle with Danish numbers, and I bet they struggle a little with my dialect. (I've since made an effort to learn those numbers ....!) I agree with Paul that with more exposure and learning the patterns it shouldn't be too hard to learn speaking Danish. That said, perhaps I don't really need to, since Danes mostly understand what I say anyway! Also, written Norwegian (bokmål) and written Danish are very similar, so it's super easy for me to read.

[@SirAser.F__k.you.Google]

Yea ..as a Dane, I never really realize, if i read Norwegian or Danish ..actually, I had problems in school, since i had family in Norway and therefore was reading just as much in Norsk(bokmål), than i did in Danish ..so i got a lot of errors in spelling, since i was actually writing Norwegian...

[@uuuuNB]

As a Dane, Norwegian is how our written language should've been like; to me it seems less confusing in the sense that it's almost always spelled exactly like you would say it. Swedish is way more difficult for me to read though, and certain sentences can be completely incomprehensible to me.

[@malthebryde0368]

I’m from Denmark and have lived here all my life. Jeg elsker at bo her det er hyggeligt fordi næsten alle er venlige🇩🇰🇩🇰

[@purplechips5251]

Ja Danmark er maget fantastisk

[@migsestrella5188]

How to speak Danish: Step 1: Phlegm Step 2: Speak Swedish while hammered

[@masicbemester]

Or alternatively: To other Germanic languages what French is to the Romance languages

[@gustavogiacomet4032]

If this method didn't work, sleep for three hours, wake up at 4 AM and try to speak Norwegian

[@masicbemester]

@@gustavogiacomet4032 or better yet, walk an extremely long distance and run every so often, don't stop until you reach a border, then go back where you started, and Then you speak Norwegian.

[@uffeheimdal6648]

Well speaking Danish whilst hammered is the most Danish one can ever speak

[@lazerwing3022]

lmao

[@brassen]

"Å, kamelåså!"

[@sternis1]

Jeg må ha en Kamelåså før min sygglekugle!

[@atticboy51]

I've been doggedly trying to learn Danish using the duolingo and drops apps. I'm getting on very slowly, and when I watch Danish spoken in TV programmes I just think omg, I'll never get anywhere with it. However, through learning what I have done, it's so incredibly clear how close English is to Danish, with so many words the same or similar. I think the Danish characteristic of silent letters is similar to English, and we just went different directions from the same base. I won't stop trying to learn Danish, and I hope one day to understand and speak it in some rudimentary way!

[@Sorgenfri0]

Norwegian here. I understand written Danish almost as well as I do Norwegian, but spoken is harder. Usually not too much of a problem if they speak clearly, since the dialekt continuum in Scandinavia makes it so that Norwegian from small places usually can be harder to get than clear standardized Danish for us. Still prefer hearing Swedish spoken though, as it is much clearer than Danish, as I think our language tends to be to the Swedes too.

[@tapadhleibh3052]

*grabs popcorn and heads to comment section*

[@osasunaitor]

Yeah, LangFocus's comment sections are quite interesting and fun

[@OakenshieldArt]

I have found as a danish person that it is not difficult to understand Norwegian and Swedish in most cases, it becomes challenging if they talk very fast or have a thicker accent, but that is also the case in Denmark, if I meet someone from the southern parts of Denmark and they have thick accents, they become harder to understand, especially if they also talk fast. I have met people who say they don't understand Swedish and Norwegian, but it feels more like they are telling themselves they can't and therefor don't even try and I have also met Norwegian and Swedish people who do the same thing.

[@SadMatte]

It is really hard for me to grasp Swedish though, the tonal differences are quite dramatic and it's like the difference between french accent and portuguese accent imo

[@Kvtomsen]

Dane her: First of all, I find it easiest to speak with Norwegians rather than Swedes, but only by a margin. I find that because both Norwegians and Swedes pronounce their consonants so much more than we do, if they speak too quickly, it starts to sound like they aren't pronouncing any vowels at all, really. And vice versa actually. Someone I studied with once told me that it'd be easier to understand danes if we weren't so lazy with our consonants. Which is fair.

[@solsorten0745]

Det er så rigtigt

[@Malentor]

The laziness is on their part, to be honest. It's easy to understand with enough exposure and practice - it's silly to expect the world to change for you.

[@allieluo3046]

With Danish you just have to chill and relax

[@myk1137]

@@Malentor You sure?Because I completely disagree.

[@12061988]

I knew this day would come. This German-Dane living in Schleswig-Holstein very close to the border is very happy about it.

[@LaVieDeReine86]

Ich auch, ich bin ein Copenhagen/Hamburg Baby.

[@danifalkjensen]

there's like a trifecta of understanding in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, between the written and spoken languages.

[@billrachmad]

seems like English but foreign, lol. their phonology reminds me of the inconsistency of english phonology too, like how "ough" is pronounced... still interesting...

[@magnushmann]

Except (hypothetically ofc.) "ough" would be pronounced the same way in most or all words because it is the same string of letters, though those same individual letters might be pronounced differently in a different string of letters, because it's all about how the context informs you of the actually very predictable pronunciations, unlike English. If that rambling even makes sense. Anyway there are a lot of similarities to English still, and I get how this particular one *seems* very similar to English.

[@spinnis]

No phonologies are inconsistent, that's just not how languages work. It's just that the orthography has an inconsistent way of conveying the phonology. The actual sounds and the way they are represented in the writing system are completely separate.

