Been learning Danish since May 2019. Danish is easy to learn, and hard to pronounce....UNLESS you know about Mic's Languages haha. This channel has been so helpful to me, and other Danish learners I know compliment me a lot on my pronunciation, and I credit this channel for that
I have been learning danish since 2014 and i consider myself pretty good at grammar and writting, but when it comes to watch a movie i can barely understand it, it is so frustrating
@@Sohamsfriendedits u r lucky. If U native Danish speaker other languages not so important for me. Selvom jeg har boet 4 året i Danmark jeg kan ikke kommunikere på dansk
A lot of Danes (and other Scandinavians) are saying they switch to English to be helpful and because it's quicker. I'm sure this is true. However, if it's the case of a newcomer living in Denmark trying to integrate and learn the language then switching to English is simply a passive aggressive way of telling them 'keep out, this is our language not yours'. And if it's not meant that way they should pause and think that it may be perceived that way. Let me put it this way. Refusing to speak Danish is like having somebody arrive at a party in your house and at the door you say "Oh, don't come in. Wait outside and we'll all come out to you and have the party out here". Letting them join in the conversation in Danish is like saying "Oh, nice to see you. Come inside, welcome to my home".
I agree. But as you say, people first have to think about it in order to get to the same conclusion. Most people probably (/hopefully) don't intend to be rude, they just haven't considered that maybe the energy/relationship with the other person will be better off if they avoid switching to English. Deep inside I think we all want to have good relationships with others, be it strangers that we meet once or people that we interact with daily, but the Zeitgeist we are in seems to be about aggression and short-sightedness, not considering the consequences of the way we interact. People who can overcome that, will be more "successful" than those who partake in the divisive ways that are spread by the media etc.
Yes but sometimes you, and they, don't have time for language lessons. For example at the counter while paying something, there are people waiting and people get nervous fast when someone takes a bit too much time to finish the transaction. In a more relaxed context, I had no problem trying to insert a couple of words and let them repeat sometimes to make sure I understood correctly how it's pronounced.
As a Danish- native English translator, the biggest feature of Danish for me is its economy of words. Generally word counts increase about 30% when translating a Danish text into English. Translating a French text into English usually means a reduced word count of about 20%. Part of this comes from the extensive use of composite words and the definite article of nouns using one word instead of two, but does not entirely explain the improved word economy. Also, if it makes anyone feel better, the average standard of written Danish among native Danish speakers is pretty dreadful (personal pet hate is when people use "og" instead of "at"). It certainly makes me feel better about the mistakes I still make after living in Denmark for almost 30 years.
As a Dane living in America for 30 years, I can confirm that you never pick it all up. You simply must be born into it to completely master all the intricate details, however you will get to a level that flows without effort in a few years and you will notice your universrity educated Danish friends butcher the sentence order regularly.
There are not many channels that teach Danish and your's so good, so helpful! Great video and content quality. Thank you so much. Greetings from Brazil )
Great video! Yes, I think English is the only Germanic language that doesn't have the verb as the second idea. You're spot on with what you say about the experience of learning and using Danish in Denmark. I lived there for ten years spread between 1990 and 2014, with multiple addresses across Copenhagen and in Århus and on Bornholm. Being from England, I was constantly 'Englished', and it was only through dogged persistence that I managed to get people to speak to me in Danish, even as my command of the language improved. There were even times - many times, actually - when I would speak to a stranger in a bar, say, for a good half an hour in Danish, and by that time they'd approach the subject of me sounding like I might not be from 'these parts'. With 100% guarantee, I always knew that the moment I said I was from the UK, the next word out of the Dane's mouth would be in English. Every. Single. Time! They'd then continue in English as if the previous half an hour in Danish had never happened. I was left thinking it was a deeply ingrained national identity issue: you're one of us or you're not one of us, as if it was: Danes speak Danish, and therefore non-Danes don't speak Danish. It was a daily fight, which is quite sad, really. And I'd studied phonetics and worked obsessively to get my pronunciation as accurate as possible. The hardest part of Danish is definitely listening skills, by the way. Danes typically speak with 'raised consonants' - just like in Friends, when Chandler mumbled on the phone to Joey that he was trapped in an ATM vestibule with Jill Goodacre. That's the freaky thing that so many Danes do all the time! I love the language - it's a fun challenge - and I love speaking it. Pity that I no longer live there. But I can still speak to myself in the language!
Wow, great comment. You seem to be a good storyteller, that's at least the impression I get from reading this 😉 The experience you have had where Danes switch to English could be interpreted as you do, i. e. you are not a part of "us", or Danes just love speaking English and are happy when they finally get a chance to talk to a native English speaker. Or both at the same time. It's sad that you don't have anybody to talk to in Danish. I guess you could always find somebody on the internet, especially if you're ready to pay for it, for example in Italki... 🤔
@@MicsLanguages The question is: is mumbling the norm? I think it is: I think it's the standard, unmarked form for most speakers of the language. I don't think any of the surrounding languages work like that. It's fascinating!
Can I pass on the comments of a friend of mine who is English and speaks Russian fluently? He said he loves the fact that when he's with Russian friends they all speak together in Russian. People never speak to him in English. He says it makes him feel accepted and welcomed as part of the group - not an outsider. This is part of the joys of learning foreign languages. After I asked him to read your comments he said the attitude of people in places like the Nordic nations, The Netherlands etc is passive aggressive. Although it's probably never meant that way, he perceives it as passive aggressive at two levels. IF your level in the language is advanced as yours is but an individual replies in English anyway, he gives out the message he still considers his English to be better than yours, which may not even be true. At another level, if it's a group and they switch to English it's, as you said, like they're saying you can't be part of our group because you're an outsider. It's like knocking on somebody's door for a party and people saying 'you can't come in, we'll come out to you and we'll talk outside'. I repeat that it may not be the intention but that is the effect and it feels passive aggressive in its effect or at the very least rude. I was just reading a book about moving to Denmark and in it the author said you'll never be truly a part of the society if you don't learn the language. I wonder how a Dane/Swede etc would react if you said 'you know, when you speak to me in English it makes me feel like an outsider who is not welcome in'. How would they react? Probably surprised because they'd never thought of it that way.
To be honest, I switch to English even when talking to Swedes or Norwegians... Had a British manager at some point, he spoke Danish very well, but he had given up on "om/hvis" which led to some quite fun sentences at times. Bottom line is just that it may be easier to switch to English, especially if it's something that you don't want to be misunderstood.
I'm English and both a professional linguist and a keen amateur learner. The old switching to English thing is a real pain for native English speakers learning other languages. It has been an incentive at times though. You know sometimes you HAVE to be really good to stop them switching to English so it makes you work hard. It's those countries where the people both speak English well and aren't used to hearing their language spoken with an accent or imperfectly which are the problem. I was struck by the comment below by the English guy who said he was speaking in the language for half an hour and then the other person switched to English as soon as he knew he was speaking to an Englishman. It happened to me in a bar in the Czech republic once. I did Czech as part of my degree and, all modesty aside, my Czech was much better than his English but we switched to English and I was too polite to insist. I just left pretty quickly. I've even been known to lie when asked where I come from. I tell them I'm Russian or Romanian and don't really speak English. I do have a friend who lived in Denmark and learnt the language and she said on a one to one basis Danes would often speak to her in English but in a group they'd all speak Danish and she could join in happily.
I'm pretty sure if you tell a dane, that you're trying to learn our language, they wouldn't mind the minor inconvenience it would be, to listen to danish with a strong accent. Might even get a few good laughs out of it! In shops and the like however, they will switch to english. Just because it is easier and takes less time to expedite a customer, than to try guesswork what it is you want. Also, I think for a lot of danes, switching to english is a way, to not let foreigners embarrass themselves trying to pronounce danish.
I can read this post but I'd rather swallow porcupines than try to read it aloud, though, come to think of it, it might be easier to pronounce Danish after swallowing a porcupine.
I used to visit a Danish family quite often in the 70s. They all spoke very good English, even the young children as they were taught it at school and wanted to learn, unlike my learning of French at school where I was not motivated. English has status in Denmark as I often heard them criticising others who did not speak as good English. I tried to learn Danish and can read it even now but the pronunciation and its rules were beyond me. I used to buy books in Denmark that were all word for word translations from English and then read them both at the same time. I do remember at the British customs where I had a book 'Pa veg mod doden' (sorry about the vowels) which was 'The road to dusty death' by Alistair McClean. The customs guy saw the Danish book and asked me if it was pornographic as at the time porn was available easily in Denmark but not in the UK. I replied: "would it matter if it were?" - my best reply of all time!
A swede here, learning Danish. I've spoken Swedish and Finnish my whole life and when I started learning Danish I was shocked that it actually was really easy to start to understand it when it's being spoken by people. In sweden when you mention the Danish language everyone goes kind of like ''porridge people'' ''porridge language'' It takes some time to learn it but when you have learned how the soft D works it gets so much easier! Great job, you're the only one who has actually helped me with my Danish, I appreciate it!
Great to hear that you find Danish fairly easy. It shouldn't be too difficult if somebody really wants to learn it and puts in the right attitude and work. Thank you very much for your comment, have fun improving your Danish!
I’m Saudi , so Arabic is my mother language . Arabic is a very difficult language with a complicated grammar system. Naturally, my language of choice has always been English since my parents mainly communicated with us in English growing up. I, however, have always been obsessed with the danish language because of my deep deeeeep love of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales. When I was a teenager I wrote tens of letters for him and promised to visit his grave as an adult and leave them there. My father laughed at me and said “mockingly” what made you think his soul could read English. I vowed to learn Danish. I fell madly in love with everything Danish ? I even force feed my kids st.lucia saffron buns 😂😂. I’m 36 and I just started fulfilling my dream of learning Danish, I figured it can’t be more difficult than Arabic! It’s a beautiful language and I find it so elegant but hard to understand and mind you there aren’t a lot of Danes here to practice with 😂😂. Your vids have been a breath of fresh air , simplifying everything so I don’t feel dumb with my mistakes. I believe that the mumbling thing “ this might sound silly” is just a hygge thing! 😅 I think Danes are so relaxed that they refuse to be bothered by over enunciating and I find it rather charming. learning a foreign language is always a long process but it does not have to be a daunting task if you enjoy the ride and just don’t take it too seriously. Thank you so much for your videos.
Dear Nisma, thank you very much for your beautiful story. Your enthusiasm really shines through in the way you write. Very vivid. I'm glad to hear that my videos are helpful for you to get closer to your dream of learning Danish. When you write your letters to H. C. Andersen in Danish, feel free to send me a copy 😁
Swedes also tend to switch to English the minute they spot a foreign accent in one's Swedish or a second's hesitation before one finding the right word. That happened to me often in Stockholm at the beginning of my time there when I was learning the language ( I am a Spanish-speaker). However, I learned to resort to a trick: Whenever my interlocutor tried to switch to English, I would excuse myself, in my still broken Swedish, and say: "ursäkta, jag talar inte engelska, jag talar bara ryska och nu svenska". That did the trick! Fortunately, I never encountered any Swede who spoke Russian and wanted to practice his/her Russian with me!
Haha that's a great trick. Maybe you should choose something like Georgian or Armenian, then you are even safer 😉 But definitely, one needs to resort to those kinds of tricks in order to be able to practice the language, at least in DK and Sweden. Thanks for the comment!
@@MicsLanguages I’ve just recently found your videos on RUclips. I must totally say “kudos”!! As a language scholar, I find it a very entertaining pastime to compare the similarities and differences in the romance languages among themselves (French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), as well as in the main Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish). Your videos have provided a wealth of information and explanations about the Danish language, which makes it all the more interesting when comparing a Danish structure to what I would normally say in Swedish. One question though, I have been trying to find an equivalent between the Swedish/Danish forms m of “to think or to believe”. Swedish has: att tycka, att tro and att tänka. What would the similar/equivalent verbs be in Danish? Could you please make a video with examples sometime? Mange tak!!!
I think Danes will switch to English because it is rare for a foreigner to speak Danish well. It’s just easier to go to English rather than struggle to understand one another in Danish. I sometimes wish I didn’t speak English actually. As soon as people know you speak English, they usually want to practice their English with you! 😀 English is the Swiss Army knife of languages, basically anywhere you are in the developed world, someone will know some English. But with dedication, and attention to detail I think any language can be learned..endda dansk! 🇩🇰🇩🇰
The best language tutorial I ever saw on youtube, not only in terms of Danish-oriented lessons! Very thorough and with nice explanations on the grammatical aspects between languages, comparing and explaining! And by thye way; I'm convinced that Danes tend to switch to English very quickly in order to accommodate the foreigner and also to speed up the conversation to make it run more smoothly. This also due to the fact that Danes speak English on a decent level generally.
Hi Carina. Thanks for your nice words :) And yeah, modern Danes are fairly efficient people, so your reasons for Danes switching to English make total sense.
@@MicsLanguages Hey Mic, you're so welcome! I hope a lot of people practising their grip will be heading your way. Hav en fantastisk dag, og tak igen... Tschüss und einen schönen Tag noch
Ok, hurtigere og nemmere hvis jeg svare på Engelsk, så… Michael, that was brilliant! You are such a good teacher. So many interesting and helpful points you addressed, many of which I’ve not heard anyone else acknowledge before. I was nodding my head the whole way through. In particular it was the cultural differences you mentioned which resonated the strongest. That you specifically identified that Danes are such great English speakers because of their exposure to English language television, film and music was such a relevant observation, because you then logically concluded that Danish learners in turn need to seek out and watch Danish films and television, and hear Danish music to help them learn. Ideally, the same songs again and again until we know all the words and can pronounce them all. Also, that Danes don’t like to correct and are not used to hearing foreigners speaking their language badly is something I’ve experienced. They’re more likely to ask me to repeat my mispronunciation of Danish (so that they can laugh at it and let others hear how bad it is) rather than help me by saying the correct pronunciation. Yes, the vowels are tricky compared to English. In English you can mispronounce many vowels and the words are still recognisable and acceptable. Castle - car stel & cah stel Tomato - toe may toe & toe mar toe Not so in Danish, if I say bag wrong, then I’m saying sausage and get laughed at. Amazing that Danish children take relatively longer to learn their own language than most other children do. Adjective forms. Yes, this is an important point. Rød røde rødt. Doesn’t exist in English. Sentence inversions, again, very important and a big difference, but I think not so tricky to remember, just practice. The only thing I think you might want to add to this video is the soft D which we don’t have in English. Brød, handler, hvid, osv… I know you’ve covered it before, but I think it’s one of the most difficult things for native English speakers. Also, a major difference between the two languages is that in English, 95% of the time, adding an s to the end of the word (or if it ends with a y replacing the y or ey with an ies) makes it plural. Man / woman to men women is an exception to the rule! While in Danish there are many ways a word could become plural, such as adding the suffix of E or ER, or changing the final vowel, or the order of the last 2 letters, or leaving it as-is (æg). Just a case of remembering them all! You covered so much important information. I think it was the most helpful learning Danish video I’ve ever watched and I started learning exactly 2 years ago! Tak skal du have.
