As an English and German speaker, this video was fantastic for me! In the beginning of the video when you were switching back and forth between Danish and German, I could almost understand all of the Danish without having to translate it in my brain. Hearing it back to back with German like that really worked for me. I'm part Danish and want to learn Danish as well. I think I'll do okay, especially with vocabulary. I also speak some Norwegian. I'll focus on pronunciation differences between the three languages, Thank you! 👍
As an Englishman who lived and studied in Germany for 11 years and has also a longstanding interest in Denmark. This has given me the insight I needed! My next goal is to learn Danish!! Thank you!
Your analytical explanation of the differences in these three languages is very interesting. I appreciate your concise explanation of complex subject matter.
Thank you very much. I really try to "attack" each topic in an analytical manner. I haven't always been very structured as a person, but now I'm coming to see the advantages of structure. Structure is very good, as long as there is still "freedom" and a bit of chaos mixed in. Thanks for your comment 🙂
@@MicsLanguages I watched the video on German you hosted that you suggested we watch as well as another one regarding Old Norse that you participated in. They were very interesting and fun. It was great to see you smiling, interacting with others and laughing which you're not as likely to do in your instruction videos. You seemed very relaxed and it was enjoyable to see that side of you
top notch video, super interesting! one minor note though: at 8:38 you say that English, like Danish, uses the past tense where the subjunctive would be used in German. this is kind of true, but “to be” is actually conjugated as “were” regardless of who is addressed when using the subjunctive! for example one might say “if i *were* him, i’d get a new car”; i’d argue that this is a different form than just the past tense. mange tak fordi du laver de her videoer Mic, det virkelig skønt at se folk der bidrager til verden sådan her :))
Great video, I live in Brazil and did study Icelandic and i find danish a lot more difficult (can’t notice all those different sounds). You’re channel made it a lot more clear for us to understand.
Thank you, I'm glad the videos are helpful. Interesting that you find Danish harder than Icelandic, as Icelandic, at least grammatically, seems a lot more complex.
im actually friends with a danish guy and its very impressive to see and hear how he doesnt even sound danish when speaking english but i cant get rid of my german accent regardless of how hard i try or have spoken english in my past years
Getting rid of an accent is super difficult for most people. Also for Danes, normally you (or at least I) can easily hear when somebody is Danish. But yeah, Germans are even easier to recognize 😅 Maybe Danes are a bit better because they watch English TV from they're small 🤔
@@stoggafllik So is German ( the name should give you a hint 😂 ), but Modern & Middle English are much simplified mixes of the West Germanic Old English with the North Germanic Old Norse, which is in turn the ancestor of Danish + Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese ( spoken on the Faroe Islands North of Scotland ). Old English had a structure that was much more like that of German today, but it was even more complicated 🙄 Check out the brilliant video "Viking Influence on the English Language" from Langfocus and Melvyn Bragg's great TV series "The Adventure of English" ( especially episodes 1 & 2 ( of 8 ) in this context ), if you want to see how this peculiar situation came about 😊
Thank you for the video! Seeing some common ground with german gave me a lot of insights (and hope!), as most danish materials I see are for english speakers. And certain things simply make no sense when comparing danish to english.
Jeg er utrolig glad for at jeg er i en position hvor jeg har mulighed for at sprede viden om det danske sprog. Tak for din kommentar! 🙂 Måske lærer du også noget i videoerne som du ikke har tænkt over før. Vi tænker ikke meget over vores modersmål medmindre vi begynder at fokusere bevidst på det, fx fordi vi hjælper andre med at tilegne sig sproget. Også en god dag til dig!
P.S.: my mother language is Romanian, I worked in Wiesbaden 6 months, lived and worked in Regensburg and Muenchen 18 months so this means I know the middle basic German. Now I live in Horsens and work in Aarhus. Danish is becoming more and more part of my next-level language.
Finally I get to hear this explanation in English, my brain almost crashed after hearing so much German on the Ecolinguist video because my German level is pretty low (I’m Mexican)
It is absolutely faszinating how similar many single words are in Danish and German! The difficulty for me as a German and English spreaker is actually to understand Danish as a spoken language.. because of the whole pronounciation, I guess. So interesting! I loved being in Danmark as a child. Beautiful memories.
The only thing making learning danish even marginally possible for me is that I speak German. I don’t know how anyone could learn danish without speaking a Germanic language from birth. Mad respect to those people
How do you mean? For an English speaker, the only really tricky aspect of Danish would be the pronunciation. Scandinavian grammar is more similar to English than to German. And many basic words are cognates. Partly because of the "Vikings", partly because of even older common heritage, and also thanks to similar French loans.
Kleine Korrektur (10:50): "sein" ist der männliche Possessivbegleiter und steht mit dem besessenen Substantiv zusammen. Die Form "3. Pers. Sing. mask. Genitiv" des Personalpronomens wäre "seiner" wie in "Wir gedenken seiner" (ggü. modernerem "Wir gedenken ihm"), wo das Pronomen ein im Deutschen seltenes Genitivobjekt darstellt (vgl. Bsp. mit Substantiven als Genitivobjekt: "jemanden einer Straftat (GEN) bezichtigen", "sich einer Sache (GEN) bemächtigen"…). Du hast vermutlich "sein" und "seiner" miteinander verwechselt, weil Possessionen und Zugehörigkeiten im Deutschen typischerweise mit dem Genitiv ausgedrückt werden, wobei dieser zumindest in der Umgangssprache mehr und mehr durch Konstruktionen mit "von" + Dativ abgelöst wird. LG
I grew up in Austria and now I wanna go to Denmark to study there, but for me learning danish is very difficult. I had no difficulties learning Spanish or Korean for example, but for some reason, I got some difficulties with danish (which is closest to my two fluent languages (English & German))
I have come across many people who have difficulties with Danish, even though they already speak several languages. The only reason for this which makes sense is the fact that Danish pronunciation is more complex than many other languages. Is the pronunciation the reason why you find it difficult? You need to work in a very focused manner with modern Danish spoken language, then you'll slowly get there! 🙂
Little side note about the genitive. There is no genitive for personal pronouns, we use the dative or another construction instead. "sein" is a possessive pronoun and they can have all four cases so nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. "sein, seinen, seinem, etc..."
