(Image by Sabine Dirksen from Pixabay; no copyright.) Hej! Hvordan har du det? Jeg håber du har det godt… (Hi, how are you doing? I hope you’re doing fine…) Learning any language takes a lot of time and work. Sometimes it gets a little too technical with all the details you need to remember: Grammar, udtale (pronunciation) and what not. Below is a small collection of phrases that might be useful. (I’m sure some of them have been mentioned before in this blog, but not in the same post!)   Velkommen til. (Welcome.) Hvad hedder du? (What’s your name?) Vi er på ferie i Danmark. (We’re on ho ..read more

(Image courtesy of Katie Walker from Pixabay; no copyright.) Since you read this blog last month, a horrible krig [kreey] (war) has broken out in the midst of Europa. Let’s all hope and wish it will end as soon and as peacefully as humanly possible. Verden har brug for fred. (The world needs peace.) And we need to be able to communicate respectfully and try to understand each other, even if we don’t always agree – isn’t that why we’re language learners, after all? Learning, however, isn’t easy when your mind is full of frygt (fear). Focusing on nice and even nerdy things is, I think, the way ..read more

(Photo courtesy of Michael Hiemstra at Flickr, CC Licence, no copyright.) Kommaer er underlige. (Commas are strange.) Man skriver dem, men man kan ikke høre dem. (You write them, but you can’t hear them.) Well, sometimes you do hear them, as little pause/r (breaks) when people talk. In Denmark, people have been discussing the correct use of commas for ages, and most people are fed up with kommakrigen (the comma war). The current rules are, however, not very difficult. Let’s take a look!1 As in English, you use commas in order to avoid having multiple ”ands” in lists. Instead of ”boller og sm ..read more

(Photo by Sofus Rose from Pixabay; no copyright.) Hurra, så er det jul! (Hooray, then it’s Christmas!) For billions of people, that means glæde (joy) and spending time with familien (the family). But what is special about the højtid (feast, literally ’high time’) in Denmark? Jul [yool] is a very old tradition in Danmark – in fact, even the Vikings had a party this time of year! They called it jól [yohl], and it was a celebration of vintersolhverv (winter solstice): From now on, the days would get longer. After the Viking Age, the ancient jul was replaced by a kristen fest (Christian festival ..read more

(Photo by Szabolcs Molnar from Pixabay; no copyright.) Danes just can’t stay away from vandet (the water) – even with temperatures approaching frysepunktet (the freezing point), they jump into havet (the sea)… Vil du med ud at vinterbade? (Wanna go ”winter-bathing”?) The last few years, the Danes’ interest in vinterbadning (winter bathing) has just exploded. For example, there were 25.000 organised vinterbadere (winter bathers) in 2011. Today there’s more than 60.000! And that’s just klubmedlemmer (members of a klub) – in my experience, lots of people take the icy plunge without being in a c ..read more

Krølle-r-ne på hale-r-ne på gris-e-ne… (The curls on the tails on the pig[let]s…) Endings are an essential part of the Danish language. (Illustrative photo by Gerhard G. from Pixabay; no copyright.) One of the funny things about Danish is that you can’t avoid adding endings to words. Well, of course English learners also sometimes get confused – how do you add a plural -s to box? But generally, as long as you know how to add an -s1 to words, you don’t have to worry about endings in English. Danish is more complex, mainly because – and I’m sure you learnt this early – the is an ending! Yeah ..read more

(Picture by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay; no copyright. This is just to illustrate the article. Click here for an idea of how Margrete may have looked.) Did you know Danmark, Norge (Norway) and even Sverige (Sweden) were once united – and ruled by a kvinde (woman)? This month, Margrete den Første (Margrete the First), a film starring Trine Dyrholm, is making its rounds in danske biografer (Danish cinemas). Let’s take a look at this important historisk skikkelse (historical figure).1 And yes, you guessed it – she’s the reason the current queen is called Margrethe II. In the year 1397, al ..read more

If you don’t know how to read Danish numbers correctly, you might get the wrong impression of prices in tourist places such as Tivoli, Copenhagen! (Picture by Lena Svensson from Pixabay; no copyright.) How often do you need to do number tricks in a foreign language? Det står nok ikke øverst på listen (it probably isn’t on top of the list), but still, if you’re a little bit like me, you’ll sometimes find yourself in situations where simply counting is not enough… In Danish, saying basic calculations out loud is quite straightforward: 2 + 2 = 4 to plus to er fire 4 – 1 = 3 fire minus et er tr ..read more

Gen– means re– and is very much alive in Danish! (Graphics by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay; no copyright.) After some culture-related posts it’s time to take another look at det danske sprog (the Danish language). ”All Danish words seem to end in -er!” my sister once ex-claimed1. And true enough, really many Danish words end in -er: • verbs in the present tense: køber, maler, smiler (buys, paints, smiles) • plurals of around 70 % of all nouns: kvinder, byer, sætninger (women, cities, phrases) • certain nouns in the singular that typically describe som kind of agent (similar to the ..read more

Fire nul! A Danish roligan celebrates the victory against Wales. Roligan is a Danish word for a peaceful football fan – it comes from rolig (peaceful) hooligan. (Photo by the blogger.) Jeg er normalt ikke til fodbold, men… (I normally don’t like football/soccer, but…) Recently, variants of that phrase have been buzzing around everywhere in the air of Danmark. Fodbold-EM [fothbolt-eh-em] (the European Football Championship) is upon us, and almost everybody has a good excuse to be excited! Farvel, nedlukning – goddag, kvartfinale! (Goodbye, lockdown – hello, quarter-final!) Den 12. juni (the 1 ..read more