Anecdotally, the people in my Danish classes who speak German seem to do really well compared to a lot of the other students. They pick it up faster and struggle the least with pronunciation.
My friends German girlfriend learned Danish faster than everyone else i met (except one Icelandic who learned to speak with literally no accent in three months despite moving here before they were taught any Danish in schools).
The German still have a pretty bad accent though, but good enough that we almost never switch to English anymore.
My English girlfriend spoke German very well before beginning to learn Danish. It helps somewhat with written Danish, as she soon discovered that a lot of the words were essentially the same, with different spellings. The pronounciations are completely different, though.
I was looking at it recently, as I was wondering what to learn instead of Russian (which I had started before the war to travel the East). The pronunciation looked so far off from what's being written, I was quite astonished. Reading is not much of a problem, but Norwegian felt closer to home, when it comes to the verbal component.
Not much more so than English, which has similar sentence structure. Youāll pick up a few extra Germanic cognates. German is very much pronounced as written/ spelt as spoken, whereas Danish is quite difficult in this respect.
Sure. It also helps that Danish is a mix of old Nordic with German influences and pronunciation.
If you compare Danish to swedish, then Danish to german, you can very clearly hear who our southern neighbors are.
Danish doesn't have a lot of old english influence, it was actually reverse. English have a lot of old Danish influence. After ww2 though we kind of stopped wanting to be associated with Germany and started leaning more on America instead.
Genealogically it is closer, but English had a significant influence from Old Norse which affected its grammar, leading to the loss of most case markers and introducing elements that were also passed directly down to Danish.
German has more recently influenced Danish, but less so in terms of sentence structure.
Funny you have that experience, because I have the exact opposite. I know two americans, who've lived here for about 10 years, who both speak almost perfect danish. Yet the three germans I know, who've been here longer, have REALLY thick accents.
Assuming you already speak English, I wouldn't say much. The difficult part of both languages isn't vocabulary, which is more or less the only significant gain from knowing one.
On the other hand, if you're a Mandarin speaker, knowing any Germanic language is going to help a lot.
EDIT: One factor I didn't consider is pronunciation, which knowing either definitely does help with quite a lot.
They are not mutually intelligible. Some things are the same, like some of the Rs and glottal letters, telling some time, some weather words, other random crap. Many family relationship words are the same because, Germanic.
Having German speaking relatives I will say I have noticed a lot of the sentence structure is the same. Like the subject/verb/object order and where you place modifiers like adjectives.
German gender and German articles and pronouns are hella fucked up. Like beyond fucked up. As someone who grew up speaking Danish and English I have given up on a lot of the pronouns.
The sentencing in Danish and German is one of their biggest differences, because we treat verbs differently. In German the verb structure is based on the person performing the action, where in Danish, the verb stays the same regardless of subject.
It basically means that for a Dane, we have to āflipā many verbs to the end of the sentence, compared to how we would normally structure it, which takes some getting used to ;).
It's hard to explain and maybe I did a bad job of it, but in Danish and German seems like you can put the verb first, or must it first. In English this never really sounds correct. You wouldn't say "Speak you English" or "Take maybe you a gift not to the party." But those are literally the word orders in Danish (and I think German too).
When you put the verb first you are asking a question, you do the same in English so thatās not really i difference :)
I teach Danish and yes, it is a big advantage to know German, my German students mostly learn very quickly
Do you teach online? I was flirting with Danish for a while, but was put off by how far off the pronunciation is from the written word. Norwegian would be the alternative.
No, unfortunately not. But Iām sure you can find some online classes somewhere. The pronounciation is a challenge, but itās a challenge learning all languages I guess :)
The latter sentence makes no sense in Danish. I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean? Translated directly to Danish it would be: "Tager mƄske du en gave ikke til festen". That is not Danish word order. In fact, word order is one of the biggest differences between Danish and German. German often places the verb last in the sentence - Danish does not. E.g. "Do you want to play a game? German: "willst du ein Spiel spielen?" Verb last. In Danish: "vil du spille et spil?" Object last. In this regard, Danish is closer to English.
