Danish language

Danish is spoken in: Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Germany (Southern Schleswig).

Total speakers: Around 6 million.


Danish (dansk) is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, where it holds the status of minority language. Danish also holds official status and is a mandatory subject in school in the Danish territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which now enjoy limited autonomy. In Iceland and Faroe Islands, Danish is, alongside English, a compulsory foreign language taught in schools. In North and South America there are Danish language

Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Nordic dialect group, while Norwegian is classified as a West Nordic language together with Faroese and Icelandic. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Scandinavian in two groups: Southern Scandinavian, which is Danish, and Northern Scandinavian, consisting of Norwegian and Swedish. Icelandic and Faroese is placed in a separate category labeled Insular Scandinavian. Written Danish and Norwegian Bokmål are particularly close, though the phonology and prosody make them differ somewhat. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can understand the others, though studies have shown that speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each other. Both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they understand each other's languages.

Please email us to schedule a first private class in Danish.

Group classes are also available, please check our New Schedule!

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