Tak skal du have, Magnus! Det har været superfedt at medvirke i de to videoer der findes indtil videre. Hvem ved om der kommer flere. Det er jo op til Norbert, som står for kanalen Ecolinguist. 🤔 Medmindre jeg laver noget tilsvarende på min kanal. Måske engang i fremtiden. Lad mig gerne vide hvis du har gode ideer 😉
Interesting video! I’m glad I learned what “sounds right” in German because noun declensions and weak and strong adjective endings are very difficult to learn. I have no explanation for it, but English speakers would be much more likely to say “I don’t think he has ever eaten directly from the table.” as opposed to negating the eating part of the sentence.
Oh yeah, in Danish we would also prefer to put the "not" together with the "think". We would actually say it like this: Jeg tror aldrig han har spist direkte af bordet. (= I think never he has eaten directly from the table)
Thanks, Mic. What I like about Denmark, besides that everyone is happy to speak English with a smile, is that, having grown up with both German and English, there are so many Danish words that are easy to figure out.
How did I guess your fist cognate was going to be “arbejde”? That’s the first word I recognized as the same when I first started learning Danish after 2 years of German in high school….a LONG time ago.
Yeah that's very easy to recognize, as it's almost the same, and such a distinct word. Everybody who learns Danish or German seems to "love" the word arbejde/arbeiten
Fantastic video Mic. Thanks for the illuminating comparison of these related languages. Also huge respect for using the British Union Jack to denote the English language rather than an American flag like many other channels do (bizarrely)! 😄 Would love to see more of this content!
In theory I am, but I've never had a German passport. I never went through the hassle of getting it, but I suppose I would be able to get it if I tried to.
Hi, im from The Netherlands and i must say that Danish sounds a lot like Frisian with a combination between German and English. Im learning Danish for 2 months now and must say that reading with understanding is easy till now, but to be spoken to...... i have to say if someone can talk a bit slower.
Yeah, when we speak fast it is difficult to decipher for people who are not that good at the language. Frisian I don't really know, so can't comment on that.
It is not even close in pronounciation to Frisian I'd say. As a Dutch person too btw I have found Danish reading so easy I never needed a lesson and still understand most of it, enough to get what they are talking about. After more and more reading (just off and on) I found that within a month or so I can understand 95%. It seems very close to Dutch, but some knowledge of German and English can help at times it seems.
@@d.v.t No, modernday Frisian of The Netherlands is more like Dutch with a twist. It is so similar it is borderline a dialect. There are some Noord Frisian dialects that do seem to be right between Dutch and Danish. It seems closer to Dutch even than the Frisian spoken in The Netherlands, the way they pronounce words is very close and then there are Danish words in it that most of the time make some sense. So yeah that is not a stepstone Germanic but it seems like a perfect bridge between Dutch and Danish. In the clip you can find on the internet quite a few Dutch and Danes (therefor?) also claim that they understand the guy completely.
What do you mean by the nouns are often former accusative forms? That's not something I've heard of. But I'm also not a language historian by any means. Regarding Old Norse, I don't really know anything 😕
@@MicsLanguages I mean for example den and det. I had a friend in Norway and he studied it and said that the nouns are often former accusative forms. It doesn't matter actually, but when one use ”den“ hund(en) then it looks like accusative in the ancient forms. That's all and I thought that han would be accusative and ham dative. In other Germanic languages which do inflect all for Germanic cases (nom, gen, dat, acc) they look like that paradigm.
German is a west germanic language. Danish falls into the North germanic sector. That alone tells that there is quite a big difference, even tho there are several similar words and even same ones to say so
- Bitte ich will finden ein wörterbuch oder eine Grammatik in Danish in Brasilien . Wo ich können kaufen ? Sie haben du eine Netzwerkseite zu geben Beispiel !!! - Vielen Dank für ihre Zeit ...
- Bitte ich will finden ein wörterbuch oder eine Grammatik in Danish in Brasilien . Wo ich können kaufen ? Sie haben du eine Netzwerkseite zu geben Beispiel !!! - Es ist schwer zu finden Danish hier ? - Vielen Dank für ihre Zeit ...
Well, thanks to linguist Rasmus Rask (born Rasch 😅), Danish isn’t nowadays considered a German dialect… until not so long time ago, all nouns were written with capital letters… and Å, å is the newest letter in the Danish alphabet. It was AA, aa until World War II ended… 🥸
Die Verwandtschaft zwischen Dänisch, Deutsch und Englisch ist echt faszinierend. Aber Huhn ist der neutrale Oberbegriff für männlich Hahn und weiblich Henne. Wobei es als Eselsbrücke für han und hun trotzdem hilfreich zu sein scheint :) Immerhin Henne wie hende ;)
Oh ja! Das Wort Henne hatte ich völlig vergessen. Und dass Huhn der neutrale Oberbegriff ist, ist wohl irgendwie an mir vorbeigegangen. Aber zum Glück funktionieren die Wörter trotzdem als Eselsbrücken. Danke für den Kommentar :)
Ich wohne auf Bornholm und der dänisch Unterricht ist nur in Englisch.Dad ist für mich sehr schwer weil ich die Einzige im Kurs bin die nicht Englisch spricht.Dahet suche ich Videos auf deutsch _dänisch.
So I'm Dutch, learned English, German and French. And now I'm going to move to Denmark. I thought it would be not too difficult, reading Danish. But the pronunciation is so different! In Dutch we basically pronounce every letter. Danish seem to swallow half. Although in east Netherlands they do that too! And I wanted to add a funny thing about 'er' . In Dutch this means there. Sometimes speaking several languages gets confusing
Yeah I know. I've tried to learn a bit of Dutch as well, and there are some words that mean something else in other languages I know. This makes it confusing. And I must agree with you that Danish is not as easy as it seems when you just read it. But I'm sure you can learn it. Good luck! 😉
@@MicsLanguages thank you! What also makes it difficult is all videos are from English to Danish. Not Dutch to Danish. So I have to translate and think about pronunciation twice
Yes I am Dutch to. It is a bit confusing: reading Danish is about as easy as it is difficult to understand them spoken. Norwegian is a bnit like how we would pronounce Danish. I never learend any Norwegian, just read it and heard it here and there but could have a good conversation with a Norwegian in Norwegian without a lot of problems. Unthinkable to me in Danish. Good luck, in the end for Dutch Danish is still a very easy language and from what I gathered Dutch are renowned in Denmark for speaking the language without an accent, much like Danish do in Dutch.