Wow, Roger, thank you for taking the time to write such a nice comment. I'm glad the video resonated with you. And thanks for mentioning the two extra cases I could have included. The soft D and the plural endings. I didn't think about adding the plural at all, but if I were to make the video now, I would definitely include it. Thanks again, this comment made my day :)
Oh my god. I was considering learning danish cause it sounded so good when I heard it from mads mikkelsen and I even started it on duolingo. But when I saw all those words you pronounced with B, I'm so scared. I'm not so sure now. I mean I like mads mikkelsen and danish and learning languages so much, but not that much:))
Great rundown of Danish. I think this video would make a great primer for anyone thinking about beginning Danish. The pronunciation is definitely the biggest hurdle, not necessarily because of its unphonetic nature but because of the number of and subtlety among vowel sounds. A couple times, I tested my pronunciation by speaking into Google Translate in Danish, French, German, Russian, and Japanese. Besides one or two words in French, my Danish was the only one that it couldn't reliably decipher. I'm guessing if a machine can't tell what I'm trying to say, a person would have a hard time too. I can understand the Danish reluctance to correct someone (at least without being asked to). In America, most people would consider it rude to correct someone without being asked to. There is a right and a wrong way to do it. I was text chatting in a German Discord channel once, and someone was correcting every sentence I wrote to the point that I didn't feel as if I was communicating with someone but rather being graded, so I gave up because I knew I couldn't keep up with the conversation and be 100% correct.
Thanks a lot for your input. I'm glad you consider the video a good introduction to the Danish language. This was also kind of my intention. About being corrected: If a language learner is corrected a lot and it only seems like the conversation is about correction, it definitely can be demotivating. But on the other hand, if you for example are at a work place every day and your colleagues never correct you when you make the same mistakes, it can also be a problem. It can be difficult to find the middle way. And talking about Google Translate, your comment is the second one I have read today about the same problem. One thing I must say is that Google is not as good at picking up Danish as it is with for many other, bigger languages. I have just run a quick test of me speaking Danish and also of recordings of other native speakers, and there were several words that were picked up incorrectly. Just so you know, the problem might not be entirely with you 😉
I'm trying to learn Danish for about a month, and about a week ago I found your channel and started watching your videos, and they helped me so much with pronouncation and Danish in general, so just wanted to say to mange tak, and can't wait for your new videos! 🇩🇰🙏
I’ve wanted to learn Danish my whole life as my mom grew up there, but never had to since all my Danish relatives speak English. Plus, they love to tease me on my progress. Really needed this to push forward. Thank you!
Thank you for this. I've been learning Swedish and Norwegian for some time now and has never really had issues with pronunciation. I've recently picked up Danish too and, boy, I'm struggling. I'm from Hungary and I live in the UK, so I speak both languages pretty well and having Hungarian my native I'm used to weird sounds, but still, Danish gives me hell. 😎
@@MicsLanguages No, thank you for creating great quality content! It helps a lot. And yeah you should take pride in being able to make those sounds effortlessly 😁.
I finally came across which is probably the hardest thing to learn in Danish, it seems like a secret code for native Danes only: the glottal stop / stød. I'd love a video with your way of explaining about it. The way you explained the soft D and R made it very easy to understand and replicate the sounds. But the stød has no logic and reproducible rule at all. How to understand and replicate this? "The stød has sometimes been described as a glottal stop, but acoustic analyses have shown that there is rarely a full stop of the airflow involved in its production. Rather it is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice, that affects the phonation of a syllable by dividing it into two phases. The first phase has a relatively high intensity and a high pitch (measured as F0), whereas the second phase sees a drop in intensity and pitch."
Hi Alfred. Yeah, I've also come across that weird definition of the stød that you posted here. It makes no sense to any normal person. I will surely make a video about the stød at some point. I have had it in the making for quite some time, have made lists with words in order to try to explain it. But it's not an easy topic, at least if the idea is - like it always is in my case - to make a video including everything that's important for the stød. Maybe I'll make a simplified video about the topic. But again, I don't know when it's gonna happen... 🤔 Thanks for your comment, I have already had several requests for a video on stød
@@MicsLanguages Haha to be honest that description expresses the feeling of the Danish pronunciation for a foreigner, in the end it's just... "wha..t.. the.. hell... did you just say? what kind of sound is that?" xD
As an English speaker married to a Dane from Jutland, I find your videos valuable. I have found that the many accents within Denmark a BIG issue in correctly understanding and using the language. I had worked in Jutland from 1995 through 1998. Has a video been made addressing the unique differences of pronunciations? For example, I was always told that even Danes may not understand another Dane from other part of Denmark.
Great video Mic! I'm trying to learn Danish and your channel is very helpful. Spanish (from Argentina) is my native language so it's twice as hard because there are no Spanish - Danish teachers around, lol.
Moved to Denmark 3 months ago. I have found that Danes quickly switch to English as soon as they hear my American accent. A few of my work colleagues are patient and help me but in everyday life I don’t get to practice. My British neighbor has lived in Denmark for 13 years and gave up on learning the language because Danes switch to English so quickly.
Because there are so many different varieties of English spoken around the world (and hence in the media), English speakers tend to "auto-adapt" while listening. This is useful in that we can understand a fairly wide range, but has a downside in that we are unlikely to ever correct anyone who is trying to learn, I suppose partly because it might just be an unfamiliar variety and we don't want to look foolish.
Your video was the first Google search result. But I was looking for similarities between Danish and Swedish. Some languages, if you aren't articulate, the speakers won't interact with you. I enjoyed listening while driving 🚗 😌 Thank you. As an Arabic, I was comparing your style of talking, and it is so different. Arab speakers avoid a negative way of putting things together and always sugarcoat their expressions. I guess learners should switch their way of thinking as part of language acquisition. Thanks again 😊
The reason I switch to English is often just to efficiently communicate. If the purpose of the conversation is to learn Danish then I'm open to talking Danish only, but if their Danish is not near perfect in a normal conversation I just switch to English.
In my opinion they switch to english because they hear how you use english sentences structure. They understand that guy should speak good english. That's the main reason of switching.
I used to live in Glostrup and searching for an apartment to rent in Lyngby. The homeowners asked during the smalltalk, were i was living at the time. I had to pronounce Glostrup 6 times. I ended up spelling it. I never quite understood wether he was trolling or not. It was the first time I told someone where I lived and I could not be understood. I have a couple of Danish friends and they think I pronounce it fine! Maybe it was just a very unlucky day for me.
Fairly often students of mine have told me about similar episodes, and when they said the word (fx street or place name) that the Dane didn't understand, it was often very clearly pronounced and I found it weird that they weren't understood.
Regarding the tropic of switching to English. I think you broached the reason earlier in your video when you said that we tend to cut off endings and consonants in words to save time. I think the reason for us switching to English is the same. We want to get through the conversation in the easiest and least time consuming way possible, and that is often to switch to English.
Here are a few additional factors that make learning Danish difficult: it's difficult to learn when you're not in the country It's impossible to find classes and lessons in person, they are always online with Danes in Denmark. There are no language groups to practice Danish with, compared to other European languages that are super popular (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese). There are so many resources for these more popular languages and more opportunity to speak with natives here (England) Also the switching to English thing is not unique to Denmark, I experienced this quite a bit in Madrid and some really refused to speak Spanish with me
Very important points that you mention! But even though there isn't much possibility for lessons, language groups etc., there is still a lot of material out there, thanks to the internet, for example on RUclips. It's not material intended for language learners, but it can still be of tremendous help for learning the language. One thing I recommend people to use is children's programmes on www.dr.dk/drtv/boern. I should probably make a video about that at some point. 🤔 But of course, if one is to learn only with material intended for native speakers, it requires that the learner is more or less good at teaching themselves.
@@MicsLanguages it's a harder start for sure! Nice one for the link, I've spent this morning watching Børste 😄 however I can't watch everything without a VPN, so I don't get to watch the potato show
Very informative and defenitely helpful even to swedes. I think the switch to english as a reflex even for swedes is patience on both parties. The stress in modern society don't promote afterthought. As you mentioned exposure is key. I follow with big enthusiasm Badhotelle and try hard not to look at subtitles.
Yeah, this world we live in tight now is stressful and doesn't promote afterthought. It takes a lot of courage / focus / presence to be a real human, not a robot. Great to hear that you challenge yourself and work hard, that's a sane approach for a person who doesn't want to "devolve" :)
Great video! I started learning Danish a few months ago and the pronunciation is by far the hardest thing to learn. I’m starting to understand how to pronounce the a when followed by specific consonants and I’m getting the hang of the soft d. But there are two things right now that I find really confusing, which are the stød and time expressions in the Danish language. The stød is very important, but I have no idea when to use and when not to use it, so I’d love a video about the stød. I’m having a hard time with time expressions as well, especially with when to use i, på or om before morgen(en), nat(en) etc. It is also very confusing to me when to use ‘i aftes’ , ‘i morges’ etc. Just time expressions in general are very hard to learn, so I’d absolutely appreciate it if you could make a video about that. Mange tak for videoen!
Hi! Okay, thanks for letting me know about these two challenges of yours. Regarding the stød, it's not easy to talk about rules as to when to use it. That's one of the reasons why I haven't made a video about it yet. With regards to the time expressions, that's fairly easy to explain. I'll put it on my list :) Thanks for your comment ;)
Many thanks for your videos, Mic. I have been fascinated by the Danish language and Danish culture since the 1990s. I am Dutch. Reading Danish didn't pose too much trouble, but understanding spoken Danish was quite a struggle. I had a breakthrough in 2019, with your national elections, when I was following a political debate and noticed I could follow like 70% of it. As if a glass wall had shattered. From then on Danish became like German and English. Only not knowing a word or an expression, or not recognizing a word because of the way it is pronounced, could and can stump me. Your pronunciation videos have been an absolute ear-opener. There is method to the udtale madness... I'm listening to DR P1 every day and practice the sounds diligently. Final point: in the Netherlands, too, when someone 'from outside' speaks Dutch and it's not perfect, the Dutch will revert to English, as if hearing their language slightly mangled is too painful to them. Speaking for myself, I must admit I also find it difficult. But if someone asked me expressly to speak Dutch to help him or her learn it, I would certainly oblige.
Hi Johan, thanks for your interesting story. It's great to hear that you have had a breakthrough with Danish. It feels so great when the language suddenly becomes clear. Listening to the radio every day is a very good strategy, and combined with practicing the sounds diligently it becomes a perfect strategy. About the switching to English, thank you for sharing your experience. DK and NE are very similar in many ways. The fact that TV series are subtitled and not dubbed in these two countries may be one of the main reasons why people are so familiar with English and switch to English when speaking to foreigners.
I enjoy learning languages and Danish is one of my "want-to-learn" language. I'm learning Dutch now and my knowledge of English and Dutch helps me understand Danish to a certain extent. As a Spanish speaker I'm so curious about Romance and Germanic languages. I've learned many Romance languages and now I'm learning Germanic languages besides English (Dutch is my second Germanic language). This is why I don't have so many problems with grammar. Pronunciation however, I still struggle with difficult sounds, especially those which aren't in my native language. About correcting people, I don't like to correct people when speaking Spanish because I consider it rude. Unless you tell me that you want me to do it. So, I understand your point of view about this.
I recommend imitation and repetition. I have taught English as an additional language for thirty years. It is helpful for a leaerner to pick a mndel, for example an actor whose voice and sound they like and would like to emulate. Then practice imitating that voice. Memorize sentences the person. has said and repeat, repeat, repeat until you can produce them alm ost exatly the way that actor does. It helps with pronunciation. If you do it a lot, it also helps with collocations and fluency.
When I asked for a water in Danish (vand), the saleswoman did not seem to understand me 😅 So I asked in Swedish for a "vatten" instead, suddenly she got me and gave me a bottle 😆 haha
Haha! But depending on where this happened, the person might have been Swedish. There are lots of Swedes who work in Copenhagen and go back to for example Malmö after work.
I am half Danish, so I grew up (in the US) listening to Danish, but replied in English. I did not travel to Denmark until I was well into adulthood. I have found that Danes are patient in listening to me, and do not switch to English, regardless of some grammatical errors. One thing I missed on an early trip there was not differentiating properly between past and present tense. An old cousin listening to me thought I was speaking about someone in the present, rather than someone who had passed many years ago! I’m always working to improve my Danish. A fantastic country. ❤
It seems like you've had some great adventures with Danes. And good to hear that you are working to improve your level of Danish. Thanks for your comment 🙂
A friend of mine, a teacher of English has recommended me to start learning Danish ( I am already around B2/C1 in English and German) to grasp minor aspects of the larger germanic language family. Well, I started to read danish websites within a month or so. But hell, the pronunciation...
Yeah, that's a very common experience. Cool to hear that you are learning Danish. You can learn it, it just takes a but more time and effort than many other languages because of the pronunciation. I wish you good luck and fun learning Danish!
After 40 years I am having fun rediscovering Danish. This is an excellent presentation. IHMO, the greatest obstacle for foreigners is the extreme difficultly of the pronunciation, and the many very different regional dialects. For example, if I lived on Bornholm, and traveled 24 km to the other end of the island, I would have difficulty understanding the dialect there ,where there is a strong Swedish influence. I can still speak a bit of old school Danish of the 1960-1970's variety, a Kobenhaven dialect. I am very fond of Danish. The language has indeed changed. I can hear the unfortunate influence American English has had upon it. When I was there, British English was dominate and few spoke English as well as they do today. This is another obstacle for those who wish to learn Danish. It is now easier for Danes to speak English to any foreigner, and they have little need or motivation to help foreigners learn Danish. If your desire is to learn Danish, the key is to work on the pronunciation. The rest will follow.
