Danish is relatively easy for English speakers to read. Unfortunately the pronunciation is odd, they kind of swallow consonants and Danish has many simple monosyllabic words that change meaning according to context.
It's at least related to Norwegian and German, which are considered pretty easy for native English speakers to learn, so it's probably not terribly difficult. One of my friends from high school was a foreign exchange student in Denmark and said she was conversational within a week or two, for what that's worth.
My time to shine! As a Dane i think its gonna be easy to learn danish for english speaking people. A ton of words are taken from the English vocabulary. The hard part is the pronunciation, but Danes are likely going to understand you anyway. :)
Oh my gosh, that's awesome!!! I really want to go now, the language sounds absolutely amazing too. It's like the best parts of french and german combined.
I found that it's reasonably easy to start being able to puzzle out what (simple) written Danish is trying to say.
It turns out that, in addition to the pillaging and looting, many Vikings settled down in England, got married, and contributed lots of Old Norse words to Old English. This makes for a lot of cognates.
On the other hand, I find the pronunciation to be very difficult. As kxh points out, they do love to swallow consonants, and they seem to be speaking from the back of the throat, which I find baffling. So I have a very hard time understanding even simple sentences, even in highly-constrained contexts, like ordering a coffee. "You want milk in that?" is pronounced, apparently, "Wil mmmph glerg bjlghhj?"
Denmark is indeed an extremely cool country. You should go anyway, regardless of language fluency, since pretty much everybody speaks excellent English.
I'm curious as to how hard Danish is to learn, I've been thinking of attempting to learn it, it seems like a neat country.
Danish is relatively easy for English speakers to read. Unfortunately the pronunciation is odd, they kind of swallow consonants and Danish has many simple monosyllabic words that change meaning according to context.
It's at least related to Norwegian and German, which are considered pretty easy for native English speakers to learn, so it's probably not terribly difficult. One of my friends from high school was a foreign exchange student in Denmark and said she was conversational within a week or two, for what that's worth.
That's amazing!!! I hope to be able to do some sort of foreign exchange/studying abroad there someday!
My time to shine! As a Dane i think its gonna be easy to learn danish for english speaking people. A ton of words are taken from the English vocabulary. The hard part is the pronunciation, but Danes are likely going to understand you anyway. :)
Oh my gosh, that's awesome!!! I really want to go now, the language sounds absolutely amazing too. It's like the best parts of french and german combined.
I found that it's reasonably easy to start being able to puzzle out what (simple) written Danish is trying to say.
It turns out that, in addition to the pillaging and looting, many Vikings settled down in England, got married, and contributed lots of Old Norse words to Old English. This makes for a lot of cognates.
On the other hand, I find the pronunciation to be very difficult. As kxh points out, they do love to swallow consonants, and they seem to be speaking from the back of the throat, which I find baffling. So I have a very hard time understanding even simple sentences, even in highly-constrained contexts, like ordering a coffee. "You want milk in that?" is pronounced, apparently, "Wil mmmph glerg bjlghhj?"
Denmark is indeed an extremely cool country. You should go anyway, regardless of language fluency, since pretty much everybody speaks excellent English.