Danish language course U1M5

[LoveMusicJMx3Lz]

The toughest? I don't think so because u don't have to conjugate verbs like in French nd Spanish ! And thats what makes these languages so difficult in my opinion ( nd I'm from Germany;German is a horrible language to learn ) xD

[mossespag]

Danes go far into scandinavian minimalism pronouncing random little parts of their words!

[stellacourse]

@mossespag :) brilliant!

[BerwaldShootMe]

I live in Sweden(and speaks Swedish) but I'm going to study Danish after this year (:

[vikesh81]

Danish is supposed to be the toughest Scandinavian language to learn.

[LabRat4680]

@vikesh81 Hardest to pronounce. Finnish is MUCH harder to learn.

[simonmaersk]

This is very funny for me, because i am from denmark :P Velkommen til Danmark :D

[sarahshuffle]

@simonmaersk

Enig :-).

[ROEDERBABY]

WOW THIS LANGUAGE IS EASY! :O

[MariaStancheva17]

difficult landuage to pronounce.... thanks for the lesson!

[lukaskriller]

If you know swedish then danish is not as hard to learn. they sound alike.

[Angelow07]

Danish is pretty similar to swedish. Actually really similar (i'm swedish)

[luciablabla]

haha hvor er det sært xD

[MsSolkongen]

Wow, my language really doesn't sound that nice xD. And it's really difficult, too. I mean, for Heavens sake, we don't pronounce half our letters! Good thing I don't have to bother learning it now... xD

[aimmaster18]

Difficult pronunciation ;D !

[gloomyoutlook]

Wow, this is such a brilliantly helpful video. Very well executed; the pronunciation help, the spelling and reading, etc.

[MsToNeOne]

danish is my second language!..and i like it more than arabic!..arabic is more difficult! T_T

[lukas0070]

if you ever say tak in danmark you are gonna die by my

[SavilliMillard]

wtf.

[Dustybirrd]

I'm interested about learning Danish... I've been studying Swedish for YEARS (I live in Finland and it's compulsory for us :^U )

I.... I must admit that Danish doesn't sound that nice.... But that doesn't stop me being interested about the language. : D My goal is to learn all North European languages, and currently I'm trying to study both Danish and Icelandic (and trying to get better with my Swedish).

[lizzieke]

Hey! Do you people know how/ where could I find somebody to teach me Danish via Skype? I could help with hungarian, romanian, german or even english :) But Im sure you guys speak better english than me :P Thanx! Lizzie

[Mugib]

i could im danish and i can english and german

[larsenmark277]

im only on msn and if you need to teach danish so send me a pm and in not the best to english

[myllemis]

haha!!! it's so funny, i have never thought about how hard my language is!!! :D

but ofcause, danes is use to it...

[pippavon]

@ musicdevotee

- How about you not judge my languange in such an insulting way huh?

Please refrain from stating that sort of crap when you don't even know Danish - you have absolutely no right to judge us on one lousy video. Besides, we have a number of dialects that she haven't even grazed yet, this was as "school book-ish" as it gets.

[tiddler111]

Just over two years ago I fancied learning a new language and for one reason or another I chose Danish. I bought the colloquial Danish pack. Oh my god, the first time I heard this language I thought what the ****!! I gave up straight away and went out and bout a norwegian course. And i'll be honest, I haven't looked back. Norwegian is beautiful and EASY for en engelskmann. Sorry Danmark, but I am being drawn to your language again out of curiosity. PS danish isn't anywher near as hard as Welsh.

[freddyzcount90]

Im danish, have any questions? Ask me!

[emochickslove]

i thought english was confusing.....and im from america.....but this.....omg....sometimes the longer words are easier to say than the short words.

[VoigtCPH]

I'm danish, and I didn't know it was so difficult for foreigners.

But I see her point.

Many letters are silence :o)

[clearcut76]

holy crap it's a mess! i thought dutch was difficult, but this one is the hell O_o

[xxlarsenxx]

no...you have go to now the language...

[yyysz]

she speaks danish likes she's not danish..

[Nikolaj11]

You're serious? I could very well hear that it was a Danish tounge..

[musicdevotee]

If Danish is really like that, I think I'm right to believe it's a really ugly language. German is the most beautiful language of all Germanic languages.

[imaCONvict]

German? Are you effing kidding me?

[jinp1]

an important thing to remember is that "i" normally sounds like "ee" and "e" sounds like "i" when used in words like "is". i'm pretty sure this counts for most european languages.

[Agrashsallam]

Its not true when she says u dont say these letters.. fuck u we dont bitch

[singular23]

WTF? Hvem udtaler ikke L'et i ordet "til"?