Faktisk hjalp dansk mig med tysk ! Men dansk er selvfølgelig lettere for mig... Also, there used to be capitalisation in Danish, no? I have seen old books with it.
Tak fra en amerikaner, der taler svensk, tysk og lidt dansk (jeg boede i Malmø og tilbragte et par måneder i København). Ein sehr deutlicher Vergleich zwischen den drei Sprachen.
Tak for din kommentar! Så manglede der bare svensk i sammenligningen, så havde det været perfekt for dig. Jeg taler også svensk, jeg synes det er et dejligt sprog. Dog laver jeg mange fejl, så det er nok bedst at jeg ikke inkluderede det. 🤔
English used to use "shall" for the first person singular and plural compound future, while "will" indicated desire. e.g. I shall go vs I will go. This has all but disappeared in the last century in the English-speaking world. From the wiki: Shall and will are two of the English modal verbs. They have various uses, including the expression of propositions about the future, in what is usually referred to as the future tense of English. Historically, prescriptive grammar stated that, when expressing pure futurity (without any additional meaning such as desire or command), shall was to be used when the subject was in the first person, and will in other cases (e.g., "On Sunday, we shall go to church, and the preacher will read the Bible.") This rule is no longer commonly adhered to by any group of English speakers, and will has essentially replaced shall in nearly all contexts. Shall is, however, still widely used in bureaucratic documents, especially documents written by lawyers. Owing to heavy misuse, its meaning can be ambiguous and the United States government's Plain Language group advises writers not to use the word at all. Other legal drafting experts, including Plain Language advocates, argue that while shall can be ambiguous in statutes (which most of the cited litigation on the word's interpretation involves), court rules, and consumer contracts, that reasoning does not apply to the language of business contracts.These experts recommend using shall but only to impose an obligation on a contractual party that is the subject of the sentence, i.e., to convey the meaning "hereby has a duty to."
Yeah, it is very tricky. The sound is basically the same, but produced in different places. O goes by the front, like when you say OK in english. And Å by the throat, like when you say OLD in english - which is where the O from ODD comes, but sounds different too.
Yeah, it's difficult to hear the difference if you're not used to it. We Danes hear at easily :) It's correct what danisaurusrex wrote, the Å is produced more in the back of the throat than the O. The mouth is also more open. With time and practice you can learn the difference. 🙂
Ich bin ja so froh, daß ich als Kind nach Flensburg zog, und damit auch in die Schule ging (dänische), og tænk, at skulle lære tysk grammatik som voksen. Men det gjorde du vist… sejt. Liebe Grüße aus Dänemark
Ja, det gør sgu tingene en del nemmere hvis man lærer det tidligt. Und nee, ich bin mit 8 Jahren nach Wiesbaden gezogen, wo ich 11 Jahre gelebt habe. Für mich war's also auch ziemlich einfach 😁 Og det har helt klart også gjort det nemmere at lære flere sprog senere hen. Alle mennesker burde vokse op med to eller flere sprog, jeg tror det ville gøre dem mere åbne over for andre måder at leve (og at opfatte verden) på. 😇
@@MicsLanguages fuldstændig enig. Som ung tomlede jeg rundt i Spanien, og sugede en smule spansk til mig. Senere tog jeg bl.a. på sproghøjskole, hvor jeg også fik lidt fransk.. bare en gentagelse af det, jeg havde lært et års tid på HF. Få år senere mødte jeg en flok skønne italienere på Christiania, og tog sammen med en veninde på stop til Rom. Det blev til mange ture. Resultatet: jeg har en halvt italiensk søn på 40, og jeg taler et habilt italiensk. Jeg æææælsker sprog. Inkl. mit eget. Så iøvrigt det program hvor I skulle se, hvor meget oldnordisk, I forstod. Dybt fascinerende, at islændingen forstod det hele. Alle de bedste, og sprognørdeste tanker fra Lene. 🇩🇰
@@MicsLanguages und ein PS. Ich war auch 8, als meine Mutter zum zweiten Mal geheiratet hat, bin in der zweiten Klasse eingeschult worden, und habe ziemlich schnell Deutsch gelernt.
Ich habe auch superschnell Deutsch gelernt. Und dann 11 Jahre in Wiesbaden gelebt, bevor ich nach Kopenhagen gezogen bin. Jetzt wohne ich in Brasilien :)
Es una buena comparación. Para mi, el francés es super dicifil, aunque lo tenía en la escuela por unos 3 años. Italiano es mucho más fácil de entender para mi (ya hablo portugués perfectamente y español mas o menos), aunque nunca hice clases de italiano. Y el danés tiene la misma dificuldad para los hablantes de otras lenguas germânicas.
Beim Thema gendern bewegt sich ja grade einiges in Deutschland, wäre vielleicht mal ein extra Video wert. På dansk kan man ikke sige generelt, at der ikke findes feminine og maskuline former, feks. sanger og sangerinde. Er det ikke mere en vane kun at bruge den maskuline form?
Det er rigtigt at vi har sanger/sangerinde, skuespiller/skuespillerinde osv. Jeg havde det faktisk med i mine overvejelser da jeg var i gang med at forberede videoen, men så endte jeg med at droppe det, da videoen allerede var super lang, og da vi, som du selv siger, kun bruger det forholdsvist sjældent, og det findes også kun ved få ord hvis man sammenligner med tysk. Über das Gendern werde ich voraussichtlich nie ein Video machen. Aber es ist interessant zu verfolgen was sich da so abspielt. Danke für den Vorschlag!
Danish has such a cool orthography, and seems simpler than German ... but I wish it was pronounced more like German! i.e. consants pronounced and the words spoken as they are written.
@@MicsLanguages with my basic German I can see some cognates and not having the infuriating der,die,das (which is the main challenge with German) is such a plus! I'm guessing Danish and other Scaninavian languages must be comparatively easy for German speakers to learn.
