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LEARNING DANISH

Easier than learning German? Four myths about the Danish language

So, you want to learn Danish? To help you make sure you know what you're getting into, we've looked into the most common myths about the language and why they're not true.

Published: 15 March 2024 16:47 CET

Easier than learning German? Four myths about the Danish language

Are there any misconceptions about the Danish language? Photo by yasara hansani on Unsplash

1. It’s interchangeable with the Scandinavian languages

The Danish language can be sold as a kind of “buy one, get two free” offer, and many a learner is lured into Danish class with the promise of travelling across Scandinavia, speaking Danish and being understood by Swedes and Norwegians alike.

Sadly, it’s not quite true, despite what Swedish-Danish crime drama The Bridge would have you believe. Even native Danes might end up resorting to English with their neighbours to avoid misunderstandings, as Danish Tiktok and Instagram creator Kelly Louise Killjoy makes fun of here.

@kellylouisekilljoy

When Scandinavians are expected to understand each other but they’re speaking Danish 🇩🇰🇸🇪🇳🇴 #scandinavia #denmark #sweden #norway #language

♬ Reading Rainbow Theme Song – Reading Rainbow

Norwegian is more similar to Danish than Swedish, especially in written form where there is a lot of common vocabulary and letters such as the ø, which in Swedish is ö. This is because Norway was a part of the Danish kingdom between the 14th and 19th centuries and everything official had to be written in Danish. However the spoken language does not sound the same. Norwegian is actually closer to Swedish in terms of pronunciation, despite the words being different.

Bilingual conversations can work if both people remember to speak slowly and clearly. But for most English-speaking people still in the process of learning Danish, or who have had little to no exposure of the neighbour languages, it’s going to be far easier to stick to English in Norway or Sweden.

2. It’s one of the hardest languages in the world

Danish, with its plethora of vowels, has a reputation among newcomers to Denmark as being one of the world’s hardest languages to learn.

However the Foreign Service Institute ranks Danish as a “Category 1” language in terms of the amount of time needed for English speakers to learn it – no different to French, Italian or Spanish, but easier than German and non-European languages.

There are four factors to consider when learning any language, Kasper Boye, Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics told The Local in 2017.

1. The grammatical or phonological proximity of the language being learned with one’s own.

2. Motivation for learning a new language.

3. Ability or talent for learning a language (known as a sprogøre – literally, ‘ear for language’ in Danish).

4. The amount of work put in to learning.

The thing that makes Danish unusual and therefore more difficult to speak for many, is the number of vowels.

While around 50 percent of the world’s 6-7000 existing languages have five vowels and English has around ten vowels – which is already a lot – Danish has 20 by a conservative analysis and as many as 30 vowels by less conservative analysis, Boye said.

But it doesn’t make it impossible to learn, nor the hardest language in the world. It just takes a lot of patience to get to speaking level.

3. Some words are just untranslatable

We’re thinking pålæg, altså, overskud, sympatisk, jo, træls and of course hygge.

But it all depends on how you think about the concept of untranslatable words.

These words don’t have a precise one-word English translation, but there are plenty of equivalents in other languages. Swedish mysig and German gemütlich are very similar to hygge for example.

And it’s not just the Danish language where some words don’t translate directly into English. German for example has its fair share of words that are impossible to translate.

It’s also about context. If you say “coffee”, Danes might instantly think Americano, Italians will think espresso, and Brits might think coffee with milk. If you say “city”, the size of population you’d think of will differ depending on the speaker’s culture.

The meaning of adjectives like “polite” or “punctual” also differ between speakers and cultures and the same even goes for prepositions: på usually means “on” when translated to English, but can also mean “in” and “to” depending on context.

Even the simplest-seeming words mean different things to different people, and different cultural contexts add an extra layer to that.

4. Danish isn’t a beautiful language

In Danish, the words are shortened, the consonants softened and the endings almost swallowed. Then there’s the glottal stop, which are words containing stød. This gives rise to the famous expression that Danish sounds like you have a potato is stuck in your throat.

It’s true that Danish is not regarded as one of the romance languages like French or Italian, but it does have its own charm.

One is that the Danish language has a lot of words that have multiple meanings, such as “dør.” You can use it to mean “door” or “dies”: “Den dør vil ikke åbne” (that door won’t open) versus “personen i filmen dør” (the person in the movie dies).

Then there are some words that are very literal. Brusebad, meaning ‘spray bath’ for shower; køleskab, meaning ‘cooling cupboard’ for fridge; flyvemaskine, meaning ‘flying machine’ for aeroplane; græsslåmaskine, meaning ‘grass hitting machine’ for lawn mower and sporvognsskinneskidtskraber, meaning ‘tram wagon track dirt scraper’ for a person who cleans tramway rails.

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'Make it fun': How foreigners in Denmark help their kids become bilingual

For foreign residents in Denmark with children, the matter of bilingualism can be one that requires a lot of thought.

Questions can include which languages to speak at home, how important is it to you that your children speak your mother tongue, and how to ensure they are strong at speaking the local language – in this case, Danish.

We previously spoke to an expert about the topic, whose advice included the recommendation that “parent(s) should speak in their mother tongue and stay authentic”, and also touched on school options and technical aspects of language acquisition in kids.

Below is a selection of the overwhelming number of survey responses we received from our readers. Thank you to all those who took time to get in touch.

“My only tip is to speak your own language with your children confidently and consistently whatever people around think or say,” said Radu, a Romanian who lives in Copenhagen.

