Master Danish Pronunciation: Beginner’s Guide
Tired of not being understood when you speak Danish?
Overwhelmed by the seemingly endless stream of vowels that is the Danish language?
Sick of being asked to pronounce “rød grød med fløde”?
You’ve come to the right place.
Danish pronunciation is notoriously difficult – it has sounds that don’t really exist in other languages, a tendency to “drop” letters, and a dizzying amount of vowels.
Fortunately, there is a proven way to improve your pronunciation.
This guide is your DIY roadmap to mastering Danish pronunciation. Drawing on years of experience with accents and language learning, we’ll lay out practical steps to boost your speaking fluency and listening comprehension. By the end, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to speak with both comfort and confidence.
Let’s start by changing how we think about language.
Let’s stop thinking of language as a school subject for a second, and start thinking about what it really is – sounds that help us communicate a message.
In this way, language is like music. And if language is music, then our mouth and throat is our instrument. The good news is, you’re already an accomplished musician – in your native language! You’ve mastered it’s sound, its rhythms, its melodies.
Now, think of Danish as adding another style of music to your repertoire. While it might seem unfamiliar at first, with a little practise and understanding, you will get used to the new sounds and rhythms and soon be singing along in harmony.
When we learn a new language, it can be difficult to understand speech. We are not familiar with the music of that language and so it makes no sense to us.
Imagine you are listening to jazz music for the first time. If you have not heard something similar before, it might seem crazy and incomprehensible. However, the more you listen to it and get used to the patterns of the music, the more you will understand it and the more you will be able to predict what is coming.
The same is true of language – the more we train our brains to understand the different sounds and melodies, the easier it will become to understand them.
Ok, so language is music and we are the instrument. How does that help with Danish pronunciation? Well, here’s what you’re going to do:
- Establish the foundation: Understand the essence of pronunciation and mechanics of sound
- Discover the unknown: Learn to hear and reproduce the new unique sounds of Danish.
- Practise until perfect: Listen to and emulate native speech until you sound just like a local!
1. Establish the foundation – what is an accent?
Everybody has an accent.
An accent is essentially the unique way we pronounce words and phrases based on our individual backgrounds. Think of it as a vocal fingerprint.
In linguistics, it is split into two parts. First, we have all the different sounds of an accent/language. The fancy word for this is ‘phonology’, with each individual sound being called a ‘phoneme’. The different sounds, or phonemes, are the building blocks of speech.
Then there’s the rhythm and cadence of how we speak – the rises and falls, the emphasis on certain parts. This is called prosody. Think of it as the music of our speech, where we consider pitch, tone and rhythm.
Put together phonology and prosody and you have the sound of the language or accent.
As I was saying, the good news is that you are already a master of pronunciation in your own accent. It’s just so natural you don’t even think about it. But with a little awareness and practice, you can start to understand your pronunciation. And once you understand how pronunciation works, you can start to tune your ear to the new sounds and melodies of Danish.
A crash course in English phonology: Understanding your instrument
Before diving into Danish, let’s look at the sounds of English (if English is not your mother tongue, you can also try this with whatever language you are most comfortable in).
English has around 24 consonant sounds and around 13 vowel sounds. It is important to remember that we are talking about sounds here, and not letters. Sounds are not necessarily related to the written language, especially in languages like English and Danish (consider the ‘f’ sound in the word ‘enough’). This is why it is important to focus on the actual sounds of the language, and not get distracted by the written language. Use your ears, not your eyes.
Sounds fall into two categories – consonants and vowels.
Consonants
Consonants are made by restricting air flow. This can be done in various ways:
- A ‘b’ sound is made by fully restricting the air flow with the two lips.
- A ‘th’ sound is made by mostly restricting the air flow with the tongue and the upper teeth.
- A ‘g’ sound is made by fully restricting the air flow by touching the back of your tongue to your soft palate on the roof of your mouth.
For each consonant, we use different parts of our mouth or throat to restrict the air flow to different degrees. Take a bit of time to think of different consonant sounds in English and become aware of which part of your mouth or throat you use to pronounce them.
Vowels
Vowels let the air flow freely, and are characterised by the position of the tongue and shape of the lips, as follows:
- Tongue position. Try saying the /i/ sound as in ‘street’ or ‘beat’ – eeeee – and then transition to the /u/ sound as in ‘shoe’ or ‘to’, and notice how your tongue moves forward for the /i/ sound and back for the /u/ sound. (Don’t worry about the IPA symbols, eg. /i/ for now, just focus on the sounds).
Now try going from the /u/ of ‘shoe’ to the /ɑ/ ‘aww’ sound of ‘father’ and notice how your tongue moves down and your jaw opens more to produce the ‘aww’ sound.
- Lip shape. Try going from the /i/ of ‘street’ to the /u/ of ‘shoe’ again. This time, instead of thinking of the tongue position, think of the shape of your lips. For the /i/ sound they will be relaxed, almost smiling. For the /u/ sound, they will be rounded and tense, in a pout.
Experiment with different vowel sounds, getting used to how they feel in your mouth. Become aware of the position of your tongue, jaw and lips. Remember, our natural speech patterns have become so ingrained that we rarely notice these nuances. Greater awareness of the sounds in your native language will ease your journey into the world of Danish vowels.
2. Discover the unknown – The unique sounds of Danish
Having gotten familiar with how you make sounds, it is time to discover the sounds in Danish that don’t exist in English (or your native language).
Whereas English has 24 consonants and 13 vowels, Danish has around 17 consonant sounds and around 20 vowel sounds. We can see how important it is to learn to distinguish new vowel sounds in Danish!
More good news – most of the sounds in English and Danish are the same, or very similar, so you only have to work on the few unfamiliar ones.