[Ummummummum]

//MewNina.. Er dansk seriøst blevet kåret som det sværeste sprog? Jeg havde da regnet med at det ville være et sprog som 'japansk' eller 'kinesisk'?! /:

[Abbathos]

amagad! the danish language has colapsed into meaningless guttured sounds! nah jk..very weird labguage..pretty easy for a swede to learn..you just have to skip some letters at the end of all words and speed up the speach.. =D

[soulmitz]

ive been to denmark but now im in norway,,the thing is im so interested and passionated to learn the danish language,,you are a great teacher,,i understand so well...i love danish language thatn norweigian...i love all the silent words,,love it,,

[EmoOphelia]

0o Det hedder sgu da ikke 'ti', det hedder da til

[eksowh]

hæhæ.. she was saying some of it wrong...

[WitchEva]

I'm Dutch and they always say that Dutch and Danish look like each other. I agree though. It looks like each other. xD

[CodeKitten]

Strange to see how people try to teach danish. To me, being danish, this looks completely weird.. I don't feel like I leave out as many characters from pronounciation as she claims... and I certainly don't speak that way.. but Denmark has ALOT of dialects.. and that's what makes danish REALLY hard to understand I think :)

[GhostOfOpera]

It may be strange. But think at those who try learn english,and someone from USA or UK see them trying . Don't they think it's strange too?

~Yes,I am trying to learn danish dammit XD~

[keglelaila]

yes I agree I can't see how you can pronounce hvordan as vodn it makes no sense, she even pronounces the a herself but then says it's silent. Would make more sense if it was phonetically described as vo-dan

[Nikolaj11]

I agree, i can't imagne what it's like to learn Danish as a second or third language :p

[Blankovich11]

The danish language is very hard to learn, and almost impossible to speak for some people.

I spoke with an italian in Denmark, and he had lived in Copenhagen for 6 months, and couldn't say more than a few words. :)

But danish is great, and the most beautiful language!

[kode1303]

My wife is Australian (and I'm Danish). She speaks Danish quite well now.

[ElvenDane]

Nice to see that you have house trained her well :-)

[ElvenDane]

Good to hear that you have house trained her well :-)

[jorgento]

Is there a rule to difference the two pronunciations of A?

[bamsefar73]

No, I don't think so, however, all words which start with AR sounds like the second a in Danmark.

But words like appelsin (orange) and Afghanistan also have the second a-sound

[ElvenDane]

no, sorry :-(

[haruglory6890]

Hvordan gaar det? is exactly the same as the expression in Norwegian, but totally different pronunciation :-s

[TheDreamsTV]

in the last are there a fail the voice say: det er godt og se jer but the text say: det er godt at se jer

[hkja99]

Det er også fornuftigt :S Man kan jo heller ikke sige: det er godt OG se jer :D

[tandemspring]

det hedder, AT se, ikke OG se

[ElvenDane]

Ja, men det er umuligt at forklare folk :-)

Røvirriterende - det kan endda gå med

"a'" eller "o'" , men "og" ??!?!

Altså helt ærligt, folk :-)

[bamsefar73]

That's not a fail.

The word at is pronounced like the word og.

[ElvenDane]

But people often pronounce it as "og" nowadays *SIGHHH*, even if it should be "at" - it used to be pronouced as "a' " or " 'o' "

I guess that's where it comes from.

[hoegtv]

jeg kan lide kage^^

[Prisha308]

I´m searching for something like that. But yet, it´s feeling funny to learn danish with a english speaking person as a german. Anyway, this is global *g*

[MaleneHellraizer]

I can totally understand that foreigners find our language difficult. :b

[fogger456]

haha hvor er det godt man!!:P

[qeib87]

I think that the only way to learn Indo-European languages, such as Danish, is simply being born in a country in which one of these languages is spoken. Otherwise, it's just impossible... they are way too hard! but I guess we can all give it a try... English comes from an Indo-European root and is not even my mother tongue =P

[ElvenDane]

No, not at all ! You already know a lot of D words, when you know E, and the grammar is very similar.

We can all give = Vi [vee] kan alle give

My sister is good = Min søster er god

He is often here = Han er ofte her

E and D are both Germanic languages and started out as nearly the same langauge (like dialects ) and have later on influenced each other a lot.

Many simple words in E are of D/ Norse origin, and the E grammar became much simplified because of this clash of close tongues.

[syltetoey]

norsk er mye bedre enn dansk!! :P (også hvis norsk er bare en dansk dialekt^^)

[Lotusisgreat]

arrh, mon dog. danmark rådede engang over både sverige, norge og tyskland, ved du nok.

[ElvenDane]

Norsk og danske er bare dialekter af det samme sprog ;-)

[allanotropy]

i intend to return to Denmark within a year or two to study Danish full time...