Hej Mic! Endnu en udmærket video! Tusind tak! Jeg interesserer mig for både dansk og tysk. Faktisk er tysk mit første fremmede sprog. Ja, det er ingen tvivl om, at hvis du kan tysk så er det nemmere at lære tysk og omvendt. Dog tysk grammatik er generelt sværere end dansk grammatik, efter min mening./ Hallo Mic! Noch ein ausgezeichnetes Video. Vielen Dank! Ich interessiere mich sowohl für Dänisch als auch für Deutsch. Eigentlich ist Deutsch meine erste Fremdsprache. Es steht völlig außer Zweifel: wenn man Deutsch kennt, so ist es leichter, Dänisch zu lernen und umgekehrt. Doch meiner Meinung nach ist die deutsche Grammatik ist im Allgemeinen schwieriger als die dänische Grammatik. Übrigens: hier sind die Linke zu meinem neuesten Video auf Deutsch (in 2 Teilen). ua-cam.com/video/psFWp28zpqQ/v-deo.html (Geografische und statistische Überraschungen - Teil ), ua-cam.com/video/ThWNY_vQHXQ/v-deo.html (Geografische und statistische Überraschungen Teil 2) Venlig hilsen fra Storbritannien/ Viele Grüße aus Großbritannien :-)
- Jeg Ved ikke, godt hvis du forstår men ... Hvis jeg vil studere Dansk ... så har du et for eksempel, venligste vedste en bog ? - Hvis du forstår, så svar tak ...👍.
Jeg taler engelsk som mit modersmål, men jeg har studerer dansk (og lidt tysk) for nogle år.... og jeg helt synes at dansk ligner meget mere til engelsk end tysk.
Ja, det kan man godt argumentere for. Men hvis man udelukkende ligger på ordforråd, så ligner dansk nok tysk en del mere end det ligner engelsk. Hvis man lærer dansk er det en stor fordel både at kunne engelsk og tysk i forvejen.
@@MicsLanguages Ja, det er sandt. Men jeg tror at sætning strukturen at dansk er næsten det samme til engelsk. Din videoer viser det. 😀 Hvis man kan lære nok ord, så kan man bygge en dansk sætning. Du har det helt ret at ordforråd er mere det samme mellem engelsk og tysk, men i struktur er det dansk. Måske det er på grund af det “Dane-law” i stor Britannien for lang tid siden? Dansk og engelsk var ved sidden af hinanden for mange år i viking-tid Europa. At any rate, Danish is my first foreign language that I have learned to any decent level. It will always have a special place in my heart and mind! 🇩🇰🇩🇰 German will probably be my next language to tackle, but I want to get my Danish down first.
The muppets cook was danish, what wonderfull. But as german we never found out what smörrebröd really is. Maybe something a cake of surströmming and flavour. Who knows. What leeds us tu indugermanic lang wätsches! Very complicated. Even Mark Twain desperated. Ich sach ma so, wenn ihr mit Shakespeare durch seid. Seid ihr Sprachproof in germanischen Sprachen. Whalla, bassd scho. Voila. Jede Sprache hat ihren Witz und ihre Geschichte. Ich habe mich als hässlicher Mensch in keltische Sprachen eingegraben, nie habe ich mehr gelacht.
As an English and German speaker, this video was fantastic for me! In the beginning of the video when you were switching back and forth between Danish and German, I could almost understand all of the Danish without having to translate it in my brain. Hearing it back to back with German like that really worked for me. I'm part Danish and want to learn Danish as well. I think I'll do okay, especially with vocabulary. I also speak some Norwegian. I'll focus on pronunciation differences between the three languages, Thank you! 👍
Thanks for your comment. With the combination of languages/heritage in your life, this video really was for you 😁
Good luck with Danish!
Thank you boss Pls give soft copy
As an Englishman who lived and studied in Germany for 11 years and has also a longstanding interest in Denmark. This has given me the insight I needed! My next goal is to learn Danish!! Thank you!
Thank you! 🙂
Lucky for you to be able to have learnt another language!
Your analytical explanation of the differences in these three languages is very interesting. I appreciate your concise explanation of complex subject matter.
Thank you very much. I really try to "attack" each topic in an analytical manner. I haven't always been very structured as a person, but now I'm coming to see the advantages of structure. Structure is very good, as long as there is still "freedom" and a bit of chaos mixed in.
Thanks for your comment 🙂
@@MicsLanguages
I watched the video on German you hosted that you suggested we watch as well as another one regarding Old Norse that you participated in. They were very interesting and fun. It was great to see you smiling, interacting with others and laughing which you're not as likely to do in your instruction videos. You seemed very relaxed and it was enjoyable to see that side of you
top notch video, super interesting! one minor note though: at 8:38 you say that English, like Danish, uses the past tense where the subjunctive would be used in German. this is kind of true, but “to be” is actually conjugated as “were” regardless of who is addressed when using the subjunctive! for example one might say “if i *were* him, i’d get a new car”; i’d argue that this is a different form than just the past tense.
mange tak fordi du laver de her videoer Mic, det virkelig skønt at se folk der bidrager til verden sådan her :))
I watched that video. I thought they were very good. I watch your videos over and over again. Thanks for making them
Thank you very much 🙂
Great video, I live in Brazil and did study Icelandic and i find danish a lot more difficult (can’t notice all those different sounds). You’re channel made it a lot more clear for us to understand.
Thank you, I'm glad the videos are helpful.
Interesting that you find Danish harder than Icelandic, as Icelandic, at least grammatically, seems a lot more complex.
im actually friends with a danish guy and its very impressive to see and hear how he doesnt even sound danish when speaking english but i cant get rid of my german accent regardless of how hard i try or have spoken english in my past years
Getting rid of an accent is super difficult for most people. Also for Danes, normally you (or at least I) can easily hear when somebody is Danish. But yeah, Germans are even easier to recognize 😅
Maybe Danes are a bit better because they watch English TV from they're small 🤔
@@MicsLanguages The Nordic countries all mimic the english accent better since English accent is an offshoot of germanic language
@@stoggafllik So is German ( the name should give you a hint 😂 ), but Modern & Middle English are much simplified mixes of the West Germanic Old English with the North Germanic Old Norse, which is in turn the ancestor of Danish + Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese ( spoken on the Faroe Islands North of Scotland ).
