Danish

About Danish

Danish is the official language of Denmark, with about 5.6 million speakers. It is close to Norwegian and Swedish, and written Danish and Norwegian are especially easy to read side by side.

Danish is known for sounds that are far from its spelling. Many consonants are softened or dropped, so the d in mad (food) sounds close to the th in "this", and the language has a short catch in the throat on some syllables, called stød. The letters æ, ø and å come at the end of the alphabet. Danes use the informal du with almost everyone, and the formal De is now rare.

FamilyIndo-European, North Germanic
Speakersabout 5.6 million (2012)
Official inDenmark
ScriptLatin alphabet, 29 letters
Codesda (ISO 639-1), dan (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2012), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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