The gap between page and mouth
Danish is written with more letters than it says. Consonants at the ends of words soften, and vowels do a great deal of the work, so a written word can be noticeably longer than the sound of it.
This is why Danish is often said to be the hardest of the Scandinavian languages to hear, even by Swedes and Norwegians who read it easily.
- Do not sound out every letter. It will not match what relatives say.
- Learn words by ear first, then look at the spelling.
The catch in the middle of a word
Danish has a feature usually called stod, a brief catch or creak in the voice that can distinguish one word from another.
It is not written down, and adults learning Danish rarely get it right. A child hearing it daily picks it up without being taught.
- Do not try to imitate it from a description. Copy a recording.
- Its absence will rarely stop you being understood by family.
Close neighbours on paper
Written Danish and Norwegian Bokmål are close relatives, which is why a Danish-speaking family often reads Norwegian without difficulty. Speech is another matter.
Danish, Norwegian and Swedish share the three extra letters at the end of the alphabet, though they do not sound the same in each.
- A Norwegian relative can probably read the Danish line aloud.
- Do not assume shared spelling means shared pronunciation.
Reading together
A bilingual page is genuinely useful here. The child hears the spoken word from a relative and sees the written one at the same moment, which is the connection Danish makes hardest.
Point at the picture, name it in Danish, wait, then say it once more before moving on.
- Record a Danish-speaking relative naming six pictures.
- Say the Danish word before the English one, not after.