Old English had a structure that was much more like that of German today, but it was even more complicated 🙄
Check out the brilliant video "Viking Influence on the English Language" from Langfocus and Melvyn Bragg's great TV series "The Adventure of English" ( especially episodes 1 & 2 ( of 8 ) in this context ), if you want to see how this peculiar situation came about 😊
Mange tak Mic. Det var en rigtig god video! Danke Mic. Das war ein richtig gutes und informatives Video. Bisher eins deiner besten, wie ich finde!
Mange tak skal du have 🙂
Den tog mig også en del tid at forberede. Det er godt at høre at du synes den er blevet god!
I love your videos. They give me new insights and easy to understand. Keep up the good work! 👍🏼👍🏼
Perfect, great to know!
Great value in this videos ! I started learning danish last week, this helps a lot to understand some of the mysteries.
Thank you for the video! Seeing some common ground with german gave me a lot of insights (and hope!), as most danish materials I see are for english speakers. And certain things simply make no sense when comparing danish to english.
Perfect. I'm glad the video is helpful!
Hej Mic, mange tak for at sprede viden om det danske sprog på nettet. God dag fra Danmark!
Jeg er utrolig glad for at jeg er i en position hvor jeg har mulighed for at sprede viden om det danske sprog. Tak for din kommentar! 🙂
Måske lærer du også noget i videoerne som du ikke har tænkt over før. Vi tænker ikke meget over vores modersmål medmindre vi begynder at fokusere bevidst på det, fx fordi vi hjælper andre med at tilegne sig sproget.
Også en god dag til dig!
Excelent expalanations Mic. Love it!
Thanks!
P.S.: my mother language is Romanian, I worked in Wiesbaden 6 months, lived and worked in Regensburg and Muenchen 18 months so this means I know the middle basic German. Now I live in Horsens and work in Aarhus. Danish is becoming more and more part of my next-level language.
@@iuli72an1 Haha, that's a nice coincidence. Then this video is totally made for you 😉
Good luck with Danish!
4:39 in Low Saxon(AKA Low German):
ik eet
du ittst
he, se, dat itt
wi eet
ji eet
se eet
Fantastic video again Mic, thank you, mange tak :) I miss your Hummel [official DBU] t-shirt a bit :)
haha 😁
Finally I get to hear this explanation in English, my brain almost crashed after hearing so much German on the Ecolinguist video because my German level is pretty low (I’m Mexican)
Haha. But it's good to stress our brains once in a while. It makes us stronger, unless we exaggerate of course :)
@@MicsLanguages Yeah, I agree with you!
It is absolutely faszinating how similar many single words are in Danish and German! The difficulty for me as a German and English spreaker is actually to understand Danish as a spoken language.. because of the whole pronounciation, I guess. So interesting! I loved being in Danmark as a child. Beautiful memories.
Amazing amazing absolutely fantastic and brilliant video!! thank you!!
Sehr interessantes Video! Danke, Mic!
Vielen Dank!
I just discovered your channel. Excellent content! Thank you!
The only thing making learning danish even marginally possible for me is that I speak German. I don’t know how anyone could learn danish without speaking a Germanic language from birth. Mad respect to those people
How do you mean? For an English speaker, the only really tricky aspect of Danish would be the pronunciation.
Scandinavian grammar is more similar to English than to German. And many basic words are cognates. Partly because of the "Vikings", partly because of even older common heritage, and also thanks to similar French loans.
It has not been centuries since Danish had three genders. Many dialects still have three, actually.
Kleine Korrektur (10:50): "sein" ist der männliche Possessivbegleiter und steht mit dem besessenen Substantiv zusammen. Die Form "3. Pers. Sing. mask. Genitiv" des Personalpronomens wäre "seiner" wie in "Wir gedenken seiner" (ggü. modernerem "Wir gedenken ihm"), wo das Pronomen ein im Deutschen seltenes Genitivobjekt darstellt (vgl. Bsp. mit Substantiven als Genitivobjekt: "jemanden einer Straftat (GEN) bezichtigen", "sich einer Sache (GEN) bemächtigen"…). Du hast vermutlich "sein" und "seiner" miteinander verwechselt, weil Possessionen und Zugehörigkeiten im Deutschen typischerweise mit dem Genitiv ausgedrückt werden, wobei dieser zumindest in der Umgangssprache mehr und mehr durch Konstruktionen mit "von" + Dativ abgelöst wird.
LG
Thanks
I love Danish language. Which textbook do you recommend? I can fully understand the texts but i don't know how to pronounce the words in a native way.
I grew up in Austria and now I wanna go to Denmark to study there, but for me learning danish is very difficult. I had no difficulties learning Spanish or Korean for example, but for some reason, I got some difficulties with danish (which is closest to my two fluent languages (English & German))
I have come across many people who have difficulties with Danish, even though they already speak several languages.
The only reason for this which makes sense is the fact that Danish pronunciation is more complex than many other languages.
Is the pronunciation the reason why you find it difficult?
You need to work in a very focused manner with modern Danish spoken language, then you'll slowly get there! 🙂
@@MicsLanguages thank you :) and yeah, it's mostly the pronunciation. I'll just keep trying, I'm sure it'll work out sooner or later :)) thank you
Great video 👍🏻 Just a quick reminder, though, that there are more than just two future tenses in English 😉
Little side note about the genitive. There is no genitive for personal pronouns, we use the dative or another construction instead.
"sein" is a possessive pronoun and they can have all four cases so nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. "sein, seinen, seinem, etc..."
Excelente video y excelente que puedas hablar español. Mange tak!
Fede videoer Mic. Dine videoer på ecolinguist er super seje. Gid der var mere af sådan noget.
Tak skal du have, Magnus! Det har været superfedt at medvirke i de to videoer der findes indtil videre. Hvem ved om der kommer flere. Det er jo op til Norbert, som står for kanalen Ecolinguist. 🤔
Medmindre jeg laver noget tilsvarende på min kanal. Måske engang i fremtiden. Lad mig gerne vide hvis du har gode ideer 😉
Jeg er flyttet til Danmark for 5 måneder siden fra Tyskland, så mange tak!