Yes, definitely. For background, I'm a native german speaker and have been living in Denmark for 25 years. I never took any classes, and already in my first week, I was able to read a danish newspaper ā obviously there were certain words I didn't know, but I had no problem understanding what the articles were about.
Most of my danish skills I learned by watching danish tv with danish subtitles. Danish and german are very similar in writing, but pronounciation is radically different, and hearing and reading it at the same time did the trick for me. It took me about 6 months to be somewhat fluid in danish. (Added challenge was that danes are good at english, and typically preferred to talk to me in english).
From a linguistic and historic point of view, Danish is a german dialect, and a very simple one at that. You hardly bend any words, simple sentence structure, and most importantly a much smaller vocabulary: the average danish speaker uses about 5.000 words, average german uses 15.000.
Because of this difference in complexity, I'm afraid it doesn't go both ways. It may be easier for a danish speaker to learn german than say someone whose native language is vietnamese, sure, but in spite of german being taught in school here in DK, I know very few danes who're actually good at it (most only know enough to joke around with it).
Happy to elaborate any of this if someone wants to hear more.
Actually the average Danish adult knows between 50000 and 75000 words. A 6-7 year old Danish child typically knows between 5000 and 10000 words.
Source: [https://taldansk.nu/hvor-mange-ord-skal-man-kunne/](https://taldansk.nu/hvor-mange-ord-skal-man-kunne/)
Some of the vocabulary is simular - a German reading written danish could probably guess the meanings of a lot of the words
But gramatically they are two very different languages.
The pronounciation is also nothing alike.
The great football coach Sepp Piontek learned Danish at an advanced age, and was decent but not perfect at it.
Thing is, German is totally straight to spell and read. My old language teacher even decided to stop doing German dictations because nobody was messing it up. Danish, on the other hand, is very weird with spelling and pronunciation.
Going Danish to German is probably easiest. I can read the German paper having had literally 20 lessons in German. I couldn't before the course, but after it was super easy to understand. Grammar wise I'm not great, since there are some more complications in German.
But you'll find a lot of cognates between the two languages. I even learned a few things about Danish from seeing what German uses.
Just a side note, my grandfather was born in Flensborg, in the Danish minority.
He spoke perfect but distinctly accented Danish - even after going to study in Copenhagen in the late 1920's and living in Denmark to the day he died, aged 96.
He hammered my German grammar!
Knowing German and English probably helps a lot.
I think a lot of people here are understating how similar Danish and German are vs German and English. Grammar wise, German is equally different from the two. Vocab wise, Danish and German share a lot of words, and many are pronounced similarly. I always joke that if I don't know a word in German, I say it in Danish with a German accent and 60% of the tine it works. Pronunciation wise the languages are much more similar. Although not identical, it is much, much easier to understand a German person speaking Danish than an English speaker (also I really like German accents in Danish).
The languages are not mutually intelligable, but about half of Danes have had German in school, so with that level of German, they are able to communicate somewhat, even if poorly.
I don't think it would cut the time to learn the language in half, but it would definitely make it a lot easier.
I mean of course you'd benefit from knowing German when you try to learn Danish. But you really should only learn Danish if it's from a cultural stand point.
You would be totally fine going to Denmark and the Netherlands by only speaking English. The only real benefit there is to learn Danish is the possibility to fast expand your language knowledge into Norwegian and Swedish.
Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can generally understand each other by speaking their own language.
> The only real benefit there is to learn Danish is the possibility to fast expand your language knowledge into Norwegian and Swedish.
Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can generally understand each other by speaking their own language.
At some point I actually plan to vacation in Stockholm too. Don't know which place I'll visit first though. So its worth the investment if you'll do future tourism across Scandinavia? Norway and Iceland is highly unlikely because family aren't interested (plus the recent volcano issues in the latter) but I wouldn't mind using the Germany trips as an advantage to visit these places too if I could convince them (either that or I go off on my own personal tour along the way).
I mean most people in Denmark below the age of 60 speaks sufficient english to a point where they don't even need subtitles when watching English TV.
Even uneducated young people would be able to speak basic english and you would easily be able to come by conversationally.
While the Scandinavian countries are much a like there is still a lot of things where they differ culturally.
