Language in Danmark

Nu skal vi tale lidt dansk:
"Goddag, herr (frue), hvordan har De det?"
"Jeg har det fint, tak, og De selv?"
"Nå men, jeg har det faktisk skide godt..."


Dansk is an amusingly weird sounding language, seemingly incomprehensible at first, but actually closely related to English: it has a similar vocabulary and an amazingly simple grammar. However, the pronounciation is more or less IMPOSSIBLE to get right.

Fortunately, most Danes are bilingual English speakers--they have to be multilingual if they want to go out of their little country of only 5 million people. It's wonderfully easy to communicate with them, they're usually quite eager to get to use their English. In fact, one of the problems in learning Danish is that they hear your accent and respond immediately in English.

Most Danes can also manage a little high-school German, some French, and maybe a smattering of other European languages, but English is by far the lingua franca, so to speak.

Danish is closely related to English because the old Viking language was intercommunicable with Anglo-Saxon, blended by trade and war. The Norman Invasion (of then French speaking Vikings) transformed the language of England into a latinized hybrid, otherwise we'd be speaking something like Danish ourselves today.

Og nu skal vi lære at udtale dansk på den rigtige måde:
"Rødgrød med Fløde..."