Held og lykke med at blive rigtig god til dansk!
Interesting video! I’m glad I learned what “sounds right” in German because noun declensions and weak and strong adjective endings are very difficult to learn.
I have no explanation for it, but English speakers would be much more likely to say “I don’t think he has ever eaten directly from the table.” as opposed to negating the eating part of the sentence.
Oh yeah, in Danish we would also prefer to put the "not" together with the "think". We would actually say it like this: Jeg tror aldrig han har spist direkte af bordet. (= I think never he has eaten directly from the table)
Thanks, Mic. What I like about Denmark, besides that everyone is happy to speak English with a smile, is that, having grown up with both German and English, there are so many Danish words that are easy to figure out.
yeah, knowing both English and German helps tremendously when trying to understand Danish 👍
Am interested to learn Germany languages on Danish pls help me to understand to learn I need soft copy
How did I guess your fist cognate was going to be “arbejde”? That’s the first word I recognized as the same when I first started learning Danish after 2 years of German in high school….a LONG time ago.
Yeah that's very easy to recognize, as it's almost the same, and such a distinct word. Everybody who learns Danish or German seems to "love" the word arbejde/arbeiten
- Bitte ich will finden ein wörterbuch oder ein Grammatik in Danish in Brasilien . Wo ich es können kaufen ?
Fantastic video Mic. Thanks for the illuminating comparison of these related languages.
Also huge respect for using the British Union Jack to denote the English language rather than an American flag like many other channels do (bizarrely)! 😄 Would love to see more of this content!
Thank you very much! Glad you liked it.
Valeu mic !👍😎
I'm just curious, are you a Danish-German dual citizen?
In theory I am, but I've never had a German passport. I never went through the hassle of getting it, but I suppose I would be able to get it if I tried to.
Hi, im from The Netherlands and i must say that Danish sounds a lot like Frisian with a combination between German and English. Im learning Danish for 2 months now and must say that reading with understanding is easy till now, but to be spoken to...... i have to say if someone can talk a bit slower.
Yeah, when we speak fast it is difficult to decipher for people who are not that good at the language.
Frisian I don't really know, so can't comment on that.
Maybe Frisian is like a stepstone Germanic? Much like Slovak among Slavic languages
It is not even close in pronounciation to Frisian I'd say. As a Dutch person too btw I have found Danish reading so easy I never needed a lesson and still understand most of it, enough to get what they are talking about. After more and more reading (just off and on) I found that within a month or so I can understand 95%. It seems very close to Dutch, but some knowledge of German and English can help at times it seems.
@@d.v.t No, modernday Frisian of The Netherlands is more like Dutch with a twist. It is so similar it is borderline a dialect. There are some Noord Frisian dialects that do seem to be right between Dutch and Danish. It seems closer to Dutch even than the Frisian spoken in The Netherlands, the way they pronounce words is very close and then there are Danish words in it that most of the time make some sense. So yeah that is not a stepstone Germanic but it seems like a perfect bridge between Dutch and Danish. In the clip you can find on the internet quite a few Dutch and Danes (therefor?) also claim that they understand the guy completely.
isn't han and hun the declined versions in accusative from he(r) and hie?
the accusative form would be ham and hende. Han and hun are the nominative forms
@@MicsLanguages is this true for Old Norse? I am interested in this because it seems that the nouns in Danish are often former accusative forms.
What do you mean by the nouns are often former accusative forms? That's not something I've heard of. But I'm also not a language historian by any means. Regarding Old Norse, I don't really know anything 😕
@@MicsLanguages I mean for example den and det. I had a friend in Norway and he studied it and said that the nouns are often former accusative forms. It doesn't matter actually, but when one use ”den“ hund(en) then it looks like accusative in the ancient forms. That's all and I thought that han would be accusative and ham dative. In other Germanic languages which do inflect all for Germanic cases (nom, gen, dat, acc) they look like that paradigm.
German is a west germanic language. Danish falls into the North germanic sector. That alone tells that there is quite a big difference, even tho there are several similar words and even same ones to say so
- Bitte ich will finden ein wörterbuch oder eine Grammatik in Danish in Brasilien . Wo ich können kaufen ?
Sie haben du eine Netzwerkseite zu geben Beispiel !!!
- Vielen Dank für ihre Zeit ...
There is no inversion in German. The first verb in the main clause is always at the second position of the elements.
- Bitte ich will finden ein wörterbuch oder eine Grammatik in Danish in Brasilien . Wo ich können kaufen ?
Sie haben du eine Netzwerkseite zu geben Beispiel !!!
- Es ist schwer zu finden Danish hier ?
- Vielen Dank für ihre Zeit ...
as a Romanian who learned Swedish and German I found the two languages more similar than I expected
Danish is influenced by middle Low-german
Well, thanks to linguist Rasmus Rask (born Rasch 😅), Danish isn’t nowadays considered a German dialect… until not so long time ago, all nouns were written with capital letters… and Å, å is the newest letter in the Danish alphabet. It was AA, aa until World War II ended… 🥸
"he shall be" in English as well.
Yeah, shall is definitely related to skal
"Er soll sein" in German too
Die Verwandtschaft zwischen Dänisch, Deutsch und Englisch ist echt faszinierend. Aber Huhn ist der neutrale Oberbegriff für männlich Hahn und weiblich Henne. Wobei es als Eselsbrücke für han und hun trotzdem hilfreich zu sein scheint :) Immerhin Henne wie hende ;)
Oh ja! Das Wort Henne hatte ich völlig vergessen. Und dass Huhn der neutrale Oberbegriff ist, ist wohl irgendwie an mir vorbeigegangen.
Aber zum Glück funktionieren die Wörter trotzdem als Eselsbrücken. Danke für den Kommentar :)
Mange tak fra Tyskland.
Ich wohne auf Bornholm und der dänisch Unterricht ist nur in Englisch.Dad ist für mich sehr schwer weil ich die Einzige im Kurs bin die nicht Englisch spricht.Dahet suche ich Videos auf deutsch _dänisch.
Danish and English: Hard pronuciation, Easy grammar
German: Hard grammar, Easy pronunciation
Bonus: English: Relatively hard to remember vocabulary
Yeah that kind of sums it up. But why do you think it's hard to remember vocab in English?