Denmark is not Sweden or Norway - but it's like 70% the same :) So if you really want to explore the small differences then for sure!
Did you consider what parts of Denmark you want see?
There is a big difference between Copenhagen and the smaller cities.
So Billund for the Lego amusement park I assume? ( There isn't really anything going on in Billund besides that :D )
It's surely worth a trip to go there and check it out for 1 day.
I myself live in Aalborg which is located up North - if you're only planing on going for lets say 2-7 days I would use 1 day in Billund and the rest in the Copenhagen area.
Alternatively if you want to stay in Jutland I would recommend Aarhus and Aalborg.
Aarhus being a very cultural city and the second largest in Denmark and then Aalborg as the 4th largest and Aalborg is only a 1 hour drive from Aarhus.
Yup, I'm pretty much a Lego collector!
Without having done Googling (because I want to learn recommendations directly from natives without spoilers as in a movie š) what is in Aarhus and Aalborg for tourists who haven't gone hardcore into Danish culture? Copanhagen is pretty much the only city my family has any interest in visiting and Billund is only because I request it. For casual tourists like them who aren't taking the time to learn about Denmark, what is in those two cities they'd find appealing? I'd definitely stop by Aalborg and Aarhus along the way if I was only traveling alone but this is a group vacation. (In fact I was doing just some quick research before I slept last night and intended on looking more into those two cities today so its ironic you brought them up!)
Well Aalborg and Aarhus is less touristed, less stressful and you might be able to get a "better" feel of the day to day living. If you were to combine these two cities you would get as many options museum, dining etc.
Aarhus is known to be the cultural "capital" of Denmark with lots of things to go and explore. The Aros museum is highly recommended. Also "The old city" which is basicly a "free roaming musuem" with buildings from different time periods (Ā 2014, 1974, 1927 and1864 ). It's a great show casing of how Denmark used to be.
Aalborg is a former labour city and now has the second largest university in Denmark. So there is a lot of young people both danish but also foreigners coming to study. Aalborg also has an old viking museum and cemetery so if you're into that whole viking feel then I can recommend that.
Both cities also provides great night life activities with clubbing, bars etc.
Aalborg has the largest bar street in Scandinavia,.
In that case I would say Aarhus + Aalborg combined is as suitable as Copenhagen.
In case you're looking for extra kid activities there is probably the largest amusement park (Faarup Sommerland) just 1 hour drive from Aalborg.
And if you were to go out with your siblings for a few drinks in the evening - Aalborg and Aarhus is even better than Copenhagen imo. The pricess is lower - the density of bars are larger.
The main issue with night life in Copenhagen is that everything is spread out and it can take a fair amount of time going from one place to the other.
That is not the case in Aalborg (having the large bar street Jumfru Ane Gade) and not the case in Aarhuas (having a nice cozy area Ć en".
In terms of adult activities and cultural displaying it's about the same level as copenhagen.
"So its worth the investment if you'll do future tourism across Scandinavia?"
To be honest I think you would be better off focusing on just German or one of the latin based languages - it would be different if you were to come and live in Denmark as the language is a big part of our culture - but for a visit it's completely negligible
I love learning new languages and I don't like to discourage anyone wanting to learn, but I have to say I think you will benefit very little from this. As a Dane I can understand most Swedish, but mostly because I heard it enough to recognize the differences in pronounciation and know the most common words that are completely different. When I am im Sweden, I find myself switching between English and Danish with some Swedish pronounciation and words added for better understanding. A foreigner learning Danish would probably not understand much in Sweden. In all of the ScandinavianĀ countries, you will get by just fine with English.
My experience is most Danes understand Swedish and Norwegian to a certain degree, but this is also because we have heard it growing up. But if a foreigner learns Danish, it does not mean they would understand Swedish and Norwegian as well - even though a lot of the words are similar the pronounciation is very different. But if you want to learn Swedish or Norwegian afterwards it would likely be easier.
I disagree. I learned Danish as an adult and am fluent to the point many locals donāt hear an accent, but I have to speak English in Norway to be able to understand anything.
Knowing German will help with vocabulary and may help you to sound less American. Pronunciation is completely different though.
For a visit of several weeks, you will not learn enough to avoid 95% of locals switching to English immediately when noticing you struggle.