Thanks for your comment. It is true that there has been a big shift in Danish culture in general over the last 40 years. We are very much influenced by American culture (like many countries have been for decades). And our dialects are also disappearing quickly. Nowadays you probably won't have that dynamic where a person from Bornholm will have difficulties understanding another person from Bornholm. The world in general is becoming more uniform. Diversity is getting lost. Not good in my opinion 😕
@@MicsLanguages Sadly agree. Diversity is disappearing. When I hear even a slight American accent in a native Danish speaker, it saddens me. America itself, has lost itself, and is no more the once great country it was. I hate to see that degradation spread into Europe. The people is the western world no longer have a strong moral compass, especially here in the U.S. I expect changes to occur ever more rapidly as we go into the future. If there was some sort of war in Europe, I would flee to Bornholm if Danish. It is in a unique situation, and I would have friends, or a summer hus there. I once lived there on the oldest standing farm in Denmark. I learned Danish on my own, naturally as an exchange student. Because I am was a good mimic, was highly motivated, and was in an environment where English was not spoken, I managed to become conversationally fluent to the point Danish natives could not believe that I was American, but thought I was Swedish . This was accomplished within 6 months, and improved thereafter. I also read and wrote Danish better than I could speak it. This is typical, because spoken Danish is difficult to pronounce. Even polyglots do not get it right. If I had had your excellent teaching to help, my progress would have been greatly accelerated. With the excellent fundamentals that you would have instilled early on, my progress thereafter would have be much superior. Danish was my first second language, so I was a complete novice. If any prospective student is serious about leaning Danish, Mic's services could change your life in a very positive way, personally and financially. For students, your success with Danish, especially if you would live in Denmark, will have important benefits if you can learn to pronounce Danish well. Not to brag, but I believe the Dean at the time, at the University of Kobenhavn personally offered me entrance to the medical school there. I believe my ability to speak Danish well enough to impress them, was the key factor. Thanks for listening. I will be viewing your videos in attempt to refresh and improve my very old Danish. My time in Denmark were the best years, and it is very comforting to hear it spoken. I was fortunate to be surrounded by good friends, and first class people there. A lack of money cause me to return to the U.S., where the people were not nearly as nice. It is not necessarily what you know, and where you are, but the people you know, that makes life better.
as a dane, the reason i personally switch to english is for efficiency - if there's no specific reason to have the conversation in danish, i will switch to english if it is more efficient, because i want to save time and make sure no mistakes are made
As an Italian the hardest things for me are the R and the soft d, grammar is also pretty different but once you understood the way the language works it's cool
🇸🇪👋🇩🇰 Just found this channel. Really liking it so far. Jeg prøver at se på DR1 og danske filmer for at forstå mer dansk. Tack för en intressant kanal.
Super! Jeg går ud fra at du er svensker? Dansk er nok lidt sværere at lære for svenskere end svensk er for danskere. Man skal lige vænne sig til udtalen. Men man kan normalt godt lære det forholdsvist hurtigt. God fornøjelse med det 😉
Great video as always. I especially liked the part about vowels as I find them veeeeery confusing :) I would also love to see one about glottal stop. Ha' en dejlig weekend!!
I! am from Spain and i love learn languages. Now i learn myself Swedish (i know aroundo 400 words)and also Norwegian bokmal .I am 53 years old is great problem for me because learn language in my age is more difficult. I heard between Swedish and Norwegian ,Danis hfs the most difficult pronunciation. I hope in the future i can have a small conversation in Danish
Rundetårn😀 I just sat in my first zoom class to improve my Danish. There were 2 students there who I simply could not understand for the life of me. I was desperate for them to switch to English because I couldn't follow what was going on. Re. music: I learned a lot listening to Halfdan Rasmussen's ABC songs for kids
I learnt to conjugate the irregular English verbs at school and they stick now even 55 years later, same thing with the German verbs I'm a strong believer in learning languages the hard way.
Yeah learning the "traditional way" is a good method, but some people prefer (and learn faster with) a more practical method. Children also learn by doing, not by studying lists. All methods have their strengths and weaknesses. I would say the most important thing is that the learner is motivated and actually makes an effort to learn
Mic, I totally agree with you on the correcting bit. I am American. I always correct foreigners or my nieces who are Filipino. Why I do this. If I was learning a language. I would want to be corrected. Especially if they really want to learn the language. But, if you can't find a Dane willing to correct you when asked. They you will have to do it on your own, or tell your language teacher to work with you on the pronunciation. That you want to speak Danish with Danish accent. If they are good language teacher they will do so. It's possible to lose your accent. It's a lot work.
From what I've seen in Danish, I've seen some features of old English, German and Dutch. I speak Italian and Greek. I'm a native English speaker currently learning German. I'm curious about Germanic languages so I though I'd watch this video
Old English, German, Dutch and Danish have a lot of unexpected things in common. When learning one of these, it surely helps to know a few of the others. I am learning Dutch now and see so many similarities to English (modern, not old), German and Danish :)
Hi, I’m learning Danish as a Spanish native speaker. My husband speaks good Spanish so we communicate in Spanish. I am proficient in English and I have to agree if you speak English Danish is going to be easy. Grammar is fairly easy, only thing is that a lot of things break the rules so it’s adviced to learn the language (noun genders, plurals, past verbs) and memorize most of the words rather than going for the rules. Verb conjugation is fairly simple, fairly simple. We agreed Spanish has more rules but more content than Danish, therefore grammar might be harder. But pronunciation is quite simple. Hardest thing about Danish is pronunciation, listening and dialects. However, I have spoken to people from Argentina and Peru and I also don’t understand some of their words lol. PS I’m Guatemalan 😊
Hi! I totally agree with everything you wrote. It's always good to learn a language not only focusing on rules. It's better to learn by assimilation. A lot of contact with the language to build a "database" of past tense verbs etc. Children learn their native language without any grammar rules. Their brain finds the rules automatically, and also the exceptions, all through repetitive programming. But we adults have an advantage compared to children. We don't have to wait 2-3 years to speak, we can practice speaking the language right away. Active contact with the language is more powerful than passive. This is especially true for Danish, where most people have to practice the pronunciation A LOT. That's why I focus on having my students make sentences right from the beginning in my lessons. La pronunciación del Español es super fácil y basicamente puede ser aprendida desde un libro. Pero para todas las lenguas (y otras cosas también) vale: Lo que funciona mejor es aprender haciéndo, learn by doing :)
I took 2 years of Swedish in college. I'm interested in Scandinavia in general. When I started listening to some Danish it really surprised me. It seems quite different.
Hi Mic, once i was asking for "vand" and the lady could not understand me at all, then the guy next to me asked the same... she understood and i clearly did not heard the difference, but even my 5year old says i say it wrong so.. 😃 We came to Jutland 1year and a half ago and people are starting to know us by now so they try to understand, especially when i say: jeg kan godt forstå hvis du taler langsamt. I think they appreciate the effort. When we go on holidays though, it's no use, english it is otherwise we would be saying: hvad siger du? all the time because of the different dialect pronunciation. I have just discovered your videos and i think they are quite helpful so Tak for det 🙂
Hi Sonia, Thanks for you comment. About the word vand, there are various small things that could be responsible for Danes not understanding you. For example the vowel sound, the stød, the melody, the "nd" being pronounced without "d". And yeah, the pronunciation for example in Copenhagen is fairly different from the different dialects in Jylland. Danish takes more effort than må y other languages to learn well. But everybody can learn it, if they put in enough work. :) Good luck!!
I moved to Denmark as a young adult or I was just past the “teenage stage”. At school, EVERYONE could speak English, even the 4th graders (10 years old) could speak decent English, helped me a lot. And I’m saying, almost all Danes speak English, I’ll say 95% of Danes speak decent English. I’m pretty sure kids are required to have English from 1-2 grade. Most of Danes can also speak German or French. Helped me a lot,
Hi Mic! Your videos help me with Danish and motivation in general. I am looking forward to a new video of a more intermediate Danish. I hope that you are doing fine and everything is ok with you!
Hi Karim! Thanks for your nice comment. I am doing fine yeah, thank you. Just pretty busy at the moment. I hope I'll get going with the videos again sometime soon... 🤔
Hey Mic, ive been following you for a while and literally admire your channel as someone trying to learn basic Danish. And can you please make a video about comparison of Nordic languages? I mean if a Danish can understand a Norwegian or how similar Danish and Swedish is. Love your tshirt btw, greetings from Turkey ✌🏻
Thank you for your nice words. That request of yours would be difficult for me to make a video about. You might want to write to other channels, for example one called ecolinguist. On that channel they compare different languages that are from the same language group. But they haven't done one with Scandinavian languages yet, only one where Old Norse (a language spoken in Scandinavia a LONG time ago) is compared to three Scandinavian languages. I'm actually in that video, if you haven't seen it search for Jackson Crawford Ecolinguist. Write to Norbert, the guy from ecolinguist and he might make such a video in the future, who knows :)
Thank you for your video and for your honest opinions. It is exactly with Danes, they are not willing to help us if we make any single grammar mistake, I usually skip an articles so I do not use always a deffinite noun :D :D and it is complete distater when they do not get anything what I am saying. But my pronunciation is very good though. That is so sad that the native people criticize us and keep saying we should learn the language but when we do and we spend a loooot of time with this difficult language and deal with millions dialects in Denmark, they still don’t try to help us.
Yeah, it can be tough. But I would say the best thing to do is accept that many Danes react like this and then you can either live with the fact that you are not always understood, or you can practice hard and wisely and get to a level where you are being understood. It's good to have challenges in life 😁
I have known and seen a lot of people moving to Denmark, and only very few learn the language - mainly because of the issue with danes switching to english. I actually think the issue stems from the small amount of people who speak danish non-natively. Despite there being regional dialects in danish, most people have a hard time with accents. That is to say, most nativespeakers have never heard danish spoken with a french, spanish, japanese, chinese etc. accent. So we gerally have a hard time realizing whether people speak a perfectly reasonable danish, or whether they just started learning - and are struggling to communicate. I have friends with a massive vocabulary, but where i initially had to get used to the different accent. Surprisingly it rarely takes that long to get used to (30-60 minutes), but you have to aknowledge that as the only communicational problem. Contrary to this issue, a lot of people speak german, french, spanish, english, chinese etc. non-natively, which makes the accents commonly known, and easily understood amongst people who speak the languages natively - or even amongst people who doesnt.
To the topic of switching to English. I begin my Danish conversations with: "I am learning Danish, please talk Danish with me." And, all my conversations went by in a complete way of danish talking. :-) So, easy as that. Danes love to speak danish!
I lived for 2 years in Sweden and learned Swedish there, and I was actually surprised how fast I picked up the language and started talking to people with almost zero problems, and then I started working in Denmark (while still living in Sweden) and since my Swedish was pretty good, I decided to learn Danish to communicate with people there, and Jesus Christ that was quite the challenge! Most of the time we would switch to English, some of them would even change to Swedish just to make me stop butchering Danish 😂😂
haha yeah, what you have gone through is a fairly common thing. Many lists that list different languages by their level of difficulty show Danish and Swedish more or less at the same level, but this is not the actual experience that many people have. Learning Danish takes more effort than many other languages, thanks to its amazing pronunciation 😁
Very interesting video. Had learnt the basics of Danish back in my university time. We used to make fun of the Danish student who was teaching us - which was totally stupid at the time, because he spoke broken French. He did speak perfect English, though. As a teacher of English myself, I concur with your grammar assessment. If you know English, Danish grammar is a "calque". So very easy! Unless, like many of my fellow citizens, you suck at languages! But, as to pronunciation, well, that's another story! It is far more complicated than English (or French). Although I had bought tons of books, I could never get the sounds right, until I found your videos (to correct a few mistakes). That is why, if I am not wrong, Danish is considered the 6th hardest language to learn, after French, only because of the sounds and the Stöd I have never been able to apply correctly. I can mostly understand Danish when written, but absolutely not when spoken. But thanks to us, Nordic countries have that special cultural thing that we, French, wouldn't seem to ever possess: open-mindedness to languages and cultures. Every Scandinavian I met in France, UK, USA, etc. spoke very good English, as do Dutch and to some extent Germans. We, Latins, need to improve...
I have just stumbled on your interesting site after learning Danish on Duolingo online for over 4 years! My mother was Danish, we lived in London and we five children regrettably didn't become bilingual (she wasn't a natural teacher). Not for want of trying on my part, listening avidly to every word she spoke on the phone & with visitors and visits to relatives when young. That has given me a good start with pronounciation but little of the grammar. Duolingo is not that good with Danish - not enough folk want to learn compared with other languages. It's fun and gives a lot of good practise listening, speaking & writing but leaves rather a lot of doubts and gaps to fill. I'm hoping to fill some of those with your videos. Like others, I don't have anyone handy to talk with at the moment though I'm searching. And I watch films & news, read magazines & sing in Danish😊 (I know by heart all the Julesange from going to the Danish church in London every Juleaften.) I will aim to let you know how your videos help.🎉
Thank you very much for writing me this nice comment. I hope that my videos will be helpful for you. It is indeed correct that Duolingo is not good for Danish. Last time I checked, they were still using robots for the audio instead of real humans as in many of the other languages on Duolingo. This is not the only reason why I dislike Duolingo, though 😁 I am sorry to hear that your mother wasn't able (willing?) to teach you guys Danish. I live in Brazil, and with my son, who is born here and now 8 years old, I spoke Portuguese the first 3 to 4 years, but now I speak exclusively Danish with him (I should have done it for the beginning. It's very important to me that he learns my native language. I wish for you that you will find somebody to speak Danish with regularly!
I really appreciate your analytical approach to teaching Danish. You are inspiring. It was interesting to hear that Danes will often not correct you if you make a mistake or mispronounce a word. That was an obstacle for me in Japan too where people were too polite to help me by correcting me. So on that subject I would like to comment on a mistake I have heard you make when speaking English. First I must stress that this is the only mistake I have heard you make, which is really remarkable. You often say you would recommend us TO do this or that. We don't use the word to with recommend but rather use the word THAT. For example, " I would recommend that you practice until it becomes second nature." Not "I would recommend you to practice..." My mother spoke English fluently but my father really struggled with it. He was 50 when I was born and 55 when we moved to the US (born in 1897!) and he learned to understand English perfectly. The problem was no one could understand him when he spoke English so he kind of gave up trying hard. People didn't have much imagination and couldn't guess what he was saying if the words were mispronounced. I had the same issue when speaking Japaese. I admire your language ability and can see that you really persevered in your studies. Your fluency in English helps make you such an excellent teacher. You mentioned that you spoke six languages but didn't tell us what all of them were. Danish, German, English, Brazilian Portuguese were mentioned. What are the others? French, Spanish, italian,? Just curious.
Dear Signe, thank you very much for your comment. And thanks a lot for your correction. This is actually a thing I would have never figured out. I had no clue that it doesn't sound good to say "I recommend you to...". I guess the reason why it doesn't work is that you cannot "recommend SOMEBODY to do sth." Maybe it's not about the word "to" vs. "that", but about the fact that recommend cannot take an object. What do you think? ANyway, I am probably taking this directly from Danish "jeg anbefaler dig at gøre...". I normally am good at hearing when something is wrong in English, but here I wasn't able to. Thank you very much for opening my eyes :) Your family history sounds interesting. Being a family that moves to another country is in my opinion a great thing. LEarning to live in different "systems". But of course it can also be tough at times. The languages I speak are Danish and German mother tongue (I learned German from age 8, but did so in Germany, so I quickly got fluent). English, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish. In Swedish I would make lots of mistakes, but I am still "fluent". In Spanish it's similar.