A great resource to use to find all the sounds of Danish is this website: https://en.udtaleordbog.dk/ipa.php. They lay out all of the different sounds of the language in an organised list, with audio examples. Have a look through and find the sounds that are not in your native language. You can then use these to practise.
Taking English as a base, let’s have a look at a few of the sounds that might cause difficulties.
Consonants
New consonants are the sounds that are really going to work our tongue muscle. The following is a quick overview of which sounds are new (for native Engilsh speakers). You will need to take a deeper dive into these sounds to really solidify them. There are many great tutorials on Youtube. I’ll provide deeper resources in upcoming content. For now, let’s have a look at the new sounds:
ts – the Danish ‘t’ sound. If you listen to the recording on the udtaleordbog website, you will hear that it is not like the English ‘t’ sound. Instead, it sounds more like the ‘zz’ of ‘pizza’.
ʁ – the Danish ‘r’ sound. This is an uvular sound, meaning that the tongue connects with the uvula, the dangly thing in the back of your throat. English has no uvular sounds. The closest we get is the ‘g’ sound on the soft palate. To reach the uvula, we need to move the tongue further back, so that it feels like it is touching the back of our throat. If you’re struggling, there are many video tutorials online to help you work on finding the uvular sound (a similar sound is used in French, so you can look up tutorials for the French ‘r’).
ð – the soft d For some reason, this one isn’t listed on the udtaleordbog website. But you know the sound I’m talking about. It’s that weird sound at the end of words like ‘mad’ and ‘gade’. You can hear an example here on Forvo (another great Danish pronunciation resource, where you can listen to recordings of words). The best way to start is just to stick your tongue out uncomfortably far and make sure it doesn’t touch the roof of your mouth or upper teeth.
Vowels
Vowels can be challenging, but they’re essential for achieving accurate pronunciation. Let’s dissect them by categories:
- Unrounded Front Vowels
- What’s that? These are vowels produced with the tongue positioned towards the front of the mouth. The lips remain unrounded (relaxed).
- How to practise: Go to the ‘unrounded front vowels’ section of the udtalebog website. Start from the topmost vowel, which is pronounced with a nearly closed mouth. As you progress down the list, you will notice that you need to open your mouth a little more each time. Listen to each example and practise mimicking the sounds until you can differentiate between them.
- Rounded Front Vowels
- What’s that? Similar to unrounded front vowels in tongue positioning, but the lips are rounded.
- How to practise: Start with the top vowel in the list, with the mouth almost closed, and progress down, opening the mouth a little more with each vowel.
- Back Vowels
- What’s that? These are produced with the tongue towards the back of the mouth (and lips generally rounded)
- How to practise: Begin with the ‘u’ sound, with the mouth almost closed, and open your jaw a little with each vowel as you move down the list.
3. Practise until perfect: Listen to and emulate native speech until you sound just like a local!
For our next step, we’re going to immerse ourselves in authentic spoken Danish. First thing to do is to find a recording of some spoken Danish. Following the personalisation principle, you will want to take a recording that means something to you, whether it is from a song, film, TV show, podcast or audiobook that you enjoy. Choose something that can be slowed down. Youtube is a great tool as you can play videos at different speeds.
- Tune into the melody. Play the recording repeatedly (slow it down), focusing on the melody and rhythm of speech. Count the syllables, identify which ones are stressed, note the pitch variations – where does the phrase rise or fall? Then, practise repeating this melody. Don’t worry about the sounds at this stage. Instead, vocalise the rhythm by humming or using a sound like ‘la la la’. What’s vital is getting used to the flow of Danish speech.
- Decode the sounds. Phonetics time. Repeat the recording again (slow it down!), and try to work out all the different phonemes (sounds). Practise articulating them in isolation. Gradually, introduce the melody. Start slow, and as your fluency grows, increase your pace until you sound like the recording.
Remember, learning to speak a new language is like learning a new instrument. When we learn to play an instrument, we don’t start by playing the most difficult, fast pieces right away. We learn to play the notes, then we take a simple piece or phrase and learn to play it slowly. We play it slowly until we can do it without making any mistakes, then increase the speed over time until we can play the whole piece correctly.
At first, this can be quite a slow process but with a bit of practice you will become a master at picking out the correct sounds and melody. This is when the magic starts to happen. All of a sudden, instead of a cascade of weird sounds, the individual words of Danish will ring clear. Conversation will come more naturally, comfortably, and fluently.
Bonus tips – how to perfect your Danish pronunciation
- Get feedback. At first it can be quite difficult for us to hear new sounds. It will speed up the process if you can get feedback on whether you are making the correct sounds. Even better if the feedback comes from a professional who can tell you what you need to do to improve (eg. do you need to open your mouth a little more, do you need to work on where you place the emphasis in sentences?).
- Use a mirror. Are your lips rounded when they are supposed to be? Are you sticking out your tongue to make sure you hit that soft d sound?
- Imitate Danes speaking English. It is easier for us to hear new sounds and rhythms in a language we are more comfortable with. Have some fun trying to put on a Danish accent in English – the different rhythm and “mistakes” in the sound are there for a reason – this is what Danish sounds like!
Final thoughts
Picking up the skills to master Danish pronunciation takes some dedication, patience, and above all, practice. Remember that every sound you master, every rhythm you get right, is one step closer to comfortable, confident communication.
Don’t worry about sounding perfect. Small improvements in pronunciation can have a huge impact on your overall comprehension and speaking. Embrace the journey, and enjoy the process.
With the steps in this guide, a dive into Youtube, and a bit of commitment, you will soon find yourself understanding, and singing along with, the music of Danish.