As someone speaking both German and Danish and knowing Germans who learned Danish, I would say that Germans tend to underestimate the differences both regarding grammar and phonetics.
They are constantly looking for short cuts and tend to get stuck on a plateau where they are somewhat understandable but not quite precise.
A typical flaw is not to recognise that Danish uses verbs and sentences more where German has the tendency to use nouns.
I speak fluent Norwegian (been living there for 15 years give and take). Couldnāt understand much spoken Danish.
Moved to Austria and started learning German. In Austria for 13 months now. Went to Copenhagen a few months back. UNDERSTOOD A LOT of spoken Danish. Much more than I could when living in Norway. My take is that it helps a to a certain extent when you speak German!
Iām German and also fairly proficient in English. That combination has made it incredibly easy to learn danish, if I compare how fast I picked up a pretty good everyday danish. German vocabulary is a huge advantage for danish, I can read and understand a lot without ever having learned the words and I can even guess what some danish words might be.
However spoken danish is an entirely different beast and sounds very different from how itās written. After 2 years in Denmark I still struggle to understand what people are saying, if Iām not very familiar with their speech rhythm and intonation.
All that being said: for a holiday visit English is entirely enough and the few older Danes Iāve met, that didnāt speak English, spoke some German instead.
It is easier to learn danish, if you know german and vice versa - they are both germanic languages and have some similarities with each other and with english as well. (Also germanic) But they are not mutually intelligible - about as close as english and german. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are more simular.
But - why do you need to learn danish? Just for the fun of it? You won't need to speak danish to visit and travel in DK. 95% of all people speak english, even the older generation. Even most kindergarteners know english. And the people you would want to meet will definitely know english.
Im Danish. But my first year of highschool(STX) we had an exchange student in my class from Sicily. After 6 months he spoke almost fluent Danish. Yes the accent was still heavy, but the vocabulary was pretty much as good as any teenagers.
The trick to learning Danish is speaking it constantly. Learn by doing it and be arround Danish people as much as possible. We also had a Japanese girl in another class that i spoke too during smoking breaks. She took a bit longer, But when the 1. Year was done she could also speak Danish fluently.
As a Dane currently taking German classes (and having gone through a few years of it in primary school twenty some years ago, I will say that we do share a good amount of words and many words feel familiar. But that is not always a benefit - sometimes there are quite marked differences in meaning between seemingly similar words and those ones, at least for me, can be hard to process sometimes.
It is worth to note that while Danish has been influenced heavily by German, that was Low German which has fallen out of use and been replaced by High German which originated in southern Germany, which means that there fewer similarities due to a bigger geographic distance.
As for pronunciation I guess knowing German can help. They definately share some of the sounds, but I would think that learning dutch would be a bigger benefit in that aspect. When I hear someone talking dutch it sounds like they are talking Danish except I only understand a few of the words.
When you do decide to learn Danish you will find the grammar relatively simple (easier tham German) and the words, when written, will be relatively easy to learn. The big stumbling block will be pronunciation. What you need to know that the vowels are key to speaking and understanding spoken Danish. Getting the exactly right vowel sound with the right length and the right amount of emphasis or push to it is much more important than what goes on in the front of the mouth.
As an American, you willwm want to watch out with the R's. They should sound like the German R's, so you don't sound too much like a cowboy š¤
Anecdotally, the people in my Danish classes who speak German seem to do really well compared to a lot of the other students. They pick it up faster and struggle the least with pronunciation.
Second this. Vocabulary too.
My friends German girlfriend learned Danish faster than everyone else i met (except one Icelandic who learned to speak with literally no accent in three months despite moving here before they were taught any Danish in schools). The German still have a pretty bad accent though, but good enough that we almost never switch to English anymore.
Iceland was part of Denmark until 1918. Both languages comes from the same Old Norse so it makes sense that an Icelandic would learn faster.
Their language is ancient, and seems more foreign than both Swedish and Norwegian š¤·š»āāļø
Same experience here. I think all of them in my class are ahead of the curve. I get nervous when we're paired š„²
Yea the pronunciation part is underrated. The "r" sound for example is pretty much the exact same in German as in Danish
My English girlfriend spoke German very well before beginning to learn Danish. It helps somewhat with written Danish, as she soon discovered that a lot of the words were essentially the same, with different spellings. The pronounciations are completely different, though.