@@MicsLanguagesI am not sure what the reason for the construction used with "recommend" is. We would also use "you" but in this way, for example: "I recommend you practice it." Or you could say, "I recommend practicing it." Or simply, " I recommend that you practice." German is so difficult, I think, unless you grow up with it or have a great memory or a mind that works like a machine. I studied it for only two semesters and speak what I call hitch-hiker German. In 1968 when I was hitchhiking around Germany I had only 10 weeks of German study under my belt. It was the height of the war in Vietnam and most Germans were adamently opposed to the war. Whenever I spoke English and they heard my American accent, they wanted to talk about the war. Though I was also opposed to it, that was not what I wanted to talk about so I told people I was Danish and didn't speak English. The subject of war never came up then and I was able to use my rudimentary German. I think I was able to pull it off because I spoke German with a Danish accent. I have always found it interesting that I can usually guess where a foreigner is from when they speak English because people have the same accent as their countrymen. It must have something to do with your native tongue since my accent when speaking German is more of a Danish person's accent than that of an American. Yes, moving to another country is fascinating and stimulating and very different than just visiting as a tourist. Studying the language and mindset snd history and customs, etc. deepens the experience but it takes time to really understand the nuances of another culture. I wrote earlier about a job opening here for a Danish lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison but I think I may not have posted it You would be great for the position. The job was posted in October 2021 but may still be open. The contact person is the department manager: nicole.senter@wisc.edu. The department used to be called the Scandinavian Studies Department but is now the German, Nordic, Slavic Department (GNS). You can learn more about the faculty and programs and courses at the university website or possibly their facebook group. I don't know if I would want to leave Denmark if I were you. But perhaps you know someone else who might be interested if you aren't.
@@MicsLanguages Interesting because I just checked the Oxford dictionary and they have this: "recommend somebody to do something - We'd recommend you to book your flight early." I guess it must be an American English thing where "recommend somebody to do something" is not considered correct.
Oh, that's nice. So I wasn't wrong afterall 🙂 Thanks for checking it and for writing this comment. I have just read a forum discussion and it seems like Americans are against this usage but that many dictionaries accept it. It seems to be more of a British expression, indeed. But there's still a lot of confusion amongst people 😁
As a native English speaker I've experienced most of the pitfalls discussed here. Danes will switch to English if they even remotely sense that I'm struggling. Maybe part of that is so they can showcase their skills. My experience of Danes has been that of a far higher literacy and multilingual acceptance than in England. If I were a Dane then I'd be proud too. As a nation we, the English, seem to have a certain arrogance that everywhere will speak our language, and it really annoys me. One thing I have found is that going to Denmark and speaking just a few words can make all the difference. There's a whole world between saying "Do you speak English?" in English, and trying to say the same in Danish. If I make the effort then, no matter how repressed and self-conscious I am, it has always been appreciated.
I'm English, I learnt Norwegian for professional reasons [I was in a Norwegian eSport team and I was the only English person, i didn't want to be *THAT* guy] but mostly because I found it very easy from the very start so I thought why not? Most of the words have an English equivalent, more so than any other language that I have encountered so I found it really easy to remember things. When I became exposed to Danish I realized I could read most of it, just like I could with Swedish from what I'd learnt from Norwegian, but the thing I found the most fascinated is that, for me, I found it easier to SPEAK Danish, [outside of the ede pronunciation anyway!] since it flows a lot better, Norwegian is a bit more of a tongue twister in that regard, however I find Danish one of the hardest languages to listen to and understand people, since many of the words sound too similar but if they wrote it down I'd probably understand it just fine, for example Fire and Fyrre to a foreign ear sounds almost identical especially when its in conversation. Just my two cents, I do enjoy Danish, I always enjoy learning more and more words, the hardest part about Scandinavian languages is finding the situations to be able to practise it, since most Scandinavians speak such good English, it feels like a waste to force them to speak their own language ! :D
Thanks for your "two cents". Great to hear that you came into Scandinavian languages thru e-sports. And the idea of spoken Danish flowing better kind of makes sense, now I think about it. Have fun with further improving your language skills ;)
I'm a German native speaker and I wanna learn Danish. Reading is quite easy but the pronunciation is tough. When you started with the b + vowels I couldn't hear the difference in all cases - some sounded the same 🙈. The soft d sounds a lot like an l only slightly different. I try my best to get the right pronunciation but it's still a long way to go 😅
Hi! Thank you for your comment. Your remarks are very common for German speakers. The biggest difficulty regarding Danish vowels for Germans is generally O vs Å, since Å doesn't exist in German. And yes, the soft D is often perceived as a kind of L. But it is VERY different for a native Danish speaker :) I wish you good luck (and lots of fun) learning Danish ;)
For someone interested in eventually learning Danish and Norwegian, which would you recommend learning first? I spoke to a Norwegian speaker once about the similarities between Danish and Norwegian and he laughed and joked that Danish sounds like Norwegian spoken by a drunken person.
Good question. I haven't had that much contact with Norwegian in my life, apart from hearing amit spoken once in a while. But it seems like their pronunciation is quite a bit easier than Danish. The languages per se are very similar, the grammar isn't much different and the vocabulary isn't either. Having said that, young people nowadays rarely are able to understand each other if they speak their native languages, so they oftentimes switch to English. Mainly because of the pronunciation, but also because of the differences in vocabulary, which are relatively few though and shouldn't take too long to learn. I hope this helps you a bit :)
@@MicsLanguages thank you for your reply. i like what you're doing on your yt channel. i'm currently fluent in english and (thanks to my wife) spanish......my great grandparents were danish immigrant farmers to michigan, usa, and i've recently developed an interest in connecting with danish culture and language (sorry for the lack of capitalizaton and lazy punctuation...bad habits from texting)
Hi Mic :) your videos are great! It would be great if you would also upload some basic grammar videos like "danish nouns", "danisch adjectives", "danish tenses", "Danish numbers", "Danish conditional clauses"... Yes, this is mayde a little bit "dry and boring" for some people, but it is a great way to learn grammar for peolple how learn better by listening and watching videos (for me definitaly and i guess also for lots of other followers). Best, Desi
I would also say that the vocabulary in Danish (as well as Norwegian and Swedish) isn't as much of a piece of cake as one would expect. I started learning Norwegian, which has much easier pronunciation (though, again, producing the right vowels in the right places in the flow of a conversation is a bit tricky, but, as a native Russian speaker, I find this to also be a challenge in Ukrainian, which is so similar to my native tongue; on the other hand, Spanish and Italian are really really easy when it comes to pronunciation, probably the easiest languages). I found the Norwegian (and Danish) vocabulary (and morphology) to intersect much more with German than with English, which is so heavily loaded with influences from Latin, Greek, and French. When learning English, I found its vocabulary, especially when it comes to the higher-level abstract language, to have a lot in common with Russian. Both languages borrowed heavily from Latin and Romance languages. Norwegian and Danish, on the other hand, use a lot of roots and prefixes that are Germanic in origin, and a lot of those words at first blended together and got confused in my mind.
Yeah you are totally right about the connection between Norwegian/ Danish and German. And Italian and Spanish are super easy vowel-wise, no doubt about that. Interesting points about Russian and Ucranian, unfortunately I have only spent max a few hours looking at these two languages, so have no reference point to speak about them. But from teaching Danish to Russian speaking people I have come to understand that the higher level abstract language in Russian has a lot in common with other languages that I know, especially Latin (and also English/French), but also German.
It depends. If you are from another Germanic language you can pick it up in a year if you submerge yourself, meaning you speak only Danish. I've seen it done. To get your brain to think in Danish instead of translating from your native tongue ,will take longer, on average I would say 3-5 years.
If you have ever watched FC København's game in past 2 years (I think you did), you should have noticed player named David Khocholava. He's Georgian like me and our language ain't so easy as well (with it's pronounciation as well). Personally my favourite national team after Georgia is Denmark. And my second favorite team after Liverpool and the local one is FCK. I love FCK's chants and 've learnt some of them... for ex. "Synger stolt om byens farver, København er hvid og blå" "Aldrig skal du være alene, hovedstaden følger dig" And many, many more... I love Danish pronounciation BUT! ESPECIALLY I LOVE *ANTKHEAS SKOV UUULSN* (Andreas Skov Olsen) AND *IOKIM MEILA* (Joakim Mæhle) FOR THEIR FANTASTICALLY PRONOUNCED SURNAMES 😂😂❤️ (Joachim Anasn, too 😏)
Just as information for you: Dutch also has the same inversion you talk about as in Danish, German, Swedish and probably other Germanic languages. For a Dutch speaker Danish would be perhaps easier than English, including the pronunciation. A real challenge would be the soft D.
Thanks for your comment. I'm actually learning some Dutch now. Danish helps a lot, but Dutch has lots of words that are different from both Danish and German. But sometimes the words then exist in English instead. It's interesting to see all the similarities between these languages. The soft D could be difficult for you. Also some of the vowel sounds. It's an interesting question, whether Danish would be easier to learn for Dutch speakers than English would be. The "problem" is that Dutch people (just like Danes) are surrounded by English and thus learn it kind of automatically. So Danish will always be more difficult to learn for that reason. But languagewise, I don't know 🤔
I think as someone who speaks flamsk, it is very hard to learn that soft D. My girlfriend hammers me on how to pronounce it of course. But it needs to be correct. ;)
Danes switching to English all the time when speaking to someone who does not speak Danish properly reminds me al LOT of how it is in the Netherlands, which is my home country. The Dutch just want to comunicate efficienty. They often are willing to help you learn Dutch, but only if they have ample time and if the like talking to you in the first place. This might be why the Danes switch to English aswell. Secondly, the thing you said about the wordorder changing when asking questions happens in Dutch aswell.
For me as a Dutch reading Danish is quite easy. It is not too different from Dutch (alhough Swedish and especially Norwegian is a lot closer still). Spoken....well....let's say that I went through Denmark to Sweden where we have some friends. It turned out that all of us could read Danish well, but when I said that I had so much trouble making sense of what people (especially in the streets) said the Swedes told me that I wasn't the only one. they had the exact smae trouble (this was near Linköping, not very close to Denmark so in Skåne it might be different). So me as a Dutch and the Swedes moreless are in a similar situation in that we can read Danish alright, but understanding it (let alone talking it) is extremely difficult. And it is mostly due to the fact that they seem to pronounce words quite a bit different than we do, the vowels as Mic's says must be theproblem I guess. Still: most Dutch immigrants to Denmark (farmers mostly) seem to the be quickly very apt at it from what I have been told. May be I am not that talented.
Haha, maybe you're not talented 🙂 I believe that if you spent some time in Denmark as a farmer surrounded by non-English speaking Danes, you would quickly adapt. Danish is difficult for you (now) not only because of the vowels, but also the consonants that are often mute. And the sentence intonation /rhythm is also super important. It happens often that we Danes don't really hear every word in a sentence spoken quickly by another Dane. But we can deduct from our grammatical knowledge and from our prosodic knowledge what the missing words are :)
Without the text I would never hear the difference between "bo" and "bog". Is it true that children use 0.5 years longer to speak proper Danish as opposed to Norwegian?
Yeah, I have read some studies about the idea that Danish children learn Danish later than other children. And I also think I read something about half a year's difference.
Danes like the chance to speak English (seems more so with Americans) just as much as you wish to speak Danish with them. Seebach! Wonderful singer to listen too.
Because there are only 5M Danish speakers, the accepted variation in pronunciation is comparatively narrow -- maybe the Icelandic Danish accent is the least encountered as a variant, otherwise the known variants are quickly learned as a child. Compare that with all the variants of English (UK, USA, Australia, India, etc.) and all of the internal regional dialects within those countries (especially in the UK). An English speaker is confronted with new variants as they meet others from around the world who speak English as a subsequent language so they're used to expecting variations, different stress accents (especially in Indian English), and usage. I've been both complimented on my pronunciation and also confronted with "what was that???" as Danish is very sensitive to slight vowel shifts to convey meaning. A simple slip-up can confuse the casual listener unless they're expecting a non-native speaker and prepared for mistakes and to infer meaning by context when a poorly articulated word is spoken. Yes, Swedish is MUCH more forgiving but they too have pitch accent which can change the word. f.ex. anden (the duck) and anden (the spirit) distinguished only by the pitch accent. You have to learn the two pronunciations and meanings separately and thus be ready to choose the correct one.
Thanks for your comment. Definitely, the fact that English speakers are confronted with many different types of accents, both spoken by native and non-native speakers, makes them more comfortable with divergent pronunciations. As to Danish, you are right that vowel slip-ups can confuse native speakers. But at least as important is the sentence stress, which words are stressed and which aren't. This is a thing that is often overlooked, and even though Danish is often kind of seen as having less "rhythm/melody" than for example Swedish, it is crucial for proper understanding.
Cool thanks! Ecolinguist is a great channel, I didn't know about it, but then one day I was contacted by Norbert. It was a fun experience to participate in the video :)
Danish is just a vowel pronunciation challenge disguised as a language
Been learning Danish since May 2019. Danish is easy to learn, and hard to pronounce....UNLESS you know about Mic's Languages haha. This channel has been so helpful to me, and other Danish learners I know compliment me a lot on my pronunciation, and I credit this channel for that
Wow, that's amazing. Thanks for the kind words 😉
I have been learning danish since 2014 and i consider myself pretty good at grammar and writting, but when it comes to watch a movie i can barely understand it, it is so frustrating
Im from denmark but i Can speak 3 languages danish norwegian and english
@@Sohamsfriendedits u r lucky. If U native Danish speaker other languages not so important for me. Selvom jeg har boet 4 året i Danmark jeg kan ikke kommunikere på dansk
@@MicsLanguagesPlease make more video about Danish. I want to learn more. Tusind tak
A lot of Danes (and other Scandinavians) are saying they switch to English to be helpful and because it's quicker. I'm sure this is true.
However, if it's the case of a newcomer living in Denmark trying to integrate and learn the language then switching to English is simply a passive aggressive way of telling them 'keep out, this is our language not yours'. And if it's not meant that way they should pause and think that it may be perceived that way.
Let me put it this way. Refusing to speak Danish is like having somebody arrive at a party in your house and at the door you say "Oh, don't come in. Wait outside and we'll all come out to you and have the party out here".
Letting them join in the conversation in Danish is like saying "Oh, nice to see you. Come inside, welcome to my home".
I agree. But as you say, people first have to think about it in order to get to the same conclusion. Most people probably (/hopefully) don't intend to be rude, they just haven't considered that maybe the energy/relationship with the other person will be better off if they avoid switching to English.
Deep inside I think we all want to have good relationships with others, be it strangers that we meet once or people that we interact with daily, but the Zeitgeist we are in seems to be about aggression and short-sightedness, not considering the consequences of the way we interact. People who can overcome that, will be more "successful" than those who partake in the divisive ways that are spread by the media etc.
I really enjoyed Copenhagen and danish humor, culture, so much more friendly than Swedes (I have good Swedish friends ). 😂
Yes but sometimes you, and they, don't have time for language lessons. For example at the counter while paying something, there are people waiting and people get nervous fast when someone takes a bit too much time to finish the transaction. In a more relaxed context, I had no problem trying to insert a couple of words and let them repeat sometimes to make sure I understood correctly how it's pronounced.
As a Danish- native English translator, the biggest feature of Danish for me is its economy of words. Generally word counts increase about 30% when translating a Danish text into English. Translating a French text into English usually means a reduced word count of about 20%. Part of this comes from the extensive use of composite words and the definite article of nouns using one word instead of two, but does not entirely explain the improved word economy.