[allanotropy]

Danish has the "flat" sounding quality like English does, and i just imitated all the sounds i heard and put letters and words to them later. what helped a lot was that the Danish captions were always on during the tv-avisen, so i had no difficulty in associating the spoken and written forms. part of the reason for this may also be that i learned Chinese as a child, and in Chinese you have no clue whatsoever as to pronunciation just by looking at the character.

[ElvenDane]

Impressive ;-)

^5

[allanotropy]

well, maybe it's just me, but i don't find Danish to be difficult to pronounce at all. now, i don't speak it, but i did spend a season in Copenhagen and immersed myself from scratch in watching Danish TV and reading Danish newspapers. (actually, i also could watch Swedish TV from there (this was before the days of cable...), and there are still some Swedish sounds i find more difficult to do!).

[ElvenDane]

Haha, so do we *LOL*

Well, but we are very sloppy with respect to pronounciation, cutting endings and whole words, merging them- and then D has far more vowel sounds and 3 more vowels (letters), which each represents several different sound, so not strange if people in general find it difficult.

[ElvenDane]

Impressed that you find it easy - hope you noticed how D is very often like a "primitive" or basic version of English

( as is Icelandic ;-) ).

- with roughly the same grammatical rules and tons of similar words ?

Surely that must have helped you a lot ?

It's extremely helpful to us the other way around - we often don't have to think very much in E, which is a really good thing :-)

[XiAndenMigh]

Heh funny to see how you can learn our language.. it's actually harder than i thought! God i'm glad i already speaks it! Oh and good luck to everyone out there who want's to learn danish.. just keep trying!

[unitednations161]

i wanna learn this haha

[varulv234]

ååå...åååårrr....gååååååårrr??­det lyder mærkeligt

[ConXII]

And I thought the way we pronounce things in English was bad :p.

[nnb287]

Hi ! I´m from Argentina, I love your danish class, Lol, xoxo´s

[chrisn1996]

im danish, just dont speak it...god...danish is hard to learn

[anderstaurus]

Du er en kegle :) try to translate

[ElvenDane]

You are a cone-head ? LMAO

[MewNina]

german? this is danish

[jmeina]

Wow, I just realized how difficult our language is :D , haha..

[rublymonica]

Hi, I'm in Brazil trying to learn Danish and found your "classes". I simply love them. This is my first contact with the language and I am loving it. I loved the way you teach the pronunciation. I am a teacher of English and know how difficult it can be and the way you do it has been extremely helpful.

Please do not stop.

Tak.

[Atello93]

Yeah, the danish language is very hard to learn :) Good luck mate ^^

[ElvenDane]

Great - really impressed here :-)

Please feel free to ask.

if you think of it as a "dialect" of "Old English" or "primitive English", it may be a bit easier to get the hang of it - for instance with respect to the position of the words. And then there are of course tons of similar words to support you, so that you don't have to memorise as much as you would otherwise.

It's related to and has shaped Anglo Saxon a lot - and vice versa.

[Neglefil79]

Er det bare mig der synes at det er en indviklet måde at lære sproget?

[MewNina]

nope faktisk er dansk kåret som den sværeste sprog hehe...

[ElvenDane]

Ikke sandt - det er en myte.

Og fordi nogle underviser i det på den forkerte måde :-)

[varulv234]

nej osse mig

[QoolOli]

interessant ?

[baune88]

haha i har det skide skørt hva haha

[pwincesskara]

Im moving to denmark in 9 dayz to be an au pair for a year omg im sooo nervous.. so just trying to learn some basic danish words... has anyone else been an au pair in denmark before ???.. i dnt no 1 person who has yet.. very scary lol x x x

[NKoara]

Omg! She speaks English like a guy from my college! This accent is darn annoying!!

And when the text says: "Det er godt at se jer" in the end, she says: "Det er godt OG se jer". Really confusing for non-Danish-speaking people!

[mommybobbi]

I live in denmark now and have lived here for 6 years. this laguage is hard to learn and not so exotic as people think. but, it's fun to go back home and say things people dont get...lol

[gnawershreth]

Hehe "Hvordan går det?" is in dialect. We don't pronounce it "vodn" here at all. ;)

[Chrono44]

That's right!(:

[Thrym865]

Yes, I agree but note that she doesn't pronounce it in dialect. She pronounces it with a clear a "vo'dan" with stress on the last part. What she didn't say, is that the lack of the r makes o be pronounced like an å.

[PoloniaDougi]

hey, i am from poland and i think danish is a very nice language!! I can speak german to. but i dont like it *hehe*. i like germans but the language is so boring and hard.

[ElvenDane]

But you will probably recognise a lot of words from either English or German.

It's something in between so to speak, but fortunately much more like E than G with respect to basic grammar and vocabulary :-)

[Bendikoben]

She has a very annoying Danish accent

[flothepoe]

tak! i need some more of it! :)

[FBalesz]

I'm hungarian, and i like to learn danish :D its very nice language :P

[Bande]

Yeah me too! Én is!