[@Markle2k]

Most major European languages have either undergone a spelling reform and/or have some authority which tries to keep the language standard. The closest to that in English was the work of Noah Webster in the US.

[@kacper7970]

Now we need Icelandic and Finnish remastered.

[@BOBofGH]

We need German remastered.

[@kacper7970]

@@BOBofGH But most of all we need Turkish and Swahili.

[@gabor6259]

Finnish is not Indo-European. And Paul has already made 2 videos on it.

[@BOBofGH]

@@gabor6259 Did you reply to the wrong thread?

[@gabor6259]

@@BOBofGH Nope.

[@cannedasparagus]

11:45 made me realize how weird my language is.

[@drepressoespresso3894]

True😂

[@connormatthews7437]

Me: *gags* Dane: Yeah I agree bro

[@ozzeioz9182]

Shut up

[@mariusnrgaardjohansen3413]

:c

[@uk9383]

😆

[@im.weird_so]

Oh God I am Danish

[@elmosksk2959]

HAHAHAHAHSJDJSKDK

[@orktv4673]

I learned Danish last year (native Dutch speaker). Very nice language! I find the grammar very intuitive, like a compromise between Dutch and English word order.

[@JohanHerrenberg]

Another Dutchman here. Can you speak Danish? Reading it is not too difficult. They call Dutch a throat disease, but Danish comes close, too... Goedenavond!

[@orktv4673]

@@JohanHerrenberg I've completed the Duolingo course and I can read along with conversations. I read some of H. C. Andersen's stories in the native language, I should get back to it, it's a lot of fun. Stringing together sentences and pronouncing them is a lot harder, though, as it always is. That will be fun if I ever visit the country.

[@JohanHerrenberg]

@@orktv4673 I got to read newspapers, apart from books (I like literature). They had Politiken at the Central Library in Rotterdam in the 1990s. Very useful. Nowadays everything is online. Quite incredible.

[@user-kp7rk6if4o]

An observation of how confusing the Danish language is, (coming from a Dane,) I remember when I was 5 and had just started school, one of the first things i was taught when learning how to read was how a vowel could be pronounced 3 ways: The first way being more "assertive," like in "høj," (tall/high,) or like in the english word cat, second being more "light," (and short,) like in "føj," (ew,) or like the english word fun, third being more "dragging," (and long,) like in "øje," (eye,) actually just like the english word eye. It's interesting how blurred the lines for when each pronounciation is used are, as an example I just demonstrated these 3 different pronounciations on 3 almost identical words, with just a 1-letter difference. And even though we do have some rules for when a vowel should be pronounced "assertive", "light" or "dragging", I want to bring attention to the 2 first examples I used in my demonstration; "høj" and "føj". Because we also have the words "fej" (sweep) and "hej" (hi) where the vowels' pronounciations are like høj and føj, only swapped! "Høj" and "fej" are pronounced assertive, while "føj" and "hej" are pronounced light. How random and confusing is that?? And to make it even more confusing, we have dialects :D I have no idea how to demonstrate those in a better way than writing the pronounciations like this: Assertive: à, è, ì.. Light: á, é, í.. Dragging: ā, ē, ī.. Hēre āre twō sénténcés ūsíng thàt sýmbólísátión. Ī hópe Í'm nòt mákíng thís tōō cōmplícátéd. But yeah, dialects! "Juni" is mostly just pronounced "Jùnì", but sometimes "Jùní" and on Fyn even "Jūní"? Fyn does this to "onsdag" (wednesday) aswell, where "ònsdág" becomes "ōnsdāg", and they even change the O's "uh"-sound to a kind of throat-U! (Writing Æ like "ae", (which when read in english literally is what a danish Æ sounds like,)) "aeble" is mostly pronounced "āēblé", but sometimes in Jylland it's pronounced "āēbél", "āēbl" and a surprising amount of times even "áéwl"? The Jylland'ic dialect also applies that kind of funky pronounciation to "āērgelígt" (sad/a shame) which becomes "áéwl't", and somewhere far enough out on the countryside "àèg" (egg) becomes "ùhw"??? But let's make it even more confusing. Sjællands dialect, in my opinion the goofiest of them all, likes to do this weird thing where the people "double-pronounce" their assertive and sometimes even light vowels! With that meaning they break a vowel into 2; whereas the first part of the vowel (mostly) is pronounced assertively, and the second (mostly) lightly! So going back to "Jùnì", that would become "Jù-úní", "àèg" becomes "àè-áég" and "tált" (counted) turns into "tà-ált"! And here's the dot over the I; whenever they do this to vowels with an N right after, the second pronounciation of this vowel gets moved further along and onto that N, creating what sounds like a "consonant-syllable"!? Examples include "dánsé" (to dance) which becomes "dà - ń - sé", "Hènrík" (a name) which becomes "Hè - ń - rík" and get this, when this whole dialect-thing is applied to "Hans" (also a name), the N becoming almost its own syllable triggers the S to sound like a third syllable! So, the singularily-syllabled "Hàns" becomes this weird three-syllabled-where-two-of-them-are-fake-trick-consonant-syllables-"Hà - ń - ś"-word-thing. ... Danish is amazing.

[@fartreta]

In the South Jutlandic dialects (also struggling to hang on in Sydslesvig, or Schleswig as it's called in German) the definite article ('æ') comes before the noun, just like in English. So dialect speakers there say "Æ såg æ film" instead of "Jeg såg filmen" ('I saw the film'). Æ also means 'I' as you can see from the example.