So I'm Dutch, learned English, German and French. And now I'm going to move to Denmark. I thought it would be not too difficult, reading Danish. But the pronunciation is so different! In Dutch we basically pronounce every letter. Danish seem to swallow half. Although in east Netherlands they do that too! And I wanted to add a funny thing about 'er' . In Dutch this means there. Sometimes speaking several languages gets confusing
Yeah I know. I've tried to learn a bit of Dutch as well, and there are some words that mean something else in other languages I know. This makes it confusing.
And I must agree with you that Danish is not as easy as it seems when you just read it. But I'm sure you can learn it. Good luck! 😉
@@MicsLanguages thank you! What also makes it difficult is all videos are from English to Danish. Not Dutch to Danish. So I have to translate and think about pronunciation twice
Yeah I know. It can be tough to juggle with several languages. Good luck!
Yes I am Dutch to. It is a bit confusing: reading Danish is about as easy as it is difficult to understand them spoken. Norwegian is a bnit like how we would pronounce Danish. I never learend any Norwegian, just read it and heard it here and there but could have a good conversation with a Norwegian in Norwegian without a lot of problems. Unthinkable to me in Danish. Good luck, in the end for Dutch Danish is still a very easy language and from what I gathered Dutch are renowned in Denmark for speaking the language without an accent, much like Danish do in Dutch.
I love the Danes. They have a cool language, and they are so nice. They are very attractive people too. This guy is quite attractive too.
Faktisk hjalp dansk mig med tysk ! Men dansk er selvfølgelig lettere for mig... Also, there used to be capitalisation in Danish, no? I have seen old books with it.
Yep!
Jep, substantiver blev skrevet med stort indtil 1948, hvor der var en retskrivningsreform.
Hvorfor er dansk lettere for dig end tysk?
@@MicsLanguages jeg er for lazy for alt den komplicerede grammatik lol! Og dansk er så sjovere at udtale, også ;-)
Tak fra en amerikaner, der taler svensk, tysk og lidt dansk (jeg boede i Malmø og tilbragte et par måneder i København). Ein sehr deutlicher Vergleich zwischen den drei Sprachen.
Tak for din kommentar! Så manglede der bare svensk i sammenligningen, så havde det været perfekt for dig.
Jeg taler også svensk, jeg synes det er et dejligt sprog. Dog laver jeg mange fejl, så det er nok bedst at jeg ikke inkluderede det. 🤔
21:05 I think you forgot "hiccough" 😂
Came from Ecolinguist 👀👀
English used to use "shall" for the first person singular and plural compound future, while "will" indicated desire. e.g. I shall go vs I will go.
This has all but disappeared in the last century in the English-speaking world.
From the wiki:
Shall and will are two of the English modal verbs. They have various uses, including the expression of propositions about the future, in what is usually referred to as the future tense of English.
Historically, prescriptive grammar stated that, when expressing pure futurity (without any additional meaning such as desire or command), shall was to be used when the subject was in the first person, and will in other cases (e.g., "On Sunday, we shall go to church, and the preacher will read the Bible.") This rule is no longer commonly adhered to by any group of English speakers, and will has essentially replaced shall in nearly all contexts.
Shall is, however, still widely used in bureaucratic documents, especially documents written by lawyers. Owing to heavy misuse, its meaning can be ambiguous and the United States government's Plain Language group advises writers not to use the word at all. Other legal drafting experts, including Plain Language advocates, argue that while shall can be ambiguous in statutes (which most of the cited litigation on the word's interpretation involves), court rules, and consumer contracts, that reasoning does not apply to the language of business contracts.These experts recommend using shall but only to impose an obligation on a contractual party that is the subject of the sentence, i.e., to convey the meaning "hereby has a duty to."
Yes, I often teach my students that shall is a declaration of intent, or a suggestion if used as an interrogative.
I hear no difference between o and å at all!
Yeah, it is very tricky. The sound is basically the same, but produced in different places. O goes by the front, like when you say OK in english. And Å by the throat, like when you say OLD in english - which is where the O from ODD comes, but sounds different too.
Yeah, it's difficult to hear the difference if you're not used to it. We Danes hear at easily :)
It's correct what danisaurusrex wrote, the Å is produced more in the back of the throat than the O. The mouth is also more open.
With time and practice you can learn the difference. 🙂
your English accent is a mix between Danish and German.
Yeah, and other influences as well. But the main part would be Danish and German, being that those are the languages I grew up with
Ich bin ja so froh, daß ich als Kind nach Flensburg zog, und damit auch in die Schule ging (dänische), og tænk, at skulle lære tysk grammatik som voksen. Men det gjorde du vist… sejt. Liebe Grüße aus Dänemark
Ja, det gør sgu tingene en del nemmere hvis man lærer det tidligt.
Und nee, ich bin mit 8 Jahren nach Wiesbaden gezogen, wo ich 11 Jahre gelebt habe.
Für mich war's also auch ziemlich einfach 😁
Og det har helt klart også gjort det nemmere at lære flere sprog senere hen.
Alle mennesker burde vokse op med to eller flere sprog, jeg tror det ville gøre dem mere åbne over for andre måder at leve (og at opfatte verden) på. 😇
@@MicsLanguages fuldstændig enig. Som ung tomlede jeg rundt i Spanien, og sugede en smule spansk til mig. Senere tog jeg bl.a. på sproghøjskole, hvor jeg også fik lidt fransk.. bare en gentagelse af det, jeg havde lært et års tid på HF. Få år senere mødte jeg en flok skønne italienere på Christiania, og tog sammen med en veninde på stop til Rom. Det blev til mange ture. Resultatet: jeg har en halvt italiensk søn på 40, og jeg taler et habilt italiensk. Jeg æææælsker sprog. Inkl. mit eget. Så iøvrigt det program hvor I skulle se, hvor meget oldnordisk, I forstod. Dybt fascinerende, at islændingen forstod det hele.
Alle de bedste, og sprognørdeste tanker fra Lene. 🇩🇰
@@MicsLanguages und ein PS. Ich war auch 8, als meine Mutter zum zweiten Mal geheiratet hat, bin in der zweiten Klasse eingeschult worden, und habe ziemlich schnell Deutsch gelernt.