Radu said he has two children, a 5-year-old who goes to an English-speaking preschool, and a 7-year-old who also went to the preschool and now attends Danish state school. The children speak Danish with their mother and Romanian with their father.

“The Danish system and society are very focused on making foreigners speak Danish, but don’t let them assimilate your children while you are trying to integrate,” Radu said.

“We want them to be multilingual,” he said of his children.

“We think that’s the most beneficial for their development and understanding of the world. We also want them to communicate naturally with both sides of their family and not end up speaking English with relatives,” he said.

Born in Denmark

Silvia, who is Italian and lives in Copenhagen, said that Italian is the only language spoken at home between her, her two children (3 and 6 years) and their father, who is also Italian. The children were born in Denmark.

The children “go to a public Danish school and there they only speak Danish”, she said.

“We want them to be fluent in both Italian and Danish, and we know that they will pick up English very easily in school. Having three languages in the pocket will already be amazing, when it comes to languages, the more the better!,” Silvia wrote.

“The only tip is keep it clear, set a language for a specific context (home/school/family etc…) and keep it, it’s easier for the brain when you can contextualise your learning experience,” she said.

Alison, a reader in Aarhus, said she speaks “90 percent” French to her little boy who was born in Denmark in 2022. His dad is Danish and he attends a local Danish daycare, she explained. The parents speak English to each other.

“We want him to be bilingual, we see it as a plus and he needs French to communicate with French family members,” she said.

“For now we just speak each our language. We make sure to have books in French, listen to songs and watch cartoons in French to make it fun,” she said.

One reader who responded to our survey described the reverse situation – speaking Danish in a home in another country.

“My partner is Danish and she moved to the UK many years ago to live with me. We have two children. We didn’t marry and my partner and two daughters are Danish nationals with Danish passports and citizenship,” said the reader, Dominic.

The family plans to move to Denmark next year and Dominic, as the only non-Danish speaker, has now begun learning Danish. Both languages are spoken at home, he said.

“Mother speaks to daughters in Danish – I speak to them in English. When we all speak it’s in English. I am learning Danish,” he said.

“We have always used two languages. It was natural to raise our daughters with two concurrent cultures because that’s what they are – a mix of both,” he said.

Kelly in Aarhus has two children born in Denmark with one British and one Danish parent.

“We run one parent, one language [also known as the OPOL method, ed.] at home. We might have liked to have sent our kids to a bilingual school but the only one (in Aarhus) just closed so our only real option is to send them to a local folkeskole [state school, ed.],” she said.

“Have two language profiles on your streaming services so they can watch cartoons in both languages,” she tipped.

“Me and my wife came from Nepal to Denmark in 2017,” began Sapan, who lives in Copenhagen’s Vestegn.

“We had our first kid in 2019 and the second one in 2022 (in Denmark),” he said.

“Me and my wife communicate most of the time at our home in our native tongue which is Nepalese. This is to ensure that the kids can understand Nepalese language as well,” he said, adding that the children now attend Danish preschool.

“We are really careful and don’t want them to struggle with their Danish language so we help them with the Danish at home as well. Both of us have been to Danish language school. We allow only books, TV programmes, etc in Danish at home. We also help them to translate both languages,” he said.

“We want them to be multilingual so that they have multiple choices for their future”, Sapan said.

Moved to Denmark

Other readers, who moved to Denmark after their children were born, described the experience of older children learning Danish.

“I have two kids (9 and 13, today). We were all born and raised in Brazil. When we moved to Denmark, two years ago, they were 7 and 11 and were fluent in Portuguese and speak a little English,” wrote Luiz, who lives in Aalborg.

The children now go to a Danish state school where they mainly speak Danish, he said.

“It is great to see how they developed both Danish and English in the last two years,” he said.

“I had an amazing experience with the folkeskole. There, both my kids had Danish classes full time during the first six months, together with other internationals. Teachers were great and, today, both of them are attending the regular classes on the second and seventh grade,” he explained.

“It helped us a lot to watch cartoons in Danish (thanks, Ramasjang!) and often visit the library and borrow some books for them to read,” Luiz said.

Another reader said that she sometimes found it difficult to always use her mother tongue in her family setting in Denmark.

More than two languages

“We are German and American and moved with our children (son, now eight and daughter, five) to Denmark two years ago. Everyone understands both languages but when we are all together we speak mostly English,” wrote Cornelia from Copenhagen.

“Mum and Dad speak English together, but when the kids are there I try to speak German. Kids might answer in all three languages but Danish is their strongest now,” she said.

“Both kids are in a Danish environment. Son has some English-speaking friends, which is so important! I am having problems to maintain the German because I am now the only one here who speaks it to the kids, outside family and friends abroad,” she explained.

“We are trying to maintain trilingualism. Every language is an enrichment and will open future possibilities. We read books and watch TV in all three languages,” she added.

The highest number of languages spoken by children among our survey responses was four: Turkish, Italian, Danish and English.

Deniz in Copenhagen said his children, age 3 and 7, were born in Denmark to Turkish and Italian parents.

“Mom speaks Turkish with the kids. Dad speaks Italian with the kids. Mom and Dad speak English and Italian to each other,” he explained.

The children attend Danish daycare and school and “speak Turkish with each other when they play together. They speak Danish, Italian, Turkish or English when other family members or friends are around them,” he said.

Deniz explained that he preferred to bring up the children in a multilingual environment “so that they feel they are rooted in Denmark but they also feel connected to Turkey and Italy and communicate with family.”

“English is also important to communicate with everyone,” he said.

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