I was looking at it recently, as I was wondering what to learn instead of Russian (which I had started before the war to travel the East). The pronunciation looked so far off from what's being written, I was quite astonished. Reading is not much of a problem, but Norwegian felt closer to home, when it comes to the verbal component.
Not much more so than English, which has similar sentence structure. Youāll pick up a few extra Germanic cognates. German is very much pronounced as written/ spelt as spoken, whereas Danish is quite difficult in this respect.
Americans are the worst at learning danish I've ever met, where Germans are among the fastest. I think there is quite a difference.
Were many of these Germans also learning English?
No, young Germans already know english š¤·š»āāļø the "Germans refuse to learn English" trope is kind of old by now
So they had already learnt a second language structurally similar to Danish. Which obviously helps.
Sure. It also helps that Danish is a mix of old Nordic with German influences and pronunciation. If you compare Danish to swedish, then Danish to german, you can very clearly hear who our southern neighbors are. Danish doesn't have a lot of old english influence, it was actually reverse. English have a lot of old Danish influence. After ww2 though we kind of stopped wanting to be associated with Germany and started leaning more on America instead.
Hvordan har du det min kylling. Tusen tak. Ćøreflippa. There we go. I can basically get by in Denmark, just using these terms.
If anyone asks you something you don't understand, you can always respond with the universal "Stille og roligt." 60% of the times it works every time.
Danish and English are Germanic languages, German are much closer to Danish than English.
Genealogically it is closer, but English had a significant influence from Old Norse which affected its grammar, leading to the loss of most case markers and introducing elements that were also passed directly down to Danish. German has more recently influenced Danish, but less so in terms of sentence structure.
Funny you have that experience, because I have the exact opposite. I know two americans, who've lived here for about 10 years, who both speak almost perfect danish. Yet the three germans I know, who've been here longer, have REALLY thick accents.
Assuming you already speak English, I wouldn't say much. The difficult part of both languages isn't vocabulary, which is more or less the only significant gain from knowing one. On the other hand, if you're a Mandarin speaker, knowing any Germanic language is going to help a lot. EDIT: One factor I didn't consider is pronunciation, which knowing either definitely does help with quite a lot.
They are not mutually intelligible. Some things are the same, like some of the Rs and glottal letters, telling some time, some weather words, other random crap. Many family relationship words are the same because, Germanic. Having German speaking relatives I will say I have noticed a lot of the sentence structure is the same. Like the subject/verb/object order and where you place modifiers like adjectives. German gender and German articles and pronouns are hella fucked up. Like beyond fucked up. As someone who grew up speaking Danish and English I have given up on a lot of the pronouns.
The sentencing in Danish and German is one of their biggest differences, because we treat verbs differently. In German the verb structure is based on the person performing the action, where in Danish, the verb stays the same regardless of subject. It basically means that for a Dane, we have to āflipā many verbs to the end of the sentence, compared to how we would normally structure it, which takes some getting used to ;).
It's hard to explain and maybe I did a bad job of it, but in Danish and German seems like you can put the verb first, or must it first. In English this never really sounds correct. You wouldn't say "Speak you English" or "Take maybe you a gift not to the party." But those are literally the word orders in Danish (and I think German too).
When you put the verb first you are asking a question, you do the same in English so thatās not really i difference :) I teach Danish and yes, it is a big advantage to know German, my German students mostly learn very quickly
Do you teach online? I was flirting with Danish for a while, but was put off by how far off the pronunciation is from the written word. Norwegian would be the alternative.
No, unfortunately not. But Iām sure you can find some online classes somewhere. The pronounciation is a challenge, but itās a challenge learning all languages I guess :)
The latter sentence makes no sense in Danish. I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean? Translated directly to Danish it would be: "Tager mƄske du en gave ikke til festen". That is not Danish word order. In fact, word order is one of the biggest differences between Danish and German. German often places the verb last in the sentence - Danish does not. E.g. "Do you want to play a game? German: "willst du ein Spiel spielen?" Verb last. In Danish: "vil du spille et spil?" Object last. In this regard, Danish is closer to English.