Also, if it makes anyone feel better, the average standard of written Danish among native Danish speakers is pretty dreadful (personal pet hate is when people use "og" instead of "at"). It certainly makes me feel better about the mistakes I still make after living in Denmark for almost 30 years.
As a Dane living in America for 30 years, I can confirm that you never pick it all up. You simply must be born into it to completely master all the intricate details, however you will get to a level that flows without effort in a few years and you will notice your universrity educated Danish friends butcher the sentence order regularly.
There are not many channels that teach Danish and your's so good, so helpful! Great video and content quality. Thank you so much. Greetings from Brazil )
Mange tak, Lucas!
Great video! Yes, I think English is the only Germanic language that doesn't have the verb as the second idea. You're spot on with what you say about the experience of learning and using Danish in Denmark. I lived there for ten years spread between 1990 and 2014, with multiple addresses across Copenhagen and in Århus and on Bornholm. Being from England, I was constantly 'Englished', and it was only through dogged persistence that I managed to get people to speak to me in Danish, even as my command of the language improved. There were even times - many times, actually - when I would speak to a stranger in a bar, say, for a good half an hour in Danish, and by that time they'd approach the subject of me sounding like I might not be from 'these parts'. With 100% guarantee, I always knew that the moment I said I was from the UK, the next word out of the Dane's mouth would be in English. Every. Single. Time! They'd then continue in English as if the previous half an hour in Danish had never happened. I was left thinking it was a deeply ingrained national identity issue: you're one of us or you're not one of us, as if it was: Danes speak Danish, and therefore non-Danes don't speak Danish. It was a daily fight, which is quite sad, really. And I'd studied phonetics and worked obsessively to get my pronunciation as accurate as possible. The hardest part of Danish is definitely listening skills, by the way. Danes typically speak with 'raised consonants' - just like in Friends, when Chandler mumbled on the phone to Joey that he was trapped in an ATM vestibule with Jill Goodacre. That's the freaky thing that so many Danes do all the time! I love the language - it's a fun challenge - and I love speaking it. Pity that I no longer live there. But I can still speak to myself in the language!
Wow, great comment. You seem to be a good storyteller, that's at least the impression I get from reading this 😉
The experience you have had where Danes switch to English could be interpreted as you do, i. e. you are not a part of "us", or Danes just love speaking English and are happy when they finally get a chance to talk to a native English speaker. Or both at the same time.
It's sad that you don't have anybody to talk to in Danish. I guess you could always find somebody on the internet, especially if you're ready to pay for it, for example in Italki... 🤔
And yeah, we Danes mumble a lot, which definitely contributes to the difficulty in understanding Danish.
@@MicsLanguages The question is: is mumbling the norm? I think it is: I think it's the standard, unmarked form for most speakers of the language. I don't think any of the surrounding languages work like that. It's fascinating!
Can I pass on the comments of a friend of mine who is English and speaks Russian fluently? He said he loves the fact that when he's with Russian friends they all speak together in Russian. People never speak to him in English. He says it makes him feel accepted and welcomed as part of the group - not an outsider. This is part of the joys of learning foreign languages. After I asked him to read your comments he said the attitude of people in places like the Nordic nations, The Netherlands etc is passive aggressive. Although it's probably never meant that way, he perceives it as passive aggressive at two levels. IF your level in the language is advanced as yours is but an individual replies in English anyway, he gives out the message he still considers his English to be better than yours, which may not even be true. At another level, if it's a group and they switch to English it's, as you said, like they're saying you can't be part of our group because you're an outsider. It's like knocking on somebody's door for a party and people saying 'you can't come in, we'll come out to you and we'll talk outside'. I repeat that it may not be the intention but that is the effect and it feels passive aggressive in its effect or at the very least rude. I was just reading a book about moving to Denmark and in it the author said you'll never be truly a part of the society if you don't learn the language. I wonder how a Dane/Swede etc would react if you said 'you know, when you speak to me in English it makes me feel like an outsider who is not welcome in'. How would they react? Probably surprised because they'd never thought of it that way.
To be honest, I switch to English even when talking to Swedes or Norwegians...
Had a British manager at some point, he spoke Danish very well, but he had given up on "om/hvis" which led to some quite fun sentences at times.
Bottom line is just that it may be easier to switch to English, especially if it's something that you don't want to be misunderstood.
I'm English and both a professional linguist and a keen amateur learner. The old switching to English thing is a real pain for native English speakers learning other languages. It has been an incentive at times though. You know sometimes you HAVE to be really good to stop them switching to English so it makes you work hard. It's those countries where the people both speak English well and aren't used to hearing their language spoken with an accent or imperfectly which are the problem. I was struck by the comment below by the English guy who said he was speaking in the language for half an hour and then the other person switched to English as soon as he knew he was speaking to an Englishman. It happened to me in a bar in the Czech republic once. I did Czech as part of my degree and, all modesty aside, my Czech was much better than his English but we switched to English and I was too polite to insist. I just left pretty quickly. I've even been known to lie when asked where I come from. I tell them I'm Russian or Romanian and don't really speak English.
I do have a friend who lived in Denmark and learnt the language and she said on a one to one basis Danes would often speak to her in English but in a group they'd all speak Danish and she could join in happily.
I'm pretty sure if you tell a dane, that you're trying to learn our language, they wouldn't mind the minor inconvenience it would be, to listen to danish with a strong accent. Might even get a few good laughs out of it! In shops and the like however, they will switch to english. Just because it is easier and takes less time to expedite a customer, than to try guesswork what it is you want. Also, I think for a lot of danes, switching to english is a way, to not let foreigners embarrass themselves trying to pronounce danish.
Mange tak for dine videoer! Jeg er fra Brasilien og har været næsten et år her i Denmark. Dine videoer hjælper mig meget🤠
Hej "abehund" 😉 Fedt at høre at videoerne er nyttige, tak for din kommentar! 🙂
I can read this post but I'd rather swallow porcupines than try to read it aloud, though, come to think of it, it might be easier to pronounce Danish after swallowing a porcupine.
I used to visit a Danish family quite often in the 70s. They all spoke very good English, even the young children as they were taught it at school and wanted to learn, unlike my learning of French at school where I was not motivated. English has status in Denmark as I often heard them criticising others who did not speak as good English. I tried to learn Danish and can read it even now but the pronunciation and its rules were beyond me. I used to buy books in Denmark that were all word for word translations from English and then read them both at the same time. I do remember at the British customs where I had a book 'Pa veg mod doden' (sorry about the vowels) which was 'The road to dusty death' by Alistair McClean. The customs guy saw the Danish book and asked me if it was pornographic as at the time porn was available easily in Denmark but not in the UK. I replied: "would it matter if it were?" - my best reply of all time!
A swede here, learning Danish. I've spoken Swedish and Finnish my whole life and when I started learning Danish I was shocked that it actually was really easy to start to understand it when it's being spoken by people. In sweden when you mention the Danish language everyone goes kind of like ''porridge people'' ''porridge language''
It takes some time to learn it but when you have learned how the soft D works it gets so much easier! Great job, you're the only one who has actually helped me with my Danish, I appreciate it!
Great to hear that you find Danish fairly easy. It shouldn't be too difficult if somebody really wants to learn it and puts in the right attitude and work. Thank you very much for your comment, have fun improving your Danish!
I’m Saudi , so Arabic is my mother language . Arabic is a very difficult language with a complicated grammar system. Naturally, my language of choice has always been English since my parents mainly communicated with us in English growing up. I, however, have always been obsessed with the danish language because of my deep deeeeep love of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales. When I was a teenager I wrote tens of letters for him and promised to visit his grave as an adult and leave them there. My father laughed at me and said “mockingly” what made you think his soul could read English. I vowed to learn Danish. I fell madly in love with everything Danish ? I even force feed my kids st.lucia saffron buns 😂😂. I’m 36 and I just started fulfilling my dream of learning Danish, I figured it can’t be more difficult than Arabic! It’s a beautiful language and I find it so elegant but hard to understand and mind you there aren’t a lot of Danes here to practice with 😂😂. Your vids have been a breath of fresh air , simplifying everything so I don’t feel dumb with my mistakes. I believe that the mumbling thing “ this might sound silly” is just a hygge thing! 😅 I think Danes are so relaxed that they refuse to be bothered by over enunciating and I find it rather charming. learning a foreign language is always a long process but it does not have to be a daunting task if you enjoy the ride and just don’t take it too seriously. Thank you so much for your videos.
Dear Nisma, thank you very much for your beautiful story. Your enthusiasm really shines through in the way you write. Very vivid.
I'm glad to hear that my videos are helpful for you to get closer to your dream of learning Danish.
When you write your letters to H. C. Andersen in Danish, feel free to send me a copy 😁
Swedes also tend to switch to English the minute they spot a foreign accent in one's Swedish or a second's hesitation before one finding the right word. That happened to me often in Stockholm at the beginning of my time there when I was learning the language ( I am a Spanish-speaker). However, I learned to resort to a trick: Whenever my interlocutor tried to switch to English, I would excuse myself, in my still broken Swedish, and say: "ursäkta, jag talar inte engelska, jag talar bara ryska och nu svenska". That did the trick! Fortunately, I never encountered any Swede who spoke Russian and wanted to practice his/her Russian with me!
Haha that's a great trick. Maybe you should choose something like Georgian or Armenian, then you are even safer 😉
But definitely, one needs to resort to those kinds of tricks in order to be able to practice the language, at least in DK and Sweden.
Thanks for the comment!
@@MicsLanguages I’ve just recently found your videos on RUclips. I must totally say “kudos”!! As a language scholar, I find it a very entertaining pastime to compare the similarities and differences in the romance languages among themselves (French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), as well as in the main Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish). Your videos have provided a wealth of information and explanations about the Danish language, which makes it all the more interesting when comparing a Danish structure to what I would normally say in Swedish. One question though, I have been trying to find an equivalent between the Swedish/Danish forms m of “to think or to believe”. Swedish has: att tycka, att tro and att tänka. What would the similar/equivalent verbs be in Danish? Could you please make a video with examples sometime? Mange tak!!!
Mic is a wonderful teacher. I did several lessons with him, and he quickly accelerated my progress
I think Danes will switch to English because it is rare for a foreigner to speak Danish well. It’s just easier to go to English rather than struggle to understand one another in Danish. I sometimes wish I didn’t speak English actually. As soon as people know you speak English, they usually want to practice their English with you! 😀 English is the Swiss Army knife of languages, basically anywhere you are in the developed world, someone will know some English. But with dedication, and attention to detail I think any language can be learned..endda dansk! 🇩🇰🇩🇰
Helt klart, Jason. Alt kan læres hvis man er ihærdig nok!
It's not rare to see a foreigner speak Danish. I believe around 15% are foreigners in Denmark and at least 10% speak fluently
The best language tutorial I ever saw on youtube, not only in terms of Danish-oriented lessons! Very thorough and with nice explanations on the grammatical aspects between languages, comparing and explaining! And by thye way; I'm convinced that Danes tend to switch to English very quickly in order to accommodate the foreigner and also to speed up the conversation to make it run more smoothly. This also due to the fact that Danes speak English on a decent level generally.
Hi Carina. Thanks for your nice words :)
And yeah, modern Danes are fairly efficient people, so your reasons for Danes switching to English make total sense.
@@MicsLanguages Hey Mic, you're so welcome! I hope a lot of people practising their grip will be heading your way. Hav en fantastisk dag, og tak igen... Tschüss und einen schönen Tag noch
Ok, hurtigere og nemmere hvis jeg svare på Engelsk, så…
Michael, that was brilliant! You are such a good teacher. So many interesting and helpful points you addressed, many of which I’ve not heard anyone else acknowledge before.
I was nodding my head the whole way through. In particular it was the cultural differences you mentioned which resonated the strongest.
That you specifically identified that Danes are such great English speakers because of their exposure to English language television, film and music was such a relevant observation, because you then logically concluded that Danish learners in turn need to seek out and watch Danish films and television, and hear Danish music to help them learn. Ideally, the same songs again and again until we know all the words and can pronounce them all.
Also, that Danes don’t like to correct and are not used to hearing foreigners speaking their language badly is something I’ve experienced. They’re more likely to ask me to repeat my mispronunciation of Danish (so that they can laugh at it and let others hear how bad it is) rather than help me by saying the correct pronunciation.
Yes, the vowels are tricky compared to English. In English you can mispronounce many vowels and the words are still recognisable and acceptable.
Castle - car stel & cah stel
Tomato - toe may toe & toe mar toe
Not so in Danish, if I say bag wrong, then I’m saying sausage and get laughed at. Amazing that Danish children take relatively longer to learn their own language than most other children do.
Adjective forms. Yes, this is an important point. Rød røde rødt. Doesn’t exist in English.
Sentence inversions, again, very important and a big difference, but I think not so tricky to remember, just practice.
The only thing I think you might want to add to this video is the soft D which we don’t have in English. Brød, handler, hvid, osv… I know you’ve covered it before, but I think it’s one of the most difficult things for native English speakers.
Also, a major difference between the two languages is that in English, 95% of the time, adding an s to the end of the word (or if it ends with a y replacing the y or ey with an ies) makes it plural. Man / woman to men women is an exception to the rule! While in Danish there are many ways a word could become plural, such as adding the suffix of E or ER, or changing the final vowel, or the order of the last 2 letters, or leaving it as-is (æg). Just a case of remembering them all!
You covered so much important information. I think it was the most helpful learning Danish video I’ve ever watched and I started learning exactly 2 years ago!
Tak skal du have.
Wow, Roger, thank you for taking the time to write such a nice comment.
I'm glad the video resonated with you.
And thanks for mentioning the two extra cases I could have included. The soft D and the plural endings.
I didn't think about adding the plural at all, but if I were to make the video now, I would definitely include it.
Thanks again, this comment made my day :)
Oh my god. I was considering learning danish cause it sounded so good when I heard it from mads mikkelsen and I even started it on duolingo. But when I saw all those words you pronounced with B, I'm so scared. I'm not so sure now. I mean I like mads mikkelsen and danish and learning languages so much, but not that much:))
Haha 😅 I personally love challenges and think they are important in our lives. Do it for Mads! And for yourself :)
Great rundown of Danish. I think this video would make a great primer for anyone thinking about beginning Danish. The pronunciation is definitely the biggest hurdle, not necessarily because of its unphonetic nature but because of the number of and subtlety among vowel sounds. A couple times, I tested my pronunciation by speaking into Google Translate in Danish, French, German, Russian, and Japanese. Besides one or two words in French, my Danish was the only one that it couldn't reliably decipher. I'm guessing if a machine can't tell what I'm trying to say, a person would have a hard time too.
I can understand the Danish reluctance to correct someone (at least without being asked to). In America, most people would consider it rude to correct someone without being asked to. There is a right and a wrong way to do it. I was text chatting in a German Discord channel once, and someone was correcting every sentence I wrote to the point that I didn't feel as if I was communicating with someone but rather being graded, so I gave up because I knew I couldn't keep up with the conversation and be 100% correct.