@@lenechristiansen2663 Ah, wie cool, was fürn Zufall! 😁
Ich habe auch superschnell Deutsch gelernt. Und dann 11 Jahre in Wiesbaden gelebt, bevor ich nach Kopenhagen gezogen bin. Jetzt wohne ich in Brasilien :)
…el dánes 🇩🇰 es el francés 🇫🇷 de las lenguas germánicas. 🤔
Es una buena comparación. Para mi, el francés es super dicifil, aunque lo tenía en la escuela por unos 3 años. Italiano es mucho más fácil de entender para mi (ya hablo portugués perfectamente y español mas o menos), aunque nunca hice clases de italiano.
Y el danés tiene la misma dificuldad para los hablantes de otras lenguas germânicas.
Beim Thema gendern bewegt sich ja grade einiges in Deutschland, wäre vielleicht mal ein extra Video wert. På dansk kan man ikke sige generelt, at der ikke findes feminine og maskuline former, feks. sanger og sangerinde. Er det ikke mere en vane kun at bruge den maskuline form?
Det er rigtigt at vi har sanger/sangerinde, skuespiller/skuespillerinde osv. Jeg havde det faktisk med i mine overvejelser da jeg var i gang med at forberede videoen, men så endte jeg med at droppe det, da videoen allerede var super lang, og da vi, som du selv siger, kun bruger det forholdsvist sjældent, og det findes også kun ved få ord hvis man sammenligner med tysk.
Über das Gendern werde ich voraussichtlich nie ein Video machen. Aber es ist interessant zu verfolgen was sich da so abspielt. Danke für den Vorschlag!
My guess was German mixed with british
Danish has such a cool orthography, and seems simpler than German ... but I wish it was pronounced more like German! i.e. consants pronounced and the words spoken as they are written.
Yeah that's the challenge with Danish. Grammatically there is less of a challenge when compared to fx German
@@MicsLanguages with my basic German I can see some cognates and not having the infuriating der,die,das (which is the main challenge with German) is such a plus! I'm guessing Danish and other Scaninavian languages must be comparatively easy for German speakers to learn.
As a guy who's learning Norwegian, I don't see any difference between Danish and Norwegian... Except when it comes to pronunciation 😂
they have a lot in common. Really a lot. But there are also quite a lot of differences
Hej Mic! Endnu en udmærket video! Tusind tak! Jeg interesserer mig for både dansk og tysk. Faktisk er tysk mit første fremmede sprog. Ja, det er ingen tvivl om, at hvis du kan tysk så er det nemmere at lære tysk og omvendt. Dog tysk grammatik er generelt sværere end dansk grammatik, efter min mening./ Hallo Mic! Noch ein ausgezeichnetes Video. Vielen Dank! Ich interessiere mich sowohl für Dänisch als auch für Deutsch. Eigentlich ist Deutsch meine erste Fremdsprache. Es steht völlig außer Zweifel: wenn man Deutsch kennt, so ist es leichter, Dänisch zu lernen und umgekehrt. Doch meiner Meinung nach ist die deutsche Grammatik ist im Allgemeinen schwieriger als die dänische Grammatik. Übrigens: hier sind die Linke zu meinem neuesten Video auf Deutsch (in 2 Teilen). ua-cam.com/video/psFWp28zpqQ/v-deo.html (Geografische und statistische Überraschungen - Teil ), ua-cam.com/video/ThWNY_vQHXQ/v-deo.html (Geografische und statistische Überraschungen Teil 2) Venlig hilsen fra Storbritannien/ Viele Grüße aus Großbritannien :-)
- Jeg Ved ikke, godt hvis du forstår men ...
Hvis jeg vil studere Dansk ... så har du et
for eksempel, venligste vedste en bog ?
- Hvis du forstår, så svar tak ...👍.
Jeg taler engelsk som mit modersmål, men jeg har studerer dansk (og lidt tysk) for nogle år.... og jeg helt synes at dansk ligner meget mere til engelsk end tysk.
Ja, det kan man godt argumentere for. Men hvis man udelukkende ligger på ordforråd, så ligner dansk nok tysk en del mere end det ligner engelsk.
Hvis man lærer dansk er det en stor fordel både at kunne engelsk og tysk i forvejen.
@@MicsLanguages Ja, det er sandt. Men jeg tror at sætning strukturen at dansk er næsten det samme til engelsk. Din videoer viser det. 😀 Hvis man kan lære nok ord, så kan man bygge en dansk sætning. Du har det helt ret at ordforråd er mere det samme mellem engelsk og tysk, men i struktur er det dansk. Måske det er på grund af det “Dane-law” i stor Britannien for lang tid siden? Dansk og engelsk var ved sidden af hinanden for mange år i viking-tid Europa. At any rate, Danish is my first foreign language that I have learned to any decent level. It will always have a special place in my heart and mind! 🇩🇰🇩🇰 German will probably be my next language to tackle, but I want to get my Danish down first.
Danish is really bizarre 😅
🤯
Poor brits so much french(latin) these last years (about 1000 of 'em) 😞
Høne is not chicken. It’s hen. Kylling is chicken.
Gibt ja die Mitgift im deutschen noch :D Ich glaub so false Friends sind die Wörter garnicht :)
I hope you weren't at that mall!
Thanks for your concerns :) I wasn't there luckily
@@MicsLanguages Jeg er dybest set bekymret. Jeg er glad for, at alt er godt. Sorry for my danish :D hugs ^^
Hilsen fra Ungarn {} :)
The muppets cook was danish, what wonderfull. But as german we never found out what smörrebröd really is. Maybe something a cake of surströmming and flavour. Who knows. What leeds us tu indugermanic lang wätsches! Very complicated. Even Mark Twain desperated. Ich sach ma so, wenn ihr mit Shakespeare durch seid. Seid ihr Sprachproof in germanischen Sprachen. Whalla, bassd scho. Voila. Jede Sprache hat ihren Witz und ihre Geschichte. Ich habe mich als hässlicher Mensch in keltische Sprachen eingegraben, nie habe ich mehr gelacht.
Die dänische Sprache hört sich immer total abgehackt an. Als würden sie manche Wörter verschlucken.
Das kann man wohl so sagen 🤔