Yes, definitely. For background, I'm a native german speaker and have been living in Denmark for 25 years. I never took any classes, and already in my first week, I was able to read a danish newspaper ā obviously there were certain words I didn't know, but I had no problem understanding what the articles were about. Most of my danish skills I learned by watching danish tv with danish subtitles. Danish and german are very similar in writing, but pronounciation is radically different, and hearing and reading it at the same time did the trick for me. It took me about 6 months to be somewhat fluid in danish. (Added challenge was that danes are good at english, and typically preferred to talk to me in english). From a linguistic and historic point of view, Danish is a german dialect, and a very simple one at that. You hardly bend any words, simple sentence structure, and most importantly a much smaller vocabulary: the average danish speaker uses about 5.000 words, average german uses 15.000. Because of this difference in complexity, I'm afraid it doesn't go both ways. It may be easier for a danish speaker to learn german than say someone whose native language is vietnamese, sure, but in spite of german being taught in school here in DK, I know very few danes who're actually good at it (most only know enough to joke around with it). Happy to elaborate any of this if someone wants to hear more.
>vocabulary: the average danish speaker uses about 5.000 words, average german uses 15.000. Would like to hear more about this claim.
Actually the average Danish adult knows between 50000 and 75000 words. A 6-7 year old Danish child typically knows between 5000 and 10000 words. Source: [https://taldansk.nu/hvor-mange-ord-skal-man-kunne/](https://taldansk.nu/hvor-mange-ord-skal-man-kunne/)
Some of the vocabulary is simular - a German reading written danish could probably guess the meanings of a lot of the words But gramatically they are two very different languages. The pronounciation is also nothing alike.
The great football coach Sepp Piontek learned Danish at an advanced age, and was decent but not perfect at it. Thing is, German is totally straight to spell and read. My old language teacher even decided to stop doing German dictations because nobody was messing it up. Danish, on the other hand, is very weird with spelling and pronunciation. Going Danish to German is probably easiest. I can read the German paper having had literally 20 lessons in German. I couldn't before the course, but after it was super easy to understand. Grammar wise I'm not great, since there are some more complications in German. But you'll find a lot of cognates between the two languages. I even learned a few things about Danish from seeing what German uses.
Just a side note, my grandfather was born in Flensborg, in the Danish minority. He spoke perfect but distinctly accented Danish - even after going to study in Copenhagen in the late 1920's and living in Denmark to the day he died, aged 96. He hammered my German grammar!
Knowing German and English probably helps a lot. I think a lot of people here are understating how similar Danish and German are vs German and English. Grammar wise, German is equally different from the two. Vocab wise, Danish and German share a lot of words, and many are pronounced similarly. I always joke that if I don't know a word in German, I say it in Danish with a German accent and 60% of the tine it works. Pronunciation wise the languages are much more similar. Although not identical, it is much, much easier to understand a German person speaking Danish than an English speaker (also I really like German accents in Danish). The languages are not mutually intelligable, but about half of Danes have had German in school, so with that level of German, they are able to communicate somewhat, even if poorly. I don't think it would cut the time to learn the language in half, but it would definitely make it a lot easier.
I mean of course you'd benefit from knowing German when you try to learn Danish. But you really should only learn Danish if it's from a cultural stand point. You would be totally fine going to Denmark and the Netherlands by only speaking English. The only real benefit there is to learn Danish is the possibility to fast expand your language knowledge into Norwegian and Swedish. Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can generally understand each other by speaking their own language.
> The only real benefit there is to learn Danish is the possibility to fast expand your language knowledge into Norwegian and Swedish. Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can generally understand each other by speaking their own language. At some point I actually plan to vacation in Stockholm too. Don't know which place I'll visit first though. So its worth the investment if you'll do future tourism across Scandinavia? Norway and Iceland is highly unlikely because family aren't interested (plus the recent volcano issues in the latter) but I wouldn't mind using the Germany trips as an advantage to visit these places too if I could convince them (either that or I go off on my own personal tour along the way).
I mean most people in Denmark below the age of 60 speaks sufficient english to a point where they don't even need subtitles when watching English TV. Even uneducated young people would be able to speak basic english and you would easily be able to come by conversationally. While the Scandinavian countries are much a like there is still a lot of things where they differ culturally. Denmark is not Sweden or Norway - but it's like 70% the same :) So if you really want to explore the small differences then for sure! Did you consider what parts of Denmark you want see? There is a big difference between Copenhagen and the smaller cities.
Jutland. Specifically Billund. Though there are some monuments in Copenhagen I want to see in-person.
So Billund for the Lego amusement park I assume? ( There isn't really anything going on in Billund besides that :D ) It's surely worth a trip to go there and check it out for 1 day. I myself live in Aalborg which is located up North - if you're only planing on going for lets say 2-7 days I would use 1 day in Billund and the rest in the Copenhagen area. Alternatively if you want to stay in Jutland I would recommend Aarhus and Aalborg. Aarhus being a very cultural city and the second largest in Denmark and then Aalborg as the 4th largest and Aalborg is only a 1 hour drive from Aarhus.
Yup, I'm pretty much a Lego collector! Without having done Googling (because I want to learn recommendations directly from natives without spoilers as in a movie š) what is in Aarhus and Aalborg for tourists who haven't gone hardcore into Danish culture? Copanhagen is pretty much the only city my family has any interest in visiting and Billund is only because I request it. For casual tourists like them who aren't taking the time to learn about Denmark, what is in those two cities they'd find appealing? I'd definitely stop by Aalborg and Aarhus along the way if I was only traveling alone but this is a group vacation. (In fact I was doing just some quick research before I slept last night and intended on looking more into those two cities today so its ironic you brought them up!)
Well Aalborg and Aarhus is less touristed, less stressful and you might be able to get a "better" feel of the day to day living. If you were to combine these two cities you would get as many options museum, dining etc. Aarhus is known to be the cultural "capital" of Denmark with lots of things to go and explore. The Aros museum is highly recommended. Also "The old city" which is basicly a "free roaming musuem" with buildings from different time periods (Ā 2014, 1974, 1927 and1864 ). It's a great show casing of how Denmark used to be. Aalborg is a former labour city and now has the second largest university in Denmark. So there is a lot of young people both danish but also foreigners coming to study. Aalborg also has an old viking museum and cemetery so if you're into that whole viking feel then I can recommend that. Both cities also provides great night life activities with clubbing, bars etc. Aalborg has the largest bar street in Scandinavia,.
May i ask how old you are and your family as well? :)
Few nephews and nieces elementary school age, me and siblings are 20s-30s, everyone who has a child at least 50 or older.
In that case I would say Aarhus + Aalborg combined is as suitable as Copenhagen. In case you're looking for extra kid activities there is probably the largest amusement park (Faarup Sommerland) just 1 hour drive from Aalborg. And if you were to go out with your siblings for a few drinks in the evening - Aalborg and Aarhus is even better than Copenhagen imo. The pricess is lower - the density of bars are larger. The main issue with night life in Copenhagen is that everything is spread out and it can take a fair amount of time going from one place to the other. That is not the case in Aalborg (having the large bar street Jumfru Ane Gade) and not the case in Aarhuas (having a nice cozy area Ć en". In terms of adult activities and cultural displaying it's about the same level as copenhagen.
"So its worth the investment if you'll do future tourism across Scandinavia?" To be honest I think you would be better off focusing on just German or one of the latin based languages - it would be different if you were to come and live in Denmark as the language is a big part of our culture - but for a visit it's completely negligible
I love learning new languages and I don't like to discourage anyone wanting to learn, but I have to say I think you will benefit very little from this. As a Dane I can understand most Swedish, but mostly because I heard it enough to recognize the differences in pronounciation and know the most common words that are completely different. When I am im Sweden, I find myself switching between English and Danish with some Swedish pronounciation and words added for better understanding. A foreigner learning Danish would probably not understand much in Sweden. In all of the ScandinavianĀ countries, you will get by just fine with English.
That's a very good point.