Thanks a lot for your input. I'm glad you consider the video a good introduction to the Danish language. This was also kind of my intention.
About being corrected:
If a language learner is corrected a lot and it only seems like the conversation is about correction, it definitely can be demotivating. But on the other hand, if you for example are at a work place every day and your colleagues never correct you when you make the same mistakes, it can also be a problem. It can be difficult to find the middle way.
And talking about Google Translate, your comment is the second one I have read today about the same problem.
One thing I must say is that Google is not as good at picking up Danish as it is with for many other, bigger languages. I have just run a quick test of me speaking Danish and also of recordings of other native speakers, and there were several words that were picked up incorrectly. Just so you know, the problem might not be entirely with you 😉
I'm trying to learn Danish for about a month, and about a week ago I found your channel and started watching your videos, and they helped me so much with pronouncation and Danish in general, so just wanted to say to mange tak, and can't wait for your new videos! 🇩🇰🙏
Thank you very much for your nice comment ☺️
I’ve wanted to learn Danish my whole life as my mom grew up there, but never had to since all my Danish relatives speak English. Plus, they love to tease me on my progress. Really needed this to push forward. Thank you!
Great! I wish you good luck learning Danish. You can do it!! :)
Thank you for this. I've been learning Swedish and Norwegian for some time now and has never really had issues with pronunciation. I've recently picked up Danish too and, boy, I'm struggling. I'm from Hungary and I live in the UK, so I speak both languages pretty well and having Hungarian my native I'm used to weird sounds, but still, Danish gives me hell. 😎
Yeah, even seasoned language learners often struggle with Danish.
Thanks for your comment and good luck with Danish pronunciation ;)
@@MicsLanguages No, thank you for creating great quality content! It helps a lot. And yeah you should take pride in being able to make those sounds effortlessly 😁.
Me too and I'm Danish
I finally came across which is probably the hardest thing to learn in Danish, it seems like a secret code for native Danes only: the glottal stop / stød. I'd love a video with your way of explaining about it. The way you explained the soft D and R made it very easy to understand and replicate the sounds. But the stød has no logic and reproducible rule at all. How to understand and replicate this? "The stød has sometimes been described as a glottal stop, but acoustic analyses have shown that there is rarely a full stop of the airflow involved in its production. Rather it is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice, that affects the phonation of a syllable by dividing it into two phases. The first phase has a relatively high intensity and a high pitch (measured as F0), whereas the second phase sees a drop in intensity and pitch."
Hi Alfred. Yeah, I've also come across that weird definition of the stød that you posted here. It makes no sense to any normal person.
I will surely make a video about the stød at some point. I have had it in the making for quite some time, have made lists with words in order to try to explain it. But it's not an easy topic, at least if the idea is - like it always is in my case - to make a video including everything that's important for the stød. Maybe I'll make a simplified video about the topic.
But again, I don't know when it's gonna happen... 🤔
Thanks for your comment, I have already had several requests for a video on stød
@@MicsLanguages Haha to be honest that description expresses the feeling of the Danish pronunciation for a foreigner, in the end it's just... "wha..t.. the.. hell... did you just say? what kind of sound is that?" xD
Another great video. Thank you!
And yes, pelase make a video about the pronunciation of the most used words :)
As an English speaker married to a Dane from Jutland, I find your videos valuable. I have found that the many accents within Denmark a BIG issue in correctly understanding and using the language. I had worked in Jutland from 1995 through 1998. Has a video been made addressing the unique differences of pronunciations? For example, I was always told that even Danes may not understand another Dane from other part of Denmark.
im here ,bcos im currently taking dansk class ,im happy being corrected,children books and movies help too
Great video Mic! I'm trying to learn Danish and your channel is very helpful. Spanish (from Argentina) is my native language so it's twice as hard because there are no Spanish - Danish teachers around, lol.
Moved to Denmark 3 months ago. I have found that Danes quickly switch to English as soon as they hear my American accent. A few of my work colleagues are patient and help me but in everyday life I don’t get to practice. My British neighbor has lived in Denmark for 13 years and gave up on learning the language because Danes switch to English so quickly.
Yeah, that's fairly common.. You need to be extremely persistent if you want to avoid the switching the English
You're right.
Because there are so many different varieties of English spoken around the world (and hence in the media), English speakers tend to "auto-adapt" while listening. This is useful in that we can understand a fairly wide range, but has a downside in that we are unlikely to ever correct anyone who is trying to learn, I suppose partly because it might just be an unfamiliar variety and we don't want to look foolish.
Definitely hard to find people to practice with living in New Zealand. Really glad i found Mic! Pronunciation is super hard for me.
Thanks Mic❤️yes please make a vlog on frequently used words where some of the sounds are dropped in the syllables to “ conserve energy “😁
Ok, I'll see what I can do :)
Basically every single one...
Your video was the first Google search result. But I was looking for similarities between Danish and Swedish.
Some languages, if you aren't articulate, the speakers won't interact with you.
I enjoyed listening while driving 🚗 😌
Thank you.
As an Arabic, I was comparing your style of talking, and it is so different.
Arab speakers avoid a negative way of putting things together and always sugarcoat their expressions. I guess learners should switch their way of thinking as part of language acquisition.
Thanks again 😊
The reason I switch to English is often just to efficiently communicate. If the purpose of the conversation is to learn Danish then I'm open to talking Danish only, but if their Danish is not near perfect in a normal conversation I just switch to English.
In my opinion they switch to english because they hear how you use english sentences structure. They understand that guy should speak good english. That's the main reason of switching.
Great video, as always. THANKS, Mic!
I used to live in Glostrup and searching for an apartment to rent in Lyngby. The homeowners asked during the smalltalk, were i was living at the time. I had to pronounce Glostrup 6 times. I ended up spelling it. I never quite understood wether he was trolling or not. It was the first time I told someone where I lived and I could not be understood. I have a couple of Danish friends and they think I pronounce it fine! Maybe it was just a very unlucky day for me.
Fairly often students of mine have told me about similar episodes, and when they said the word (fx street or place name) that the Dane didn't understand, it was often very clearly pronounced and I found it weird that they weren't understood.
@@MicsLanguages thank you! It feels better to know it happens often and I am not uniquely bad at this! Great content btw!
Regarding the tropic of switching to English.
I think you broached the reason earlier in your video when you said that we tend to cut off endings and consonants in words to save time. I think the reason for us switching to English is the same. We want to get through the conversation in the easiest and least time consuming way possible, and that is often to switch to English.
Bullshit
Here are a few additional factors that make learning Danish difficult: it's difficult to learn when you're not in the country
It's impossible to find classes and lessons in person, they are always online with Danes in Denmark. There are no language groups to practice Danish with, compared to other European languages that are super popular (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese). There are so many resources for these more popular languages and more opportunity to speak with natives here (England)
Also the switching to English thing is not unique to Denmark, I experienced this quite a bit in Madrid and some really refused to speak Spanish with me
Very important points that you mention!
But even though there isn't much possibility for lessons, language groups etc., there is still a lot of material out there, thanks to the internet, for example on RUclips. It's not material intended for language learners, but it can still be of tremendous help for learning the language. One thing I recommend people to use is children's programmes on www.dr.dk/drtv/boern.
I should probably make a video about that at some point. 🤔
But of course, if one is to learn only with material intended for native speakers, it requires that the learner is more or less good at teaching themselves.
@@MicsLanguages it's a harder start for sure! Nice one for the link, I've spent this morning watching Børste 😄 however I can't watch everything without a VPN, so I don't get to watch the potato show
Wow great analysis. I agree with all the points you made.
Very informative and defenitely helpful even to swedes. I think the switch to english as a reflex even for swedes is patience on both parties. The stress in modern society don't promote afterthought. As you mentioned exposure is key. I follow with big enthusiasm Badhotelle and try hard not to look at subtitles.
Yeah, this world we live in tight now is stressful and doesn't promote afterthought. It takes a lot of courage / focus / presence to be a real human, not a robot.
Great to hear that you challenge yourself and work hard, that's a sane approach for a person who doesn't want to "devolve" :)
Great video! I started learning Danish a few months ago and the pronunciation is by far the hardest thing to learn. I’m starting to understand how to pronounce the a when followed by specific consonants and I’m getting the hang of the soft d. But there are two things right now that I find really confusing, which are the stød and time expressions in the Danish language. The stød is very important, but I have no idea when to use and when not to use it, so I’d love a video about the stød. I’m having a hard time with time expressions as well, especially with when to use i, på or om before morgen(en), nat(en) etc. It is also very confusing to me when to use ‘i aftes’ , ‘i morges’ etc. Just time expressions in general are very hard to learn, so I’d absolutely appreciate it if you could make a video about that.
Mange tak for videoen!
Hi!
Okay, thanks for letting me know about these two challenges of yours.
Regarding the stød, it's not easy to talk about rules as to when to use it. That's one of the reasons why I haven't made a video about it yet.
With regards to the time expressions, that's fairly easy to explain. I'll put it on my list :)
Thanks for your comment ;)
@@MicsLanguages Okay, thank you for putting the time expressions on your list! :)
Many thanks for your videos, Mic. I have been fascinated by the Danish language and Danish culture since the 1990s. I am Dutch. Reading Danish didn't pose too much trouble, but understanding spoken Danish was quite a struggle. I had a breakthrough in 2019, with your national elections, when I was following a political debate and noticed I could follow like 70% of it. As if a glass wall had shattered. From then on Danish became like German and English. Only not knowing a word or an expression, or not recognizing a word because of the way it is pronounced, could and can stump me. Your pronunciation videos have been an absolute ear-opener. There is method to the udtale madness... I'm listening to DR P1 every day and practice the sounds diligently.
Final point: in the Netherlands, too, when someone 'from outside' speaks Dutch and it's not perfect, the Dutch will revert to English, as if hearing their language slightly mangled is too painful to them. Speaking for myself, I must admit I also find it difficult. But if someone asked me expressly to speak Dutch to help him or her learn it, I would certainly oblige.
Hi Johan, thanks for your interesting story. It's great to hear that you have had a breakthrough with Danish. It feels so great when the language suddenly becomes clear. Listening to the radio every day is a very good strategy, and combined with practicing the sounds diligently it becomes a perfect strategy.
About the switching to English, thank you for sharing your experience. DK and NE are very similar in many ways. The fact that TV series are subtitled and not dubbed in these two countries may be one of the main reasons why people are so familiar with English and switch to English when speaking to foreigners.
I enjoy learning languages and Danish is one of my "want-to-learn" language. I'm learning Dutch now and my knowledge of English and Dutch helps me understand Danish to a certain extent. As a Spanish speaker I'm so curious about Romance and Germanic languages. I've learned many Romance languages and now I'm learning Germanic languages besides English (Dutch is my second Germanic language). This is why I don't have so many problems with grammar. Pronunciation however, I still struggle with difficult sounds, especially those which aren't in my native language.
About correcting people, I don't like to correct people when speaking Spanish because I consider it rude. Unless you tell me that you want me to do it. So, I understand your point of view about this.
Hey mic wonderful explanation🙂 got more knowledge about grammatik can you please make a grammar vedio on conjunction,preposition& adverbs
I recommend imitation and repetition. I have taught English as an additional language for thirty years. It is helpful for a leaerner to pick a mndel, for example an actor whose voice and sound they like and would like to emulate. Then practice imitating that voice. Memorize sentences the person. has said and repeat, repeat, repeat until you can produce them alm ost exatly the way that actor does. It helps with pronunciation. If you do it a lot, it also helps with collocations and fluency.
When I asked for a water in Danish (vand), the saleswoman did not seem to understand me 😅 So I asked in Swedish for a "vatten" instead, suddenly she got me and gave me a bottle 😆 haha
Haha! But depending on where this happened, the person might have been Swedish. There are lots of Swedes who work in Copenhagen and go back to for example Malmö after work.
I'm french and I'm starting to learn danish.
It seems easier to understand than prononce.
Thanks for your videos, it's very helpfull
Great, thank you, and good luck!
I am half Danish, so I grew up (in the US) listening to Danish, but replied in English. I did not travel to Denmark until I was well into adulthood. I have found that Danes are patient in listening to me, and do not switch to English, regardless of some grammatical errors. One thing I missed on an early trip there was not differentiating properly between past and present tense. An old cousin listening to me thought I was speaking about someone in the present, rather than someone who had passed many years ago! I’m always working to improve my Danish. A fantastic country. ❤
It seems like you've had some great adventures with Danes. And good to hear that you are working to improve your level of Danish. Thanks for your comment 🙂
12:27 those words are so similar. Even though the pronunciation being similar, all of them did not merge into just one word. Really nice 👍👏👏😁
Yeah, very small differences between the words. But they still are different from each other :)
A friend of mine, a teacher of English has recommended me to start learning Danish ( I am already around B2/C1 in English and German) to grasp minor aspects of the larger germanic language family. Well, I started to read danish websites within a month or so. But hell, the pronunciation...
Yeah, that's a very common experience. Cool to hear that you are learning Danish. You can learn it, it just takes a but more time and effort than many other languages because of the pronunciation. I wish you good luck and fun learning Danish!
Thanks Mic. Your blog does a wonderful job
Akavit REALLY helps. Trusht me on thish.
The pronunication always trips me up! Especially after learning German, where literally every letter is pronounced.
After 40 years I am having fun rediscovering Danish. This is an excellent presentation. IHMO, the greatest obstacle for foreigners is the extreme difficultly of the pronunciation, and the many very different regional dialects. For example, if I lived on Bornholm, and traveled 24 km to the other end of the island, I would have difficulty understanding the dialect there ,where there is a strong Swedish influence.
I can still speak a bit of old school Danish of the 1960-1970's variety, a Kobenhaven dialect. I am very fond of Danish. The language has indeed changed. I can hear the unfortunate influence American English has had upon it. When I was there, British English was dominate and few spoke English as well as they do today. This is another obstacle for those who wish to learn Danish. It is now easier for Danes to speak English to any foreigner, and they have little need or motivation to help foreigners learn Danish. If your desire is to learn Danish, the key is to work on the pronunciation. The rest will follow.
Thanks for your comment. It is true that there has been a big shift in Danish culture in general over the last 40 years.
We are very much influenced by American culture (like many countries have been for decades).
And our dialects are also disappearing quickly. Nowadays you probably won't have that dynamic where a person from Bornholm will have difficulties understanding another person from Bornholm.
The world in general is becoming more uniform. Diversity is getting lost. Not good in my opinion 😕
@@MicsLanguages Sadly agree. Diversity is disappearing. When I hear even a slight American accent in a native Danish speaker, it saddens me. America itself, has lost itself, and is no more the once great country it was. I hate to see that degradation spread into Europe. The people is the western world no longer have a strong moral compass, especially here in the U.S. I expect changes to occur ever more rapidly as we go into the future. If there was some sort of war in Europe, I would flee to Bornholm if Danish. It is in a unique situation, and I would have friends, or a summer hus there. I once lived there on the oldest standing farm in Denmark.
