How to pronounce Ø in Danish
One of the first ‘tricky’ Danish vowels you’re likely to come across as you try to order an ‘øl’, learning how to pronounce ‘ø’ will help build up both your Danish listening and speaking skills.
First things first, it’s important to have a general grasp of how vowels are made in any language. Once you have that down, it will be much easier to move your tongue and lips freely to form new sounds.
Secondly, it’s important to remember that the written Danish language and Danish sounds are two different things. Here, we are going to focus mainly on the ø sound. In some words, the letter ø sounds different. We will look at some of those variations at the end.
Let’s get into it.
THE Ø SOUND
As outlined here, there are 3 things that we do to make different vowel sounds. They are: the position of our tongue (front to back), the position of our jaw (close to open) and the shape of our lips (rounded or unrounded). Let’s take these individually and see where the ø sound fits in.
1. TONGUE. Some sounds are called front sounds because our tongue is at the front of our mouth (eg. the /i/ sound in the word ‘free’) whereas other sounds are called back sounds as the tongue is in the back of the mouth (eg. the /u/ sound of boot). The /ø/ sound is a front sound, so our tongue is at the front of our mouth.
2. JAW. Some sounds are called close because our mouth is almost closed (eg. the /i/ sound of free). Some sounds are called open because our mouth is more open (eg. the /a/ sound of ‘bat’). Another way to think about this is the position of the tongue (higher for /i/ and lower for /a/).
The /ø/ sound is called ‘close-mid’, meaning that the mouth is almost, but not completely closed. It is a little more open than for the /I/ sound of the English word ‘fit’.
3. LIPS. Some sounds are called unrounded because the lips are relaxed (eg. the /i/ of ‘free). Some sounds are called rounded because the lips are pouted and taut (eg. the /u/ of boot). Ø is a rounded sound, so the lips need to be rounded and tensed.
The vowel diagram below is a representation of a mouth. Imagine it as a side view of a face looking to the left. The letters on the left hand side are with the tongue at the front of the mouth, the letters on the right hand side are with the tongue at the back of the mouth. The letters at the top are with the jaw closed and at the bottom with the jaw open. Letters written on the left of the line are unrounded, and on the right are rounded.
So we can see that the ø sound is at the front of the mouth, a little more open than the ɪ sound, and with the lips rounded.
How to Reach the Ø Sound
One way to get closer to making the correct sound is starting from a sound you are more familiar with and then making adjustments to reach the ø sound.
In this case, try making the /e/ sound. This sound is found in some English accents, such as at the start of the vowel sound in the word ‘may’. Try taking this vowel sound and then rounding the lips to make the ø sound.
It may be easier to start with the Danish /y/ sound. This is made by taking the /i/ sound of ‘free’ and then rounding the lips. This sound is in Danish words such as ‘by’. From here, hold the shape of the lips and open the jaw/ lower the tongue a little to reach the ø sound.
Ø in Other Contexts
As stated, this is the ø sound, not the written letter. This sound appears in many Danish words. Sometimes it is quite short, as in the words ‘øl’ and ‘køkken’. Other times it is stretched a little longer, as in ‘fløde’. Other times it is pronounced with ‘stød’, the Danish glottal stop, such as in the word ‘dø’.
At other times, when the vowel is particularly short, the written vowel becomes a bit more open (ie. the jaw opens more) to make an /œ/ sound, as in the word ‘søn’.
If followed by a ‘j’ or ‘g’, (oi), as in ‘tøj’, the vowel sound is more like the ‘oi’ of the English ‘boy’.
I would advise that to start with, you focus on the sounds of Danish, rather than the written language. In that case, these examples above can be covered with other sounds, and are not related to the ø sound.