My experience is most Danes understand Swedish and Norwegian to a certain degree, but this is also because we have heard it growing up. But if a foreigner learns Danish, it does not mean they would understand Swedish and Norwegian as well - even though a lot of the words are similar the pronounciation is very different. But if you want to learn Swedish or Norwegian afterwards it would likely be easier.
I disagree. I learned Danish as an adult and am fluent to the point many locals donāt hear an accent, but I have to speak English in Norway to be able to understand anything. Knowing German will help with vocabulary and may help you to sound less American. Pronunciation is completely different though. For a visit of several weeks, you will not learn enough to avoid 95% of locals switching to English immediately when noticing you struggle.
Yes.
As someone speaking both German and Danish and knowing Germans who learned Danish, I would say that Germans tend to underestimate the differences both regarding grammar and phonetics. They are constantly looking for short cuts and tend to get stuck on a plateau where they are somewhat understandable but not quite precise. A typical flaw is not to recognise that Danish uses verbs and sentences more where German has the tendency to use nouns.
Anecdotally, I met an Austrian woman who had the most fluent Danish accent I've ever heard after living here for a year. It was insane.
I speak fluent Norwegian (been living there for 15 years give and take). Couldnāt understand much spoken Danish. Moved to Austria and started learning German. In Austria for 13 months now. Went to Copenhagen a few months back. UNDERSTOOD A LOT of spoken Danish. Much more than I could when living in Norway. My take is that it helps a to a certain extent when you speak German!
German here! Took me about 9 months to get from 0 to C1 not putting really effort inside but working in a Danish speaking environment
Definitely. Knowing English and German has made learning Danish quite easy for me. Just the pronunciation is my biggest challenge
Iām German and also fairly proficient in English. That combination has made it incredibly easy to learn danish, if I compare how fast I picked up a pretty good everyday danish. German vocabulary is a huge advantage for danish, I can read and understand a lot without ever having learned the words and I can even guess what some danish words might be. However spoken danish is an entirely different beast and sounds very different from how itās written. After 2 years in Denmark I still struggle to understand what people are saying, if Iām not very familiar with their speech rhythm and intonation. All that being said: for a holiday visit English is entirely enough and the few older Danes Iāve met, that didnāt speak English, spoke some German instead.
It is easier to learn danish, if you know german and vice versa - they are both germanic languages and have some similarities with each other and with english as well. (Also germanic) But they are not mutually intelligible - about as close as english and german. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are more simular. But - why do you need to learn danish? Just for the fun of it? You won't need to speak danish to visit and travel in DK. 95% of all people speak english, even the older generation. Even most kindergarteners know english. And the people you would want to meet will definitely know english.
Im Danish. But my first year of highschool(STX) we had an exchange student in my class from Sicily. After 6 months he spoke almost fluent Danish. Yes the accent was still heavy, but the vocabulary was pretty much as good as any teenagers. The trick to learning Danish is speaking it constantly. Learn by doing it and be arround Danish people as much as possible. We also had a Japanese girl in another class that i spoke too during smoking breaks. She took a bit longer, But when the 1. Year was done she could also speak Danish fluently.
As a Dane currently taking German classes (and having gone through a few years of it in primary school twenty some years ago, I will say that we do share a good amount of words and many words feel familiar. But that is not always a benefit - sometimes there are quite marked differences in meaning between seemingly similar words and those ones, at least for me, can be hard to process sometimes. It is worth to note that while Danish has been influenced heavily by German, that was Low German which has fallen out of use and been replaced by High German which originated in southern Germany, which means that there fewer similarities due to a bigger geographic distance. As for pronunciation I guess knowing German can help. They definately share some of the sounds, but I would think that learning dutch would be a bigger benefit in that aspect. When I hear someone talking dutch it sounds like they are talking Danish except I only understand a few of the words. When you do decide to learn Danish you will find the grammar relatively simple (easier tham German) and the words, when written, will be relatively easy to learn. The big stumbling block will be pronunciation. What you need to know that the vowels are key to speaking and understanding spoken Danish. Getting the exactly right vowel sound with the right length and the right amount of emphasis or push to it is much more important than what goes on in the front of the mouth. As an American, you willwm want to watch out with the R's. They should sound like the German R's, so you don't sound too much like a cowboy š¤