I learned Danish on my own, naturally as an exchange student. Because I am was a good mimic, was highly motivated, and was in an environment where English was not spoken, I managed to become conversationally fluent to the point Danish natives could not believe that I was American, but thought I was Swedish . This was accomplished within 6 months, and improved thereafter. I also read and wrote Danish better than I could speak it. This is typical, because spoken Danish is difficult to pronounce. Even polyglots do not get it right. If I had had your excellent teaching to help, my progress would have been greatly accelerated. With the excellent fundamentals that you would have instilled early on, my progress thereafter would have be much superior. Danish was my first second language, so I was a complete novice.
If any prospective student is serious about leaning Danish, Mic's services could change your life in a very positive way, personally and financially. For students, your success with Danish, especially if you would live in Denmark, will have important benefits if you can learn to pronounce Danish well. Not to brag, but I believe the Dean at the time, at the University of Kobenhavn personally offered me entrance to the medical school there. I believe my ability to speak Danish well enough to impress them, was the key factor.
Thanks for listening. I will be viewing your videos in attempt to refresh and improve my very old Danish. My time in Denmark were the best years, and it is very comforting to hear it spoken. I was fortunate to be surrounded by good friends, and first class people there. A lack of money cause me to return to the U.S., where the people were not nearly as nice. It is not necessarily what you know, and where you are, but the people you know, that makes life better.
as a dane, the reason i personally switch to english is for efficiency - if there's no specific reason to have the conversation in danish, i will switch to english if it is more efficient, because i want to save time and make sure no mistakes are made
As an Italian the hardest things for me are the R and the soft d, grammar is also pretty different but once you understood the way the language works it's cool
Good luck. With the right mindset and dedication, you will learn it!
🇸🇪👋🇩🇰 Just found this channel. Really liking it so far. Jeg prøver at se på DR1 og danske filmer for at forstå mer dansk. Tack för en intressant kanal.
Super! Jeg går ud fra at du er svensker? Dansk er nok lidt sværere at lære for svenskere end svensk er for danskere. Man skal lige vænne sig til udtalen. Men man kan normalt godt lære det forholdsvist hurtigt.
God fornøjelse med det 😉
I learn danish and I find it quite easy, I am british
Et fyr can also mean a lighthouse. En fyr can also mean a fur tree. Getting all the meanings of the same word requires memorization.
Great video as always. I especially liked the part about vowels as I find them veeeeery confusing :) I would also love to see one about glottal stop. Ha' en dejlig weekend!!
I! am from Spain and i love learn languages. Now i learn myself Swedish (i know aroundo 400 words)and also Norwegian bokmal .I am 53 years old is great problem for me because learn language in my age is more difficult. I heard between Swedish and Norwegian ,Danis hfs the most difficult pronunciation. I hope in the future i can have a small conversation in Danish
Rundetårn😀
I just sat in my first zoom class to improve my Danish. There were 2 students there who I simply could not understand for the life of me. I was desperate for them to switch to English because I couldn't follow what was going on.
Re. music: I learned a lot listening to Halfdan Rasmussen's ABC songs for kids
Haha 😀
I learnt to conjugate the irregular English verbs at school and they stick now even 55 years later, same thing with the German verbs I'm a strong believer in learning languages the hard way.
Yeah learning the "traditional way" is a good method, but some people prefer (and learn faster with) a more practical method. Children also learn by doing, not by studying lists. All methods have their strengths and weaknesses. I would say the most important thing is that the learner is motivated and actually makes an effort to learn
Mic, I totally agree with you on the correcting bit. I am American. I always correct foreigners or my nieces who are Filipino. Why I do this. If I was learning a language. I would want to be corrected. Especially if they really want to learn the language.
But, if you can't find a Dane willing to correct you when asked. They you will have to do it on your own, or tell your language teacher to work with you on the pronunciation. That you want to speak Danish with Danish accent. If they are good language teacher they will do so.
It's possible to lose your accent. It's a lot work.
Good advice there!
Hej!Jeg er Japanere. Jeg studerer dansk i Japan.
Your youtube is very helpful for study danish!Tak!
Dejligt at høre, Erika. Tak for det. Og god fornøjelse med at lære dansk!
From what I've seen in Danish, I've seen some features of old English, German and Dutch. I speak Italian and Greek. I'm a native English speaker currently learning German. I'm curious about Germanic languages so I though I'd watch this video
Old English, German, Dutch and Danish have a lot of unexpected things in common. When learning one of these, it surely helps to know a few of the others. I am learning Dutch now and see so many similarities to English (modern, not old), German and Danish :)
Great channel!👏🏻👏🏻
Hi, I’m learning Danish as a Spanish native speaker. My husband speaks good Spanish so we communicate in Spanish. I am proficient in English and I have to agree if you speak English Danish is going to be easy. Grammar is fairly easy, only thing is that a lot of things break the rules so it’s adviced to learn the language (noun genders, plurals, past verbs) and memorize most of the words rather than going for the rules. Verb conjugation is fairly simple, fairly simple. We agreed Spanish has more rules but more content than Danish, therefore grammar might be harder. But pronunciation is quite simple. Hardest thing about Danish is pronunciation, listening and dialects. However, I have spoken to people from Argentina and Peru and I also don’t understand some of their words lol. PS I’m Guatemalan 😊
Hi! I totally agree with everything you wrote. It's always good to learn a language not only focusing on rules. It's better to learn by assimilation. A lot of contact with the language to build a "database" of past tense verbs etc. Children learn their native language without any grammar rules. Their brain finds the rules automatically, and also the exceptions, all through repetitive programming. But we adults have an advantage compared to children. We don't have to wait 2-3 years to speak, we can practice speaking the language right away. Active contact with the language is more powerful than passive. This is especially true for Danish, where most people have to practice the pronunciation A LOT. That's why I focus on having my students make sentences right from the beginning in my lessons.
La pronunciación del Español es super fácil y basicamente puede ser aprendida desde un libro. Pero para todas las lenguas (y otras cosas también) vale: Lo que funciona mejor es aprender haciéndo, learn by doing :)
I took 2 years of Swedish in college. I'm interested in Scandinavia in general. When I started listening to some Danish it really surprised me. It seems quite different.
The written language is not that different from Swedish. But indeed, the sound of the language is very different!
Hi Mic, once i was asking for "vand" and the lady could not understand me at all, then the guy next to me asked the same... she understood and i clearly did not heard the difference, but even my 5year old says i say it wrong so.. 😃 We came to Jutland 1year and a half ago and people are starting to know us by now so they try to understand, especially when i say: jeg kan godt forstå hvis du taler langsamt. I think they appreciate the effort. When we go on holidays though, it's no use, english it is otherwise we would be saying: hvad siger du? all the time because of the different dialect pronunciation.
I have just discovered your videos and i think they are quite helpful so Tak for det 🙂
Hi Sonia, Thanks for you comment.
About the word vand, there are various small things that could be responsible for Danes not understanding you. For example the vowel sound, the stød, the melody, the "nd" being pronounced without "d".
And yeah, the pronunciation for example in Copenhagen is fairly different from the different dialects in Jylland. Danish takes more effort than må y other languages to learn well. But everybody can learn it, if they put in enough work. :) Good luck!!
I moved to Denmark as a young adult or I was just past the “teenage stage”. At school, EVERYONE could speak English, even the 4th graders (10 years old) could speak decent English, helped me a lot. And I’m saying, almost all Danes speak English, I’ll say 95% of Danes speak decent English. I’m pretty sure kids are required to have English from 1-2 grade. Most of Danes can also speak German or French. Helped me a lot,
Aha, I _knew_ it! The inside of Danish homes look just like I imagined from reading H. C. Andersen stories as a kid. ;-)
This is a picture from inside Rundetårn in Copenhagen. It's a bit cold here at night (no heating), but I kind of like it 🤔😁
Hi Mic! Your videos help me with Danish and motivation in general. I am looking forward to a new video of a more intermediate Danish. I hope that you are doing fine and everything is ok with you!
Hi Karim! Thanks for your nice comment.
I am doing fine yeah, thank you. Just pretty busy at the moment. I hope I'll get going with the videos again sometime soon... 🤔
Hey Mic, ive been following you for a while and literally admire your channel as someone trying to learn basic Danish. And can you please make a video about comparison of Nordic languages? I mean if a Danish can understand a Norwegian or how similar Danish and Swedish is. Love your tshirt btw, greetings from Turkey ✌🏻
Thank you for your nice words.
That request of yours would be difficult for me to make a video about.
You might want to write to other channels, for example one called ecolinguist. On that channel they compare different languages that are from the same language group. But they haven't done one with Scandinavian languages yet, only one where Old Norse (a language spoken in Scandinavia a LONG time ago) is compared to three Scandinavian languages. I'm actually in that video, if you haven't seen it search for Jackson Crawford Ecolinguist.
Write to Norbert, the guy from ecolinguist and he might make such a video in the future, who knows :)
Thank you.
Thank you for your video and for your honest opinions. It is exactly with Danes, they are not willing to help us if we make any single grammar mistake, I usually skip an articles so I do not use always a deffinite noun :D :D and it is complete distater when they do not get anything what I am saying. But my pronunciation is very good though. That is so sad that the native people criticize us and keep saying we should learn the language but when we do and we spend a loooot of time with this difficult language and deal with millions dialects in Denmark, they still don’t try to help us.
Yeah, it can be tough.
But I would say the best thing to do is accept that many Danes react like this and then you can either live with the fact that you are not always understood, or you can practice hard and wisely and get to a level where you are being understood.
It's good to have challenges in life 😁
@@MicsLanguages yes, definitely! I don't give up, I still practice. The øst important thing is to have at least 1-2 danish friends who can help :D
I have known and seen a lot of people moving to Denmark, and only very few learn the language - mainly because of the issue with danes switching to english.
I actually think the issue stems from the small amount of people who speak danish non-natively. Despite there being regional dialects in danish, most people have a hard time with accents. That is to say, most nativespeakers have never heard danish spoken with a french, spanish, japanese, chinese etc. accent. So we gerally have a hard time realizing whether people speak a perfectly reasonable danish, or whether they just started learning - and are struggling to communicate. I have friends with a massive vocabulary, but where i initially had to get used to the different accent. Surprisingly it rarely takes that long to get used to (30-60 minutes), but you have to aknowledge that as the only communicational problem.
Contrary to this issue, a lot of people speak german, french, spanish, english, chinese etc. non-natively, which makes the accents commonly known, and easily understood amongst people who speak the languages natively - or even amongst people who doesnt.
To the topic of switching to English. I begin my Danish conversations with: "I am learning Danish, please talk Danish with me." And, all my conversations went by in a complete way of danish talking. :-) So, easy as that. Danes love to speak danish!
That's an amazing way of doing it. Very straight forward! 🙂
I lived for 2 years in Sweden and learned Swedish there, and I was actually surprised how fast I picked up the language and started talking to people with almost zero problems, and then I started working in Denmark (while still living in Sweden) and since my Swedish was pretty good, I decided to learn Danish to communicate with people there, and Jesus Christ that was quite the challenge! Most of the time we would switch to English, some of them would even change to Swedish just to make me stop butchering Danish 😂😂
haha yeah, what you have gone through is a fairly common thing. Many lists that list different languages by their level of difficulty show Danish and Swedish more or less at the same level, but this is not the actual experience that many people have. Learning Danish takes more effort than many other languages, thanks to its amazing pronunciation 😁
Thanks for your comment by the way!
I think the thing of Danes not correcting others as much has to do with the influence of Janteloven, which is understandable
I think this guy nailed it!
I can hear differences in 80% of pronunciation… but it’s still a horrid task.
Very interesting video. Had learnt the basics of Danish back in my university time. We used to make fun of the Danish student who was teaching us - which was totally stupid at the time, because he spoke broken French. He did speak perfect English, though. As a teacher of English myself, I concur with your grammar assessment. If you know English, Danish grammar is a "calque". So very easy! Unless, like many of my fellow citizens, you suck at languages!
But, as to pronunciation, well, that's another story! It is far more complicated than English (or French). Although I had bought tons of books, I could never get the sounds right, until I found your videos (to correct a few mistakes). That is why, if I am not wrong, Danish is considered the 6th hardest language to learn, after French, only because of the sounds and the Stöd I have never been able to apply correctly.
I can mostly understand Danish when written, but absolutely not when spoken. But thanks to us, Nordic countries have that special cultural thing that we, French, wouldn't seem to ever possess: open-mindedness to languages and cultures. Every Scandinavian I met in France, UK, USA, etc. spoke very good English, as do Dutch and to some extent Germans. We, Latins, need to improve...
I'll be doing a video on the stød soon. Hopefully that will help you use stød correctly 🙂
Thanks for you comment!
I have just stumbled on your interesting site after learning Danish on Duolingo online for over 4 years!
My mother was Danish, we lived in London and we five children regrettably didn't become bilingual (she wasn't a natural teacher). Not for want of trying on my part, listening avidly to every word she spoke on the phone & with visitors and visits to relatives when young. That has given me a good start with pronounciation but little of the grammar.
Duolingo is not that good with Danish - not enough folk want to learn compared with other languages. It's fun and gives a lot of good practise listening, speaking & writing but leaves rather a lot of doubts and gaps to fill.
I'm hoping to fill some of those with your videos. Like others, I don't have anyone handy to talk with at the moment though I'm searching. And I watch films & news, read magazines & sing in Danish😊 (I know by heart all the Julesange from going to the Danish church in London every Juleaften.)
I will aim to let you know how your videos help.🎉
Thank you very much for writing me this nice comment. I hope that my videos will be helpful for you.
It is indeed correct that Duolingo is not good for Danish. Last time I checked, they were still using robots for the audio instead of real humans as in many of the other languages on Duolingo. This is not the only reason why I dislike Duolingo, though 😁
I am sorry to hear that your mother wasn't able (willing?) to teach you guys Danish. I live in Brazil, and with my son, who is born here and now 8 years old, I spoke Portuguese the first 3 to 4 years, but now I speak exclusively Danish with him (I should have done it for the beginning. It's very important to me that he learns my native language.
I wish for you that you will find somebody to speak Danish with regularly!
I'am totally agree on this video!
I really appreciate your analytical approach to teaching Danish. You are inspiring. It was interesting to hear that Danes will often not correct you if you make a mistake or mispronounce a word. That was an obstacle for me in Japan too where people were too polite to help me by correcting me. So on that subject I would like to comment on a mistake I have heard you make when speaking English. First I must stress that this is the only mistake I have heard you make, which is really remarkable. You often say you would recommend us TO do this or that. We don't use the word to with recommend but rather use the word THAT. For example, " I would recommend that you practice until it becomes second nature." Not "I would recommend you to practice..." My mother spoke English fluently but my father really struggled with it. He was 50 when I was born and 55 when we moved to the US (born in 1897!) and he learned to understand English perfectly. The problem was no one could understand him when he spoke English so he kind of gave up trying hard. People didn't have much imagination and couldn't guess what he was saying if the words were mispronounced. I had the same issue when speaking Japaese. I admire your language ability and can see that you really persevered in your studies. Your fluency in English helps make you such an excellent teacher. You mentioned that you spoke six languages but didn't tell us what all of them were. Danish, German, English, Brazilian Portuguese were mentioned. What are the others? French, Spanish, italian,? Just curious.
Dear Signe, thank you very much for your comment. And thanks a lot for your correction. This is actually a thing I would have never figured out. I had no clue that it doesn't sound good to say "I recommend you to...".
I guess the reason why it doesn't work is that you cannot "recommend SOMEBODY to do sth." Maybe it's not about the word "to" vs. "that", but about the fact that recommend cannot take an object. What do you think?
ANyway, I am probably taking this directly from Danish "jeg anbefaler dig at gøre...". I normally am good at hearing when something is wrong in English, but here I wasn't able to. Thank you very much for opening my eyes :)
Your family history sounds interesting. Being a family that moves to another country is in my opinion a great thing. LEarning to live in different "systems". But of course it can also be tough at times.
The languages I speak are Danish and German mother tongue (I learned German from age 8, but did so in Germany, so I quickly got fluent). English, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish. In Swedish I would make lots of mistakes, but I am still "fluent". In Spanish it's similar.
@@MicsLanguagesI am not sure what the reason for the construction used with "recommend" is. We would also use "you" but in this way, for example: "I recommend you practice it." Or you could say, "I recommend practicing it." Or simply, " I recommend that you practice."
German is so difficult, I think, unless you grow up with it or have a great memory or a mind that works like a machine. I studied it for only two semesters and speak what I call hitch-hiker German. In 1968 when I was hitchhiking around Germany I had only 10 weeks of German study under my belt. It was the height of the war in Vietnam and most Germans were adamently opposed to the war. Whenever I spoke English and they heard my American accent, they wanted to talk about the war. Though I was also opposed to it, that was not what I wanted to talk about so I told people I was Danish and didn't speak English. The subject of war never came up then and I was able to use my rudimentary German. I think I was able to pull it off because I spoke German with a Danish accent. I have always found it interesting that I can usually guess where a foreigner is from when they speak English because people have the same accent as their countrymen. It must have something to do with your native tongue since my accent when speaking German is more of a Danish person's accent than that of an American.
Yes, moving to another country is fascinating and stimulating and very different than just visiting as a tourist. Studying the language and mindset snd history and customs, etc. deepens the experience but it takes time to really understand the nuances of another culture. I wrote earlier about a job opening here for a Danish lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison but I think I may not have posted it You would be great for the position. The job was posted in October 2021 but may still be open. The contact person is the department manager: nicole.senter@wisc.edu. The department used to be called the Scandinavian Studies Department but is now the German, Nordic, Slavic Department (GNS). You can learn more about the faculty and programs and courses at the university website or possibly their facebook group. I don't know if I would want to leave Denmark if I were you. But perhaps you know someone else who might be interested if you aren't.
@@MicsLanguages Interesting because I just checked the Oxford dictionary and they have this: "recommend somebody to do something - We'd recommend you to book your flight early." I guess it must be an American English thing where "recommend somebody to do something" is not considered correct.
Oh, that's nice. So I wasn't wrong afterall 🙂
Thanks for checking it and for writing this comment.
I have just read a forum discussion and it seems like Americans are against this usage but that many dictionaries accept it. It seems to be more of a British expression, indeed.
But there's still a lot of confusion amongst people 😁
As a native English speaker I've experienced most of the pitfalls discussed here. Danes will switch to English if they even remotely sense that I'm struggling. Maybe part of that is so they can showcase their skills. My experience of Danes has been that of a far higher literacy and multilingual acceptance than in England. If I were a Dane then I'd be proud too. As a nation we, the English, seem to have a certain arrogance that everywhere will speak our language, and it really annoys me. One thing I have found is that going to Denmark and speaking just a few words can make all the difference. There's a whole world between saying "Do you speak English?" in English, and trying to say the same in Danish. If I make the effort then, no matter how repressed and self-conscious I am, it has always been appreciated.
Exactly! Making an effort will always bring us further than taking the easy way :)
❤I loved Copenhagen, danish humor and warm/friendliness, more so than in Sweden (even tho I have good Swedish friends )
I enjoyed a lot! & many questions to you! Will ask glagly!
I'm English, I learnt Norwegian for professional reasons [I was in a Norwegian eSport team and I was the only English person, i didn't want to be *THAT* guy] but mostly because I found it very easy from the very start so I thought why not? Most of the words have an English equivalent, more so than any other language that I have encountered so I found it really easy to remember things.
When I became exposed to Danish I realized I could read most of it, just like I could with Swedish from what I'd learnt from Norwegian, but the thing I found the most fascinated is that, for me, I found it easier to SPEAK Danish, [outside of the ede pronunciation anyway!] since it flows a lot better, Norwegian is a bit more of a tongue twister in that regard, however I find Danish one of the hardest languages to listen to and understand people, since many of the words sound too similar but if they wrote it down I'd probably understand it just fine, for example Fire and Fyrre to a foreign ear sounds almost identical especially when its in conversation.
Just my two cents, I do enjoy Danish, I always enjoy learning more and more words, the hardest part about Scandinavian languages is finding the situations to be able to practise it, since most Scandinavians speak such good English, it feels like a waste to force them to speak their own language ! :D
Thanks for your "two cents".
Great to hear that you came into Scandinavian languages thru e-sports.
And the idea of spoken Danish flowing better kind of makes sense, now I think about it.
Have fun with further improving your language skills ;)
@@MicsLanguages Appreciate it thanks, I subscribed because I take all the help I can get.
I'm a German native speaker and I wanna learn Danish. Reading is quite easy but the pronunciation is tough. When you started with the b + vowels I couldn't hear the difference in all cases - some sounded the same 🙈. The soft d sounds a lot like an l only slightly different. I try my best to get the right pronunciation but it's still a long way to go 😅
Hi! Thank you for your comment. Your remarks are very common for German speakers. The biggest difficulty regarding Danish vowels for Germans is generally O vs Å, since Å doesn't exist in German.
And yes, the soft D is often perceived as a kind of L. But it is VERY different for a native Danish speaker :)
I wish you good luck (and lots of fun) learning Danish ;)
I agree with you 100%
Very helpful video. Thank you for you efforts.
Thank you for your nice message :)
For someone interested in eventually learning Danish and Norwegian, which would you recommend learning first? I spoke to a Norwegian speaker once about the similarities between Danish and Norwegian and he laughed and joked that Danish sounds like Norwegian spoken by a drunken person.
Good question. I haven't had that much contact with Norwegian in my life, apart from hearing amit spoken once in a while. But it seems like their pronunciation is quite a bit easier than Danish. The languages per se are very similar, the grammar isn't much different and the vocabulary isn't either. Having said that, young people nowadays rarely are able to understand each other if they speak their native languages, so they oftentimes switch to English. Mainly because of the pronunciation, but also because of the differences in vocabulary, which are relatively few though and shouldn't take too long to learn.
I hope this helps you a bit :)
@@MicsLanguages thank you for your reply. i like what you're doing on your yt channel. i'm currently fluent in english and (thanks to my wife) spanish......my great grandparents were danish immigrant farmers to michigan, usa, and i've recently developed an interest in connecting with danish culture and language (sorry for the lack of capitalizaton and lazy punctuation...bad habits from texting)
Hi Mic :) your videos are great!
It would be great if you would also upload some basic grammar videos like "danish nouns", "danisch adjectives", "danish tenses", "Danish numbers", "Danish conditional clauses"...
Yes, this is mayde a little bit "dry and boring" for some people, but it is a great way to learn grammar for peolple how learn better by listening and watching videos (for me definitaly and i guess also for lots of other followers).
Best, Desi
Thanks for your suggestion, Desi!
I would also say that the vocabulary in Danish (as well as Norwegian and Swedish) isn't as much of a piece of cake as one would expect. I started learning Norwegian, which has much easier pronunciation (though, again, producing the right vowels in the right places in the flow of a conversation is a bit tricky, but, as a native Russian speaker, I find this to also be a challenge in Ukrainian, which is so similar to my native tongue; on the other hand, Spanish and Italian are really really easy when it comes to pronunciation, probably the easiest languages). I found the Norwegian (and Danish) vocabulary (and morphology) to intersect much more with German than with English, which is so heavily loaded with influences from Latin, Greek, and French. When learning English, I found its vocabulary, especially when it comes to the higher-level abstract language, to have a lot in common with Russian. Both languages borrowed heavily from Latin and Romance languages.
Norwegian and Danish, on the other hand, use a lot of roots and prefixes that are Germanic in origin, and a lot of those words at first blended together and got confused in my mind.
Yeah you are totally right about the connection between Norwegian/ Danish and German.
And Italian and Spanish are super easy vowel-wise, no doubt about that.
Interesting points about Russian and Ucranian, unfortunately I have only spent max a few hours looking at these two languages, so have no reference point to speak about them.
But from teaching Danish to Russian speaking people I have come to understand that the higher level abstract language in Russian has a lot in common with other languages that I know, especially Latin (and also English/French), but also German.
It depends. If you are from another Germanic language you can pick it up in a year if you submerge yourself, meaning you speak only Danish. I've seen it done. To get your brain to think in Danish instead of translating from your native tongue ,will take longer, on average I would say 3-5 years.
If you have ever watched FC København's game in past 2 years (I think you did), you should have noticed player named David Khocholava. He's Georgian like me and our language ain't so easy as well (with it's pronounciation as well). Personally my favourite national team after Georgia is Denmark. And my second favorite team after Liverpool and the local one is FCK.
I love FCK's chants and 've learnt some of them... for ex.
"Synger stolt om byens farver, København er hvid og blå"
"Aldrig skal du være alene, hovedstaden følger dig"
And many, many more... I love Danish pronounciation BUT!
ESPECIALLY
I LOVE *ANTKHEAS SKOV UUULSN* (Andreas Skov Olsen) AND *IOKIM MEILA* (Joakim Mæhle) FOR THEIR FANTASTICALLY PRONOUNCED SURNAMES 😂😂❤️ (Joachim Anasn, too 😏)
Just as information for you: Dutch also has the same inversion you talk about as in Danish, German, Swedish and probably other Germanic languages. For a Dutch speaker Danish would be perhaps easier than English, including the pronunciation. A real challenge would be the soft D.
Thanks for your comment. I'm actually learning some Dutch now. Danish helps a lot, but Dutch has lots of words that are different from both Danish and German. But sometimes the words then exist in English instead. It's interesting to see all the similarities between these languages.
The soft D could be difficult for you. Also some of the vowel sounds. It's an interesting question, whether Danish would be easier to learn for Dutch speakers than English would be. The "problem" is that Dutch people (just like Danes) are surrounded by English and thus learn it kind of automatically. So Danish will always be more difficult to learn for that reason. But languagewise, I don't know 🤔
I think as someone who speaks flamsk, it is very hard to learn that soft D. My girlfriend hammers me on how to pronounce it of course. But it needs to be correct. ;)
Danes switching to English all the time when speaking to someone who does not speak Danish properly reminds me al LOT of how it is in the Netherlands, which is my home country. The Dutch just want to comunicate efficienty. They often are willing to help you learn Dutch, but only if they have ample time and if the like talking to you in the first place. This might be why the Danes switch to English aswell.
Secondly, the thing you said about the wordorder changing when asking questions happens in Dutch aswell.
Yeah, these two countries are very alike in this respect. Thanks for your input!
For me as a Dutch reading Danish is quite easy. It is not too different from Dutch (alhough Swedish and especially Norwegian is a lot closer still). Spoken....well....let's say that I went through Denmark to Sweden where we have some friends. It turned out that all of us could read Danish well, but when I said that I had so much trouble making sense of what people (especially in the streets) said the Swedes told me that I wasn't the only one. they had the exact smae trouble (this was near Linköping, not very close to Denmark so in Skåne it might be different). So me as a Dutch and the Swedes moreless are in a similar situation in that we can read Danish alright, but understanding it (let alone talking it) is extremely difficult. And it is mostly due to the fact that they seem to pronounce words quite a bit different than we do, the vowels as Mic's says must be theproblem I guess. Still: most Dutch immigrants to Denmark (farmers mostly) seem to the be quickly very apt at it from what I have been told. May be I am not that talented.
Haha, maybe you're not talented 🙂
I believe that if you spent some time in Denmark as a farmer surrounded by non-English speaking Danes, you would quickly adapt.
Danish is difficult for you (now) not only because of the vowels, but also the consonants that are often mute. And the sentence intonation /rhythm is also super important. It happens often that we Danes don't really hear every word in a sentence spoken quickly by another Dane. But we can deduct from our grammatical knowledge and from our prosodic knowledge what the missing words are :)
Without the text I would never hear the difference between "bo" and "bog". Is it true that children use 0.5 years longer to speak proper Danish as opposed to Norwegian?
Yeah, I have read some studies about the idea that Danish children learn Danish later than other children. And I also think I read something about half a year's difference.
Danes like the chance to speak English (seems more so with Americans) just as much as you wish to speak Danish with them.
Seebach! Wonderful singer to listen too.
Because there are only 5M Danish speakers, the accepted variation in pronunciation is comparatively narrow -- maybe the Icelandic Danish accent is the least encountered as a variant, otherwise the known variants are quickly learned as a child.
Compare that with all the variants of English (UK, USA, Australia, India, etc.) and all of the internal regional dialects within those countries (especially in the UK). An English speaker is confronted with new variants as they meet others from around the world who speak English as a subsequent language so they're used to expecting variations, different stress accents (especially in Indian English), and usage.
I've been both complimented on my pronunciation and also confronted with "what was that???" as Danish is very sensitive to slight vowel shifts to convey meaning. A simple slip-up can confuse the casual listener unless they're expecting a non-native speaker and prepared for mistakes and to infer meaning by context when a poorly articulated word is spoken.
Yes, Swedish is MUCH more forgiving but they too have pitch accent which can change the word. f.ex. anden (the duck) and anden (the spirit) distinguished only by the pitch accent. You have to learn the two pronunciations and meanings separately and thus be ready to choose the correct one.
Thanks for your comment.
Definitely, the fact that English speakers are confronted with many different types of accents, both spoken by native and non-native speakers, makes them more comfortable with divergent pronunciations.
As to Danish, you are right that vowel slip-ups can confuse native speakers. But at least as important is the sentence stress, which words are stressed and which aren't. This is a thing that is often overlooked, and even though Danish is often kind of seen as having less "rhythm/melody" than for example Swedish, it is crucial for proper understanding.
Mic I recently subscribed to you and then saw you on Ecolinguist my favorite RUclips channel!! I like your channel too btw
Cool thanks! Ecolinguist is a great channel, I didn't know about it, but then one day I was contacted by Norbert. It was a fun experience to participate in the video :)