[ElvenDane]

"its very nice language :P " :-))

I think Hungarians are very nice people -

except when we lose points against them in football and handball matches of course :-)

[aliii313]

taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak so useful

[ffxvideomaker]

hmm i really learnt the phrases a different way. like how are you? and im fine.

Noget af hule fraser klang anderledes. For eksempel : Hvordan har De det?? og Im følelse artig.

[ElvenDane]

Correct, but you can say different things - this is just a short demo

"Im følelse artig" ? que ? : -)

[gaby0052]

I lived in Aalborg for 6 months and I just know how to say a few danish words: tak, mange, tak, hyggelig, Aalborg,or, Netto :D, Aalborg Universitet... hehehe

Danish is så difficult!!! I wish I knew more. For us speakers of any latin/romance language (spanish, french, portuguese, italian) is VERY difficult to pronounce the danish sounds.

Well, kisses to my beloved Danmark from Mexico

Jeg savne Aalborg!!! :(

[Crez3003]

You meant Danish is so difficult ? :D

Not Danish is så difficult

[jensh69]

thats correct. im peruvian and i am in denmark since last october (2007), it is almost 5 months and i really can only say some little words like, hej, farvel, netto, fakta, velbekom, dør, stor, bord, etc. to make phrases, well, i have to practice and to understand people at the street, well that is still a dream for me. I am studying very hard, hope with more time, i will be able to understand danish people.  I have to. That is my challenge now!!

[amhung]

en stor tak .. a big thanks! .. i have been searching the net for 3 weeks now for a simple way to see the evolution of danish as it sounded when today's spelling was frozen, into the current spoken language. Your use of the DISAPPEARING LETTERS to correlate with the fantasticly clear and enunciated accompanying Sound Bite is ingenious. Tusinde tak.

[InTheSticks1881]

I've never been exposed to opinion about learning Dansk. The comments do seem valid. I learned decades ago by the natural or 'viking method' namely the 'sink or swim method' of total immersion. It was 6 months to be come 'fluent' enough to get by unnoticed.

The ability to mimic sounds accurately and be understood gave me the confidence to continue trying. The Kobenhavn dialect is the best. Hej hej

Erick

[WallehA]

I agree, the Copenhagen dialect is the real thing xD I dont live in Copenhagen, but i speak that dialect. My brother just moved to Jutland, so he started to speak with the Jut's dialect, it sounds horrible xD

[McFlynder]

åh, det æ da en kjøhn språk wi har her i jylland :D

[ElvenDane]

Well, as long as he doesn't speak in an Århus dialect ... LOL We laugh and tell jokes about those goofy people ;-)

[ElvenDane]

haha, great story - thanks for trying.

We are always impressed when people bother LOL

Hope you did notice all the many deep links between D and E - makes it a lot easier, when you really begin to notice that and a lot easier to remember as well, I would imagine ?

[snorkeprincess]

It's been 3 years and i'm still struggling. Your method is really effective. Is there a website I could go to to learn how to pronounce more Danish words? I would like to get better at Danish by Christmas to impress my boyfriend's parents :-)

[stellacourse]

The web address is provided in the info box to the right of the video. If you click on "more", you'll see it.

[lauenborg88]

haha mega grinern

[BellaPigen90]

Well, I wouldn't pronounce it like she does, she's too correct in the way she pronounce the words. Modern Danish is a bit more complicated in the way we speak. Danes don't pronounce the words exactly as it's written, since Danes reduce almost every word, and that's what makes the language hard. Danes usually talk fast too, so for understanding what the Danes are saying, you should learn how the words is pronounced when they're reduced.

[stellacourse]

You are perfectly correct. Danish is notoriously difficult. This is largely due to the speed with which Danes speak and to the fact that the written language is greatly "reduced" in its spoken form. The whole point of this module is to show how the written words are pronounced when spoken. The module is for complete beginners.

To confront them in a way that is not "too correct" could frighten people away from what is not an easy language to learn before they even get started.

[wochmann]

I imagining that this whould be a good way for a foreigner to learn danish. Many non-danish tends to pronounced danish the way it is written, witch completly ruins the language, and danes ability to understand it.

-wochmann

[InTheSticks1881]

Wholly agree. This is the best way to begin. A good balanced approach which is helpful to any style one learns best by, with practical basics upon which to grown on. It is better to be understood even if the manner is formal. The confidence begotten with successful communication will quickly allow one to 'practice' and adapt to common Danish.

Erick

[jonbee1982]

lol i tried saying some of this to my Danish friend.. he was like why are you talkng so formal!? always a problem teaching a language...

[ElvenDane]

He should have appreciated you effort instead - slap him ! LOL

[kevinguy10]

this might be true, but hardly